On the morning of the second day when he returned to reality, Long Yun called his boss to ask for leave as usual.

In order to participate in the LSFT business, the owners of the repair shop have not been a few of Long Yun. In the eyes of the boss, the value of employees is reflected in low investment and high returns; For things like compensatory leave, naturally he won't give Long Yun any good attitude. The prescribed five-day work week is nothing more than a legend in private repair shops.

"Hey, Long Yun, if you take leave like this again, then you will have to deduct money from your salary. Young people, if you don't do your job well, you have to run to some kind of competition! Hum. ”

Long Yun didn't reply. How many overtime holidays before, not only did there be no overtime pay, but even compensatory time off was not paid. So what? There's nothing to argue with this kind of boss.

Hanging up the phone and packing up his things, Long Yun went out to the team's training ground to continue his pre-match training. Even if he encounters a black hand outside the arena, Long Yun doesn't want to slack off; The ideal has just begun, and it is too fragile to be discouraged at this time. Besides, it doesn't necessarily have to be released, it depends on the decision of captain Lin Feng.

At the beginning of the simulation training in the team, Long Yun still used his old partner MiG-29.

When training against his teammates, Long Yun generally kept it and didn't really do his best in the confrontation. Because he has found that if he uses all his strength, none of these players who are still in the learning period will be able to hit him in medium-range over-the-horizon combat, no matter what kind of plane or what kind of missile they use. Close confrontation? Not to mention, if he doesn't release the water, then the opponent will not be able to react at all, and often will not know where his position is until he is shot down.

In this way, the so-called training becomes a one-way slaughter, and it is impossible to learn anything from it, which is not what Long Yun wants.

Long Yun's vision is actually farther, and the goal is not just the simulator battle in front of him. Although such "air battles" are exciting and interesting enough for some, in his opinion, these are nothing more than children's tricks compared to the fierce confrontation between real fighters.

What he is looking forward to is a real confrontation that has swept the world, and a peak duel in the air with real fighters and guns.

There are many such competitions, and the most representative and competitive level is the biennial IFT.

To understand how this thrilling, expensive sport has taken the world by storm, we need to start with the fuel revolution of the new century. Otherwise, it may be difficult to understand the fact that fighter planes, which once represented the highest level of military science and technology, shouldered the heavy responsibility of airspace defense, and dominated the development of modern warfare in a very large way, were allowed to enter the civilian population and further develop into a modern competitive sport on a huge scale.

The answer is locked hydrogen crystals.

Since the beginning of civilization, human beings have been constantly searching for convenient and efficient energy storage materials.

First firewood, then coal, and then crude oil, which is widely used. For example, crude oil, the blood of modern society, is so widely used not so much because crude oil is underground and does not need to be produced artificially, but because its high energy density is more appreciated.

Burning a litre of jet fuel can produce a higher calorific value than any other energy storage material of the same volume, including the latest fuel cells. This invaluable advantage makes fuel almost the only option for energy-intensive equipment, such as aircraft that have no one to rely on in the air and can only carry energy.

With the development of modern science and technology, the energy storage capacity of batteries has been continuously improved, and a large number of electric vehicles have also appeared in people's lives. A fully charged car can already travel hundreds of kilometers at a time, which is undoubtedly an extremely high achievement; But can you imagine a fighter that relies on battery propulsion? This is certainly not possible. Fighters require a powerful burst of energy, which can only be provided by high-energy fuel, and incidentally, it also uses combustion products as a recoil agent for jet engines.

Then the locked hydrogen crystals appeared.

Thanks to its incredible internal structure, the hydrogen lock crystal is able to carry atomic hydrogen equivalent to several times its own weight in a fairly stable state, and continuously release it when burning. The only pity is that as the heating process continues, the structure of the crystal will also disintegrate, and the preparation of such crystals is quite expensive.

For equipment that requires a high-density energy source, hydrogen locking crystals are a revolutionary scientific achievement: simply put, one kilogram of hydrogen locking crystals completely burns almost ten times the energy released by the same weight of aviation kerosene. If you simply convert it, this is equivalent to a fighter equipped with an atomic hydrogen engine, and its range can reach eight to ten times that of the original.

Such energy materials have obviously brought about a revolution in military technology. With powerful engines to match, the power-first aviation industry soon began to design and manufacture completely new concepts of air weapons.

It is of course good to have a range several times that of the original, or to say that the speed is greatly increased with the same range. But what could be more appealing than a greatly increased permissible weight, or a high degree of maneuverability?

Allowing for greater structural weight of air weapons, the space occupied by fuel and engines does not increase much, which actually provides a lot of room for armor and super-motorization of combat units.

Imagine a fighter of the same size as the J-10, and the engine is replaced by a single atomic hydrogen engine with a thrust of more than 1,300 kN, which allows the weight of the whole aircraft to be increased to more than 100 tons without degrading flight qualities. Such a large surplus weight allows it to be equipped with high-strength composite armor that covers all vital parts, allowing it to withstand even the close-range detonation of modern air-to-air missile warheads, which would have been absolutely fatal to any air target.

With an indestructible armored body, other so-called super-mobility and so-called stealth are no longer important at this time.

――You are not afraid of enemy missiles and shells at all, so what can you do if you hit them?

The new generation of air combat units with unprecedented thrust, vertical take-off and landing and hovering, heavy armor, powerful firepower, and terrifying capabilities that are not inferior to the speed and maneuverability of traditional fighters, such combat effectiveness can be said to be an out-and-out air tank.

Such an epoch-making new type of air weapon is called a strong attack aircraft.

The so-called divergent path to the same end, almost at the same time, the world's major powers that discovered the lock of hydrogen crystals are vying to develop a new generation of weapons and equipment, and the final development path is similar.

With the advent of attack aircraft, the tactical value of traditional fighters has rapidly decreased, and their ability to attack air targets of this type has been reduced to almost zero. Traditional fighter planes can be said to be very vulnerable in the face of assault aircraft, and the combat exchange ratio will reach a completely unacceptable level - imagine what the exchange ratio of an armed truck equipped with machine guns and grenades would be against the main battle tank, and this is probably the case.

Due to the emergence of assault aircraft, the military aircraft manufacturing of traditional military powers has been rapidly upgraded, but the traditional aircraft industry accumulated over the past hundred years will not change overnight. For the vast majority of countries that have not mastered the technology of locking hydrogen crystals, they have seen that the once expensive and difficult to obtain fighter planes have changed from sharp weapons in air combat to weak fighters, and can no longer become a strong barrier to national security, and the willingness to buy fighter planes has also dropped to the lowest point since the end of the Cold War.

In this context, the competitive development of fighter aircraft has provided a new way out for the aviation industry.

Although the initial price was still expensive, with the rise of aviation competition, fighter shipments reached or even exceeded the highest single annual level since the Cold War. With the upgrading of technology and the stabilization of production capacity, the price of fighter-related products has gradually decreased; This provided the basis for a wider economic expansion, and later created the post-fighter era, which is known as the golden age of the aviation economy.

Although, unlike the confrontation on the simulator, the real fighter confrontation is still costly and far from affordable for the average hobbyist; But there is never a shortage of rich people in this world, and their interests often determine the interests of the public, and also determine the orientation of quite a few industries.

Being able to join an aviation club, or even, to be able to participate in a real fighter confrontation competition can be said to be Long Yun's biggest dream at this time; Although he still clearly knows that this goal is still quite far away.

But one way or another, he's already on his way.