The rise of a great power: starting with military industry

The worst thing was that a missile hit the ammunition depot at the air force base.

The explosion of the ammunition depot was like the coming of the end of the world. All kinds of high-performance, high-quality fighter ammunition released all their capabilities in an instant, ravaging everything around like the eruption of Mount St. Lawrence. The flames of the explosion ignited almost everything within a two-kilometer range. There were many "fire men" walking around, and flames and smoke enveloped the entire base.

It was not until noon the next day that the fire department put out the fire.

The subsequent loss statistics were far greater than people had expected.

The entire air force base was destroyed.

除了4架F-15和8架F-16战斗机在空中之外，其余的43架飞机全部损失了，死了1123人，238人受伤。

The entire Incirlik Air Base was destroyed this time, causing losses of up to billions of dollars.

In the city of Adana, thousands of people were killed or injured because of missiles falling. The reason for such heavy casualties was that a Scud missile fell on a shopping mall.

When the Joint Forces Supreme Command received this news, it fell into deathly silence.

This loss is really too great!

Although other air bases were also attacked by Iraqi missiles, the combined losses were not as great as those at Incirlik Air Base.

The commander-in-chief of the Supreme Joint Forces Headquarters immediately issued an order to implement a news censorship and not allow any reports on this incident to be disseminated by the media, at least not for the time being.

However, this decision was made too late.

Adana is a big city in Turkey, and there are many media. When Incirlik Air Base was attacked, many reporters from newspapers and TV stations from the United States, France, Germany and other countries rushed to the scene. They wrote reports based on the photos they took overnight, and sent them to their own newspapers by fax, and also posted them on the Internet. TV reporters even broadcast the news live on TV.

The commander-in-chief of the Supreme Joint Forces Command issued a news censorship order, but it is no longer possible because the relevant news has already been reported and is flooding the Internet.

One German journalist even wrote in his report that he personally witnessed the entire attack on Incirlik Air Base and expressed serious doubts about the specific performance of the Patriot missiles: "From what I saw, Patriot missiles fired 20 of the 24 incoming missiles and only intercepted 4. The interception success rate is very low. The Patriot missiles are not as reliable as the Americans claim."

The Patriot missile has been questioned not just now. As early as the Afghanistan War, the Patriot missile was questioned. However, at that time, the Patriot missile interception success rate reached 68%, which was barely acceptable.

However, since the outbreak of the Iraq War, facing Iraq's large-scale missile attacks, the joint forces' "Patriot" missile interception success rate has been very low, and related news has been reported more than once.

This time, the Iraq War not only shattered the myth of the "Tomahawk" cruise missile, but also the myth of the "Patriot" missile.

The Americans have vigorously built the 'National Strategic Defense System' and the 'Theater Defense System', the core of which is the 'Patriot' missile.

Raytheon and the Pentagon have hyped up the Patriot missile, and the US Congress has passed a huge budget bill to purchase more Patriot missiles.

But in the Iraq War, the Patriot missiles failed to protect Israel, Turkey, or the coalition forces.

The success rate of the joint forces in intercepting Iraqi missiles with Patriot missiles, anti-aircraft machine guns, anti-aircraft artillery and fighter missiles is between 50% and 60%. The Iraqi missiles destroyed Incirlik Air Base, killing thousands of people and causing billions of dollars in damage!

The news was also reported in the United States, and all public opinion in the country was in an uproar.

What Americans are most proud of in terms of air defense missiles is the Patriot missile, which they rank alongside China's Aegis missile as the most advanced air defense missiles in the world.

But now, this pride has been shattered.

The American people feel they have been fooled.

"Can the Patriot missile really intercept missiles?" Countless Americans couldn't help but wonder.

Thousands of demonstrators came to the gate of the White House to protest against the US government's launching of an unjust war and the transfer of interests between the US government and Raytheon, which resulted in the "Patriot" missile being an unqualified product and killing American soldiers. They demanded the withdrawal of troops from the Middle East and stopped wasting dollars.

They couldn't understand why the United States launched the Iraq War after launching the Afghanistan War and before the Afghanistan War was over.

If the war in Afghanistan was launched because of 911/ and to severely punish Bin Laden, then Americans would support it. But the war in Iraq is fundamentally unjust and a wrong war.

They clearly felt that after the United States launched the Iraq War, prices were rising, including gasoline prices. Now they have to pay two or even three times the US dollars for the same amount of gasoline.

Moreover, before the ground troops entered Iraqi territory, thousands of American soldiers had died, and if you add the soldiers from other countries, the total number was over 10,000. The war cost hundreds of billions of dollars.

Now the military budget for 2004 submitted by the Pentagon has reached a record high of 7500 billion US dollars, which is simply unacceptable.

In the eyes of more and more Americans, this war is simply the second Vietnam War!
Iraq now has thousands of American soldiers captured.

The videos of these captives crying and confessing, shouting for their parents to save them, have been on the Internet and have never disappeared.

There is also the Afghan war, which has been going on for more than two years. As a result, the US military now controls only 35% of Afghanistan, and the military expenditure has amounted to hundreds of billions of dollars.

The U.S. Department of Defense urgently launched a public relations campaign, first holding a press conference and denying the number of casualties.

Because according to the U.S. military's casualty statistics standards, as long as the soldiers are not killed immediately on the spot by the enemy's direct means, even if they die after emergency treatment, it is considered death from illness and is not counted in the list of casualties.

In other words, although many people died in the attack on Incirlik Air Force Base, unless they were directly killed by missiles, they were not included in the list of casualties, such as those killed in oil leaks and fires on the plane or in the explosion of the ammunition depot.

However, this behavior made the soldiers' families extremely angry. You have to know that their relatives have lost their lives here, and it also involves the pension standards. The gap here is huge.

In the Korean War and the Vietnam War, the US military's death list was far lower than the enemy's statistics. In addition to the need for publicity, a very important reason was related to pensions. (End of this chapter)