Go back in time and be a chaebol

Chapter 2603 The Most Deadly Reality (First Update, Please Subscribe)
Udon Thani Air Base, northeastern Siam
D10th.

Although the base was shrouded in darkness, there were still many long guns and short cannons pointed at it from outside.

People come here to take photos for various reasons—photos of stealth fighter jets.

The navigation lights on both sides of the runway drew two streaks of light in the darkness.

A Night Shadow stealth fighter jet with sharp angles is quietly parked in front of the takeoff line. Its unique multifaceted shape makes it instantly recognizable.

Night Shadow!

The biggest star of this war, it has been the most dazzling presence since the very beginning of the war.

It flew over enemy territory countless times, dropping bombs time and time again. Although these Night Shadows only accounted for 5% of the total sorties of the coalition forces, in the past 10 days, they destroyed 95% of the enemy's power plants and substations, and 75% of their roads and railway bridges.

In short, the power it has demonstrated far exceeded people's expectations.

It seemed to blend into the night, then silently destroyed everything.

Major Ma Dekun, the pilot, sat in the cockpit, his hand on the control stick, checking the instrument data once more. The final instructions from air traffic control came through his headset:

"Ghost 17, clearance for takeoff."

Ma Dekun smiled easily and pushed down the throttle. The two F404 turbofan engines roared smoothly as the Night Shadow fighter jet slowly glided across the runway, then suddenly lifted off, piercing the night sky and soaring into the clouds.

"Climbing normally."

As he reported the flight parameters, he casually adjusted his oxygen mask, his gaze sweeping over the fluctuating data on the instrument panel.

For him, such raids were already second nature, and the Night Shadow fighter jet, known as the "Ghost," allowed him to move freely in enemy airspace.

The fighter jet quickly leveled off and climbed to an altitude of 13,000 meters.

Ma Dekun turned on the auto-drive function, leaned back in his seat, and even took a sip of coffee from his thermos.

The surroundings were pitch black, and the remaining ground-based air defense radars were completely unaware of the stealthy intrusion of the fighter jet. The Night Shadow's stealth design made its radar cross-section on the radar screen equivalent to that of a bird in flight, rendering the Soviet-made air defense systems that had once caused so much trouble for their American counterparts useless.

To remain invisible, Nightshade does not emit any radio signals when launching an attack. It doesn't even have radar; it only has an electro-optical tracker that uses GPS to pinpoint its location.

Ma Dekun sat up straight, switched to attack mode, and an infrared image of the target area instantly appeared on the display screen in the cockpit—a railway tunnel hidden among the mountains, which was a key channel for Shenglong to transport strategic materials.

After confirming the target, he maneuvered the fighter jet to make slight adjustments to its attitude, and the laser guidance system started working, with an invisible laser beam locking onto the area above the tunnel entrance.

During the mission, Ma Dekun appeared very relaxed, as if he were conducting a simulation training exercise. He pressed the release button, and a laser-guided bunker-buster bomb detached from its rack and plummeted rapidly under the influence of gravity.

The bomb's guidance system closely followed the laser signal, flying towards the tunnel entrance as if it had eyes.

A few seconds later, a muffled thud came from the ground, and flames instantly illuminated the night sky. Thick smoke billowed out of the tunnel entrance like a black dragon.

Ma Dekun could clearly see through the photoelectric tracking device that a huge gap had been blasted open at the tunnel entrance, and the collapsed rocks had completely blocked the entire tunnel.

"Target confirmed and destroyed; effective."

After casually remarking it as a mission record, he maneuvered his fighter jet toward the next target—a railway bridge spanning a mountain cliff a dozen kilometers away.

Only then did the ground-based air defense forces seem to wake up from a dream, and the anti-aircraft guns on the ground began to fire blindly. The shells trailed red streaks in the air, and finally exploded into orange-red sparks in the night sky, but they couldn't even touch the shadow of the night.

Ma Dekun paid no attention to this, even thinking that the artillery fire was more like victory celebration fireworks. Amidst the celebratory fireworks, he locked onto his target again, and a 1000-kilogram laser-guided bomb was launched, accurately hitting the railway bridge.

Violent explosions rang out one after another, and the steel bridge was instantly destroyed, with the heavy bridge deck immediately crashing into the cliff.

After confirming that the target was completely destroyed, Ma Dekun maneuvered the fighter jet to gain altitude and flew back in the direction of return. "Mission accomplished, preparing to return."

Speaking into the microphone was solely for the black box to record the operation; to maintain radio silence, his tone was relaxed and comfortable.

Behind him, chaos still reigned, and the Night Shadow he was driving vanished silently into the night as if it had never existed.

At this point, war seems to have completely changed – the attacked side can only passively retaliate.

However, most of the time, their retaliation is extremely blind, because they can neither see nor detect it.

At an S-300 air defense site near Shenglong, Lieutenant Colonel Sergei looked at the sky with a sense of helplessness. Behind him was a camouflaged phased-array radar. "We've become deaf and blind..."

"Yes, this is the reality we are facing now. Even our most advanced radar cannot detect Night Shadow."

When Smirnov said these words, his tone was full of helplessness, a helplessness that seemed more like the despair caused by the technological gap.

They brought in the Soviet Union's most advanced S-300 air defense missile system, and they were initially confident that they could use it to intercept SEA's Tomahawk cruise missiles and drones.

However, through a series of practical operations, they found that this was almost impossible, especially the interception of "Night Shadow".

"Although the S-300 system's radar theoretically has the potential to detect the Night Shadow at close range, in actual combat, it is extremely difficult, almost impossible, to use it to stably track, lock onto, and successfully shoot down the Night Shadow."

He lit a cigarette, took a deep drag, and then said:
"Perhaps our radar could detect a possible 'presence' at a distance of tens to hundreds of kilometers, but the accuracy would be extremely poor. The screen might just show a blurry, flickering dot of light whose altitude and speed are indeterminate, insufficient to provide fire control-level data for guiding the missile."

This also means that we simply cannot intercept it, and most of the time, we cannot even detect its existence.

As Smirnov finished speaking, Sergei said:

"Yes, that's the biggest problem. Just like yesterday, Nightshade destroyed the power plant outside the city. Although we found it dozens of kilometers away, it seems to be it, but it may not be."

"It could be a bird, or it could be noise..."

Smirnov let out a long, helpless sigh, and then added:

"We could only watch helplessly as they dropped the bombs, destroying everything, and we were completely powerless to fight back."

That's the most crucial thing.
Smirnov and Sergei were both air defense experts dispatched by the Air Defense Forces. They had conducted targeted research on SEA drones, and the 3M9 air defense missile system further enhanced its anti-drone capabilities, achieving some success in actual combat—shooting down more than 60 drones.

But they couldn't be happy about such results, because every interception was a loss-making endeavor—to shoot down a drone, they had to launch three to four anti-aircraft missiles, and the price of one missile might even exceed that of the drone itself.

The prerequisite is that the drones must be detected in advance. SEA's drones themselves possess a certain degree of stealth capability, with a radar cross-section of only 0.1 square meters, so in many cases, they cannot detect them. However, this is not a problem, as they have now mastered some methods to deal with drones.

At least to some extent, drones can be detected and then attacked—with missiles, anti-aircraft guns, and searchlights.

So this doesn't make people feel hopeless. What truly makes people feel hopeless?
You can't see it, and you can't hit it.
That's right, it's the Night Shadow stealth fighter.

"We can't see it, and we can't hit it..."

Smirnov looked up at the sky and said:
"It comes like a ghost, silently arriving and silently departing, bringing only death and destruction to this land, and what about us?... We are powerless!"

When he said this, Smirnov's tone was low. He didn't even want to turn around and look at the S-300 behind him, which represented the Soviet Union's most advanced air defense missile technology. It was urgently transported here by Moscow before the outbreak of the war, and its performance was comparable to the SEA's Sky Arrow 3 air defense missile.

Originally, it should have shone brightly in this war, but who would have thought that they would achieve no results?

Because it simply cannot intercept Nightshade. Although it can intercept missiles, fighter jets, bombers, and drones.

But the only thing they couldn't stop was Nightshade.

Thinking of this, Smirnov said in an almost desperate tone:
"Why don't those guys deploy regular fighter jets? If they did, we could definitely intercept them and shoot them down..."

When he uttered these words, only he knew what he was thinking at that moment—despair. If he wasn't desperate, how could he be using such prayerful words here?

“But we are always facing the shadows of the night, not just here, but possibly even in our own country… This…”

Sergei pursed his lips and then said:
"That's the most crucial point, and that's precisely why Moscow demands that we intercept a Nightshade no matter what—not just announce an interception, but actually shoot one down. Only in this way can we make them hesitant to send Nightshades into our skies..."

After he finished speaking, Smirnov spoke up:
"I understand what you're saying, but the only question is how do we shoot down these stealth fighters?"

The seemingly casual question plunged both of them into silence, and their expressions became complicated.

Yes!

They needed to prove to the world that the Soviet air defense system was effective by shooting down a Nightshade stealth fighter, only then could they deter Western countries from engaging in military adventures.

The only problem is that the Night Shadow fighter is unshooable.

This is the most devastating reality.

(End of this chapter)