Invasion of America

Chapter 151 Destruction
Lieutenant Colonel Hampton's last communication indicated that he was oriented east of Avonee, less than forty kilometers from his target.

According to the original plan, five minutes later, he should have reported over the target via radio that he had arrived, and then launched a saturation attack with rockets and Gatling guns to completely raz the ground camp.

Major General Borg, far behind, stared intently at the communications radio, waiting anxiously for ten minutes, but the radio remained dead silent, with no expected reports coming through.

Even the command center's attempts to contact him went unanswered, like a stone sinking into the sea. At that moment, a chilling premonition, like a heavy lead weight, abruptly dragged the major general's thoughts into an abyss.

"Oh no, this is bad."

None of the eight Black Hawk helicopters responded. There were no emergency calls, no warning signals; they vanished completely into the vast radio waves as if they had never existed.

This shows what?
This indicates that Lieutenant Colonel Hampton's raid failed, and he was routed the moment he encountered enemy interception. The enemy's attack was swift and decisive, leaving no room for respite.

This indicates that "Holy Light" has done a very good job in battlefield construction, and its defense system around its own base is quite complete, with a monitoring range and intensity far exceeding expectations.

This indicates that the opponent's combat methods have sufficient redundancy and precision, enabling them to simultaneously launch real-time and accurate strikes on airspace with a radius of at least ten kilometers.

"I was so foolish to act rashly without conducting sufficient reconnaissance," Major General Borg thought with intense regret.

“Those yellow-skinned monkeys are a well-trained regular army, not some rabble.”

"How could a man with billions of dollars be completely unguarded? Major Fleming's death is a bloody lesson, and I was completely unaware of it."

Major General Borg suddenly realized, as if waking from a dream, that his previous decisions had been fatally flawed. Fortunately, he hadn't lost all his chips; his ground forces remained intact.

Under normal circumstances, faced with such heavy losses, a rational commander would immediately order the ground combat group to halt its advance and retreat to its camp in Richmond to preserve its strength.

At the same time, a small number of elite special forces personnel were dispatched, disguised as merchants or ordinary passersby, to secretly infiltrate the area from the ground and carefully investigate the true nature of the enemy and its defensive deployment.

If necessary, we should even humble ourselves and try to reach out to those yellow-skinned monkeys to seek cooperation in order to avoid further escalation of the conflict.

A chilling sense of reason warned Major General Borg: retreat was not an option now. If he retreated, his troops would likely fall apart.

His soldiers are like wolves and tigers, no innocent creatures. If they can't plunder enough supplies, this winter will be a severe test they can hardly endure, and they are very likely to turn on him.

The only option was to take a gamble and order the troops to continue advancing, putting their fate on a high-stakes gamble.

If we lose the bet, letting these arrogant and fierce soldiers suffer a heavy setback might actually make them more obedient.

If this opportunity can be used to reduce the number of personnel, it can alleviate the supply burden on the troops in the long run.

Of course, even amidst utter despair, a glimmer of hope remained in the Major General's heart...

What if those yellow-skinned monkeys only won by luck? What if the opponents become complacent and negligent after their victory? What if I can command them well, find a glimmer of hope in this desperate situation, and turn defeat into victory?
Major General Borg gritted his teeth and gave the order: stop searching for the attackers on both sides of the road. He himself led the remaining personnel and vehicles to continue speeding westward at top speed.

There are only about 150 or 160 kilometers left. If we floor the gas pedal, we should be able to get there in two hours. There can't be an ambush all the way, so we might actually succeed.

Of course, the major general was not entirely reckless. He cautiously dispatched a company of soldiers, a dozen or so vehicles of various types, and seventy or eighty soldiers to clear the way.

In this apocalyptic world, with a sparse population and a correspondingly smaller military force, this is already considered a considerable military power.

"It's a pity that we didn't bring mobile radar on this mission." The major general silently weighed his remaining strength, the only thing that made him uneasy was the enemy's air strike capability.

The destruction of eight Black Hawk helicopters proves that the enemy must have good air defense equipment, but their ground attack capability may not be strong—if it were strong enough, the lead unit would probably not have escaped their fate either.

"There shouldn't be any more air raids, right?" The major general sat tightly in the command vehicle, his heart pounding in his chest.

He couldn't shake off his worries the whole way until twenty cold, deathly shadows appeared like ghosts above his convoy.
-
The so-called "long-range loitering munition" is thin and long, like a flying telephone pole, and looks somewhat clumsy.

Its missile structure is not fundamentally different from that of the medium and short-range models. The main improvement is that in order to achieve a longer range, it is necessary to increase the power output and improve the flight speed.

It is equipped with both inertial guidance and radio command guidance systems to ensure that it does not deviate from the flight path during the long flight and ultimately arrives accurately over the target.

As the twenty long-range loitering munitions roared into the sky, Lin Anquan, who was in charge of commanding the operation, began to worry again.

The "Low Altitude Hunter" air defense system that has been delivered to the camp so far is only equipped with two hundred rounds of ammunition.

Of these, half are short-range missiles used to intercept drones; the other seventy are medium-range missiles that can be used for both air-to-air and air-to-ground strikes.
The longest-range missiles were only a pitiful twenty – the remaining ten were training missiles, which were all used up after a few training exercises.

It wasn't that 'Holy Light' lacked more ammunition, but rather that 'Dongda' was separated from the United States by the Earth, and its airlift capacity was severely limited, making it difficult to meet the needs of the front lines.

"Oh dear, the enemy's battle group has a hundred armored vehicles. Apart from the long-range missiles which have sufficient power, the medium and short-range missiles mainly rely on explosive destructive power and are almost unable to effectively penetrate the enemy's strong armor."

Lin Anquan was quite worried.

"If those white-skinned bandits grit their teeth and suffer casualties, and insist on charging over, the thousand or so people in the camp will be in real danger."

The radar within the camp can only monitor aerial targets and cannot identify ground targets. The only targets that can be monitored on the ground are 'warthogs'.

However, the Warthog has limited payload capacity and weak power supply, making it unable to carry high-power battlefield surveillance radar. At most, it can only rely on optoelectronic equipment to monitor the ground.

Three Warthogs have been scrambled from the camp, but their surveillance coverage remains limited. The electronic map in the command center can only roughly indicate the enemy's general route along the road.

Major General Borg was clearly aware of the potential aerial threat from the enemy.

After passing through Famvi town, his battle group, consisting of hundreds of armored vehicles, quickly spread out at intervals of several kilometers, no longer advancing densely along the road, but instead dispersing into battle formation. Lin Anquan had already ordered the "Low-Altitude Hunter" missiles to launch all twenty long-range loitering munitions, but faced with the enemy's sudden deployment strategy, he had to make a new decision quickly…

"The enemy commander dared to lead his troops so boldly straight over here; he must be gambling," Lin Anquan said calmly, staring at the scattered red dots on the electronic map.

"Their battle formation was so dispersed, even disjointed in some places, which was both a means of evading air attacks and exposed their weaknesses."

“I’ll take the gamble too,” Lin Anquan said through gritted teeth. “Those vehicles at the very front are likely just cannon fodder used to probe and draw enemy fire. Let’s let them go and concentrate our attack on the targets behind the enemy.”

I bet the enemy commander is at the rear, because his only two mobile anti-aircraft 'Avenger' tanks are deployed at the rear of the formation.
-
Because of Lin Anquan's gamble, Major General Borg's rear guard convoy suffered a devastating blow.

The three Warthogs not only served as reconnaissance aircraft but also as communications relays. Operations staff at the rear command center visually selected on their displays to prioritize attacking the two Avengers equipped with Stinger missiles.

The long-range loitering munition, weighing over 100 kilograms, was like a straight telephone pole, 'whoosh'ing down from the sky and hitting the anti-aircraft turret in the rear compartment of the 'Avenger'.

The Avenger's gunner watched helplessly as the loitering munitions crashed down, its infrared detectors failing to detect them at all. The manually operated Stinger missiles remained firmly inside their launch canisters, with no chance of interception whatsoever.

The vehicle equipped with this air defense system was a Humvee. The vehicle was blasted to pieces by the ten kilograms of high explosives inside the loitering munition, leaving it in a gruesome state, as if it had been dismembered.

The ground shook when the roar started.

Major General Borg sat in his command vehicle, a weight lifted from his shoulders—he no longer needed to worry; 'Holy Light' truly possessed long-range air-to-ground strike capabilities.

The convoy's alarm suddenly went off, and all the soldiers looked up at the sky—the major general had been hit by an incendiary bomb once before and was very experienced at this moment. He quickly handed over command and then got out of the vehicle first.

Just as he got out of the car and ran about ten meters away, a 'flying telephone pole' spotted the armored command vehicle with multiple radio antennas, locked on, and swooped down.

The entire battle group consisted of four armored command vehicles, one commanded by a major general and the other by three battalion-level frontline commanders.

His own vehicle had been burned by Zhou Qingfeng's suicide drone with incendiary bombs, and he was now riding in his subordinate's command vehicle.

As a result, this vehicle was also targeted because its antenna was too conspicuous, and it was blown into the air by a long-range loitering munition.

"We're doomed. This time, it's not the vanguard company that's going to be cannon fodder, but me." The major general didn't care about anything else, because the smoke and dust from the explosion were spreading rapidly and engulfing him.

At first, he panicked and tried to rush out of the smoke and dust, but after thinking about it carefully, he realized that the smoke and dust was a natural hiding place. Staying in the smoke and dust would prevent him from being attacked, while running out would only bring him bad luck.

In that brief moment, long-range loitering munitions swooping down from the sky, like silvery-white thunderbolts flashing through the clouds, relentlessly bombarded the vehicles on the ground.

Each hit was accompanied by a deafening explosion, and an armored vehicle was mercilessly destroyed, reduced to a pile of burning scrap metal.

The flames of the explosion bloomed like flowers of death, spreading wildly across the battlefield. Thick smoke billowed, turning the once clear road into an impenetrable gray inferno.

Major General Borg hid in the smoke and dust, coughing violently from the choking. But he dared not run away, so he gritted his teeth and lay on the ground, enduring the pain.

In order to create sufficient firepower density and to prevent the enemy from reacting or escaping, twenty long-range loitering munitions were remotely controlled and dropped in succession within a dozen seconds.

The rumbling explosions didn't last long, but for those who experienced the attack, it felt like an eternity.

When the smoke cleared, the major general felt he had been bombarded for a full half hour. He was deaf, bleeding from the corner of his eye, and covered in dust, looking like he had just come from a construction site.

Looking at the entire rearguard convoy, almost all of the twenty-odd vehicles were wiped out. Even the few Strykers with considerable armor protection couldn't escape the fate of being topped off.

The number of survivors at the scene was very small.

Even if they did, they were all disoriented, their necks and limbs stiff, staring blankly at the scene before them, not knowing what to do.

Major General Borg stood in front of the command vehicle he had been riding in not long ago, staring at the wrecked and twisted hull, speechless for a long time.

The command vehicle was smashed open, with a large hole blown in the roof and the rear door wide open, like a pressure relief valve that had been blown open. The electronic equipment used for communication and command inside the vehicle had been reduced to a pile of broken junk.

As for the staff officers who were originally inside, they were nowhere to be found, not even a piece of flesh remained. Instead, there were scattered charred fragments of uniforms or severed limbs around the vehicle.

The Major General had only ever seen such scenes on television before, but those were always targets attacked by the US military. He always took them for granted, as if they were the norm.

But now, no one expected the war to turn out this way. Without air cover or air defense, even for the US Army, ground attacks are like suicide missions.
-
A few minutes later, a Warthog flew over, approached to conduct reconnaissance, and counted the destroyed targets one by one.

Through the data link, Xiao Jinlang and the others, who were staying in the camp, confirmed the results of the battle and breathed a sigh of relief—after the enemy's rear guard was attacked, the entire combat group did not continue and quickly retreated.

No one can operate a modern air force anymore, and field air defense has also deteriorated significantly, which is equivalent to capping the military power of all forces.

Xiao Jinlang chuckled, “The so-called ‘Richmond Guard’ is nothing more than a group of surviving bureaucrats and professional soldiers banding together.”

We're definitely taking the hydroelectric power station in Famvi town. Maybe we can even take a bolder step and leave our current little place."

Lin Anquan's confidence also increased, and he asked, "What's the next step?"

Xiao Jinlang gritted his teeth, "Immigration, immigration by all means possible. If we want to gain a foothold in North America, we can't have a small population."

As long as the population is large enough, we should move to big cities. Cities have better infrastructure and higher potential for development.

Lin Anquan shook his head. "The domestic population is already insufficient. Where are we going to find immigrants?"

(End of this chapter)