As a senior commander of the coalition forces stationed at the US Central Command, Lieutenant General Clark's assessment of the battlefield situation was brief, but it had to be said that he had grasped the crux of the matter.

After months of protracted confrontation and the last 10 days of Operation Typhoon, the ground forces of the NATO coalition forces were planning to sweep the Russians up the mountains and into the sea in one fell swoop to completely wipe out the Soviet ground mobile forces in the three Transcaucasian republics, but today they paid a heavy price for the one-sided battle in the air.

Hundreds of thousands of allied soldiers who are on the offensive along the line, and the "Air Marines" are on a terrible day of hell's march.

The "Air Marines", having lost air superiority, this question is actually easy to guess.

Looking back at the sunny day in the Caucasus, from the beginning of the full-front offensive in the morning, the ground battles of the NATO coalition forces were full of surprises and "surprises", and along with the bad situation, the growing KIA list soared.

In the northwestern suburbs of Kutaiy, which had just been occupied by the coalition forces, the 1st Division of the 4th Marine Division, which was advancing along the railway line, encountered a delayed attack by the Soviet Army. In the coastal area, less than 10 kilometers from the western side of this battlefield, the Turkish armored brigade heading north along the Ring Sea Road lost the protection of its low-altitude fighters and was photographed on its back by the Red Air Force "Assembler" fighter-bombers.

In the central region of Transcaucasia, where the fighting was fierce, on the outskirts of the small city of Gori, a few dozen kilometers from Tbilisi, the capital of Georgia, the "Abrams" and "Bradley" of the US cavalry division appeared after a burst of fire from long-range artillery and tactical air force. They fought intermittently for the whole day with the tide of Soviet tanks coming from the north side of the battle line. In the end, he was defeated because of the lack of succession; It took more than a dozen kilometers to stabilize his position after retreating more than a dozen kilometers in one breath. Battalion Commander Fidel, who had lost almost all of his men, roared and cursed on the phone, not knowing that the "Apache" fleet that failed to appear on time over the battlefield was hit by MiGs, nor did he know that the follow-up troops had lost their chains because they had been bombarded with rockets and cluster bombs from Soviet fighters.

Further east, the stretch of fire on the outskirts of Yerevan in the Armenian Republic has been subjected to a whole day of combined air-ground strikes, and many of the forward positions that have been turned into scorched earth are already in shambles.

Fear in the messy bushes and depressions of the front of the battlefield, with the rumbling of artillery and the screeching of warheads. The grizzled and exhausted soldiers of the Royal United Kingdom looked around with their rifles in their arms, but they never had the courage to charge against tongues of fire and shrapnel.

In the soldier's pupils, which contracted with nervousness, clumps of charred vegetation and black smoke billowing from the wreckage of the chariot were reflected; More than a dozen "Challenger II" tanks, which launched a wave of charges in the morning but were annihilated by the Russian iron current's counterattack, the burning flames have not yet been completely extinguished, and occasionally there are a few "Samurai" infantry fighting vehicles with completely distorted and deformed contours, and the black smoke rising from the hull of the vehicles makes the vision covered with a layer of gray mist.

Today's combat operation is a complete nightmare for the British.

The "Van Vreitt" Royal Cavalry Regiment under the 7th Armored Brigade of the British 1st Marine Division originally wanted to penetrate all the way under the cover of NATO tactical air force fighters and compress the weak Russians into the narrow northern valley to eliminate them in one fell swoop. As a result, it was as if a car had crashed into the city wall, and there was a real duel with the 3rd Regiment of the 164th Motorized Infantry Division of the Seventh Army of the Soviet Union.

In the midst of a chaotic war. Although the heavy and sturdy "Challenger II" tanks were resistant to beating, they were at a double disadvantage in terms of firepower and numbers, and the John Bulls of the cavalry regiment, who were inseparable from the Russians, were lost their temper by a wave of air strikers from the "Frog Feet" attack planes that appeared over the battlefield.

Compared with the 125 mm smoothbore gun of the 2A46 type on the Russian T-72BM tank, the GSH-30-2 30 mm cannon of the "Frogfoot" attack aircraft is far less powerful, but the firing angle of the dive attack aircraft can be very tricky, and the armor-piercing incendiary bomb on the weak top of the strafing tank can paralyze the seemingly majestic steel giant beast at once, and the incendiary agent of the warhead will ignite the external fuel tank hit from time to time, and then explode.

Moreover, the fate of the armored vehicle does not stop there, if it is unfortunate enough to be hit by the ammunition in the vehicle, the deflagrated cartridge will directly trigger a violent explosion - this kind of explosion sounds simply earth-shattering, making all the British soldiers around tremble!

Since the start of the war, the soldiers of the 7th Armored Brigade have become accustomed to fighting under the cover of the tactical air force, and at least the sky above them can be kept safe even against the formidable Warsaw Pact group.

However, today, in the face of the unprecedented fierce Soviet ground offensive, the emergency call of the regimental headquarters was not answered, and in addition to the white clouds in the sky, only enemy planes painted with big red five-pointed stars could be seen shuttling back and forth; Not knowing where the Americans' fighters had gone, the unscrupulous Russians first used a few anti-radiation missiles to reimburse the search radar vehicle of the brigade's air-to-air bomb company, and then braved sparse antiaircraft artillery fire to launch several air strikes of varying scales, dropping bombs and air-to-side missiles directly on the attack echelon of the "Van Vreit" regiment.

In the face of a double blow from the ground and the sky, the British elite armoured forces charged with aerial bombs and 125-millimeter shells suffered heavy casualties, and the courage to fight against the trend was quickly exhausted, and after throwing behind a large area of wreckage and corpses, the wolf withdrew to the area where the attack was launched.

Before the British could clean up their frustration and contact the Americans to complain, a large rain of dead steel from the sky once again looted the remnants of their troops, grenades bloomed everywhere on the withered yellow grass slopes, and the panicked infantry jumped back to the "samurai" chariot to avoid the artillery attack, but many people were still directly killed by the shock wave and fragments.

Having never suffered such a big loss since entering the battle, he narrowly escaped artillery fire, and Lieutenant Colonel Parker Good, deputy commander of the "Van Fred" regiment, cursed angrily over the radio.

If the howitzer bombardment that has just been encountered is considered the traditional strength of the Russians' artillery doctrine, and the tactical air force is not likely to detect and suppress all the enemy's preset artillery positions in time, then what about the previous "frog feet" and more fighter planes' air raids?

Speaking to his superiors on the radio, Lieutenant Colonel Goode's words were not polite at all:

"Damn, what the hell are the Americans busy with, there are Russian fighters dropping bombs everywhere in the sky, why do you let us attack when you know that you have no air supremacy? Before nine o'clock in the morning, our department requested air support, and now we have all been driven back to the starting position by the Russians, but we still haven't seen a single paper plane! ”

"Lieutenant Colonel, please remain calm; The US command says that they are in trouble, and the Russians have just launched a full-front attack! ”

"Calm down? - I've always been calm,"

Hearing the indifferent answer in the headset, Lieutenant Colonel Goode was simply angry, he raised his hand and knocked on the bulkhead of the "Samurai" command vehicle, "Those bullshit Americans, are they also calm now?"

Winston, please tell the generals sent by the Pentagon that all the officers and men of the Seventh Armored Brigade 'Van Freet' are now calm, and their feelings are very steady; Of course, if they had responded to our call a few days later, or if they had not sent any planes at all, and waited until the Russian tanks had run over our corpses and entered Turkey, our feelings would have been more secure - dead people would not complain after all! ”

"Parker, these words are not funny at all."

Hearing the cynicism of his subordinates and knowing that today's Transcaucasia has become a bloody and terrifying hell on earth, General Winston Brooks of the Royal Army, who is in charge of command and coordination, implicitly criticized two sentences, and then succinctly ordered the "Van Fred" regiment not to advance and to stand by for the time being.

After turning off the call channel, the general sat in the tall tent of the headquarters for a moment, his slender fingers tapping slowly on the table.

As the coordinator and liaison officer of the British troops in the Middle East, he suddenly had to face this drastic change in the sky, and the US Air Force, which was originally regarded as a protective umbrella and strong backing, was now completely defeated and surrendered air supremacy in the Caucasus theater, which really surprised General Brooks; Faced with the 7th Armored Brigade, which was in a critical situation, he had the intention of directly calling the Royal Air Force stationed in Asia Minor and asking them to send fighter planes to Yerevan to blow up the Russian tanks that were pouring in, but he hesitated because of the agreement that "the command of the coalition forces shall be vested in the US Central Command."

As a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO), General Winston Brooks was very upset when he thought that the government was undermining the dignity of the United Kingdom by doing so.

However, the generals who are facing the battle situation must also admit that since the Americans have already vented their bitterness on the phone and have obviously been beaten by the Russians, it is a stupid choice to call the Royal Air Force fighters to put out the fire -- the reason is very simple, since so many Russian fighters suddenly came to the sky, and the air power of the coalition forces has also suffered heavy losses, and the powerful US Air Force cannot cope with the situation, can the boys of the Royal Air Force cope with it? (To be continued......)