Thunder Strikes Back

Chapter 716

Yahini was standing on the top of the hill to control the drone, and he heard a buzzing sound in the air. Of course, he immediately recognized that it was a helicopter a few kilometers away, so he quickly lay down on the ground and let the drone fly for a while. distance.

He held his head and looked in the direction of the sound. It was a group of helicopters flying close to the ground. He couldn't make out the model. Since they flew from south to north, they probably couldn't be Chinese.

At night, he went deep into the depths of the 30 kilometers behind the front line. This is an area where the enemy's Patriot missiles are relatively sure. There are not many Chinese Air Force planes. Even if they come in, they usually turn around and leave. The enemy created the conditions with the use of helicopters.

Yahini nervously monitored the targets, watched them getting closer, flew straight past his eyes, and flew towards the main battle zone. He probably didn't come for himself. He deployed his tanks in areas with complex terrain, just In order to prevent detection by aerial reconnaissance platforms.He observed the target carefully with the binoculars, and found that it was not any of the heavier armed helicopters commonly seen on the battlefield, but it was not unfamiliar, it should be a Super Cobra.When the 12st Armored Division was fully staffed, there was once an Army Aviation Wing equipped with 2 such helicopters. Of course, these attack helicopters were consumed within [-] months after India directly invaded, so the current ones, It can only be the enemy's.

"It seems that they can only use these old-fashioned second-hand goods to make up for it?" He has a natural aversion to armed helicopters, so he can't help pretending to be disdainful.

But there are quite a few helicopters, at least 20 in a long stretch.Of course, helicopters always have an advantage against tanks, so Yahini can only postpone his plan. Due to the occasional communication signals, he does not know the current situation of the 6th Armored Division. He hopes that at least they still have some Stingers or The avant-garde missiles can be used to resist for a while, otherwise they will suffer.In fact, the 6th Armored Division has no tanks worth attacking. The target of this pair of helicopters is the Chinese tanks that came to the rescue.

Yahini didn't see the full lineup of the helicopters, most of them are indeed Hughes AH-1Zs, if they could stop, Yahini might be able to spot the difference from the ones pakistan has, These helicopters are equipped with more powerful engines and exhaust infrared suppressors (hirss), making them less vulnerable to infrared missiles, and to some extent more suitable for dogfighting between helicopters, but these are not the point, the point is with, the fleet There is also a Longbow Apache hidden in it, which can use millimeter wave radar and data link as a reconnaissance/command aircraft to control the entire fleet to fight.

This mixed combat method is not a traditional U.S. military combat method. It is just a new tactic under uncertain air supremacy and a lack of equipment, and it is not an American soldier who directs the operation.

Fred Eichmann in the Longbow cockpit, in his 50s.He may be the oldest helicopter pilot in this combat space, and if fixed-wing aircraft are counted, he may be ranked second.

Colonel Eichmann was born in Chicago and has dual citizenship of the United States and Israel. In the past 30 years, he has lived in Tel Aviv more often as a retired Israeli military officer.His military career began in 1982, when he was in college and happened to catch up with the last Middle East war, so as a Jewish descendant, he resolutely joined the Israeli army.During the war, he drove an early Hughes helicopter to support the attack of the South Lebanese army near Beirut, destroying a large number of military vehicles of the PLO and at least 5 Syrian tanks. The UN peacekeeping force that was too close to the west of Beirut destroyed at least 2 armored vehicles of the Norwegian battalion.

Of course, the limelight of this war was finally taken away by the F15 and F16 in the Bekaa Valley. No one paid much attention to the army's operations. This is a part that makes him quite regretful. What disappointed him even more was the sixth Middle East war. He didn't fight all the time, and he was no longer young in a flash.

Israel, as the most determined country in the world to assist India, has always been unscrupulous. When the Indian army invaded Pakistan invincibly and the whole world was scrambling to condemn the Kahan government, Israel sent an advisory group. For technical support.Even in Spanga's headquarters, there were Israelis manipulating drones to track the whereabouts of the Hataf-6 (Shaheen II) missiles, which eventually made the Indian tank force thwart an almost successful strategic weapon strike.

When the Indian army suffered its first defeat in Quetta, the keen Israelis saw that something was wrong and began to increase their assistance.When Kahan asked the world for help, Israel began to sign up for Air Force volunteers ahead of the United States, preventing India from collapsing like dominoes.

As a retired member of the Allied Army and an American citizen without language barriers, Eichmann undoubtedly became the priority target of this army. He was indeed a bit older, but as a mercenary, this point could be accommodated.

The first time the colonel was involved in Han, he faced a highly dangerous task because he did not have air supremacy.Patriot missiles can ensure that enemy aircraft cannot freely enter and exit this airspace, but the closer to the edge of the missile envelope, the less deterrent the Patriot can be against enemy fighter jets.And now the main battle zone happens to be in the area where the missile range is not enough to deter high-mobility aircraft, and the Chinese Air Force maintains a corridor there.Until there are more slamraam missiles, ground troops will have to rely on such utterly unusable things as Chapel and Avenger.When 45 kilometers away from the combat zone, Eichmann reminded the pilots from time to time to keep close to the ground to avoid being detected.

For fixed-wing aircraft, perhaps flying 150 meters above the ground is considered terrain avoidance flight. For helicopters, the altitude must be reduced by an order of magnitude.

These helicopters are flying less than 20 meters from the ground. The task is to intercept the Chinese tanks coming back from the south. The high-altitude reconnaissance of the drones shows that a main force of the Chinese army has withdrawn from the encirclement operation and is preparing to reopen the gap opened by Frings. Fill.

Another piece of information shows that the Chinese army established a new combat principle 3 hours ago. In the new principle, the priority level of eliminating foreign legions is higher than that of destroying Indian troops, especially emphasizing the need to capture more foreign prisoners. It seems that it has also been issued A very high enemy annihilation index was set.

This inexplicable intelligence obtained by the CIA was regarded by Frings as a great shame.On the morning when he won a major victory and almost reversed the situation of the battle, the message from inside the Chinese army was not the expected panic and panic, but asked all the troops to give priority to destroying his troops quickly, which is simply unreasonable.

"Attention all, there are our tanks in the valley ahead, don't be nervous."

Eichmann cautioned that he didn't want someone to lose their mind and fire a few rockets at an M1 tank.

"Captain Savage. The AWACS saw something in the sky."

"I noticed that it may be an enemy fighter plane, keep the altitude, they can't see us."

Eichmann raised his head and looked in the direction of the enemy plane, but he couldn't see anything. The two J-2s were 10 kilometers away. The main attention of the two Chinese pilots should be provoking the Patriot missiles rather than searching for the ground. The radar warning on the Apache never sounded.

After a while, the alarm was lifted.The helicopter flew over a group of tanks that were being refueled, and the tankers below welcomed them with a thumbs down gesture, probably complaining that the helicopter was coming too late.

"These Australian idiots, who do they think they are." The speaker was Major Damon, the deputy squadron leader, a former Marine Corps pilot with the call sign Viper, who participated in the Gulf War in 03 and has been driving civilian helicopters for a company after retiring.

"But we may have missed the big fight last night. I heard that Commander Frings was very angry because the Chinese offered a reward for the capture of the Foreign Legion members this morning, but the reward for each person was only $5000. He thought it was too cheap."

"Look at the road below." Someone mentioned Eichmann on the radio. He looked down from the side and saw a large piece of tank wreckage on the road extending westward.

"I'm reminded of being in Iraq in 03."

"I feel like I'm in southern Lebanon."

Such a scene reminded Eichmann of the battle on the Golan Heights. He was about to express his thoughts when he suddenly found something in the air search Longbow radar.

"Viper, the situation is not good, there are low-speed air targets."

"Is it a drone?"

"No..." He observed and ruled out the drone, "It's a helicopter, it belongs to them, and the flying altitude is very low, unlike a transport helicopter."

"Maybe we can strike first?"

"Yeah, if they don't have mmWave radar, we can sneak up on it from the side."

All gunships carry Sidewinder and Stinger missiles and are definitely outnumbered.

The radar warning sounded in the cockpit. It seemed that the previous judgment was wrong. The enemy's helicopter also had millimeter-wave radar.Eichmann had to make a decision, whether to go forward or retreat, no matter what he made a decision, it was still too late.For the time being, he can only see 6 targets. Due to the high resolution of the millimeter-wave radar, he can hardly miss it. In other words, he has a great advantage.

Chang Yong, who drove the WZ10, was going to attack the enemy tanks all over the battlefield. He found the opponent's helicopter about 1 minute later than the opponent. In terms of numbers, the opponent had a 4 vs. 1 advantage, but he didn't want to give up the battle. The act of keeping them from threatening your own tanks will also have a positive impact on operations.

In this war, air battles using missiles between helicopters have appeared widely. Chang Yong himself, as the first pilot to shoot down the opponent's helicopter with missiles, has also summed up a lot of experience.

Helicopter combat is characterized by a relatively long contact time, compared with jet combat, it is almost like slow motion.So there is a lot of time to think about the combat strategy and the overall situation, instead of flashing, relying more on intuition to respond.

He noticed that the enemy's reaction was similar to his own, and they were all rising rapidly for the time being. Of course, this is an inevitable early step in all kinds of air battles. He called the rear, hoping that the air force could come to support.

Within 30 seconds, the enemy entered the second stage. A 3-machine formation quickly flew towards the front of Chang Yong's fleet, while another 3-machine formation moved sideways, as if wanting to bypass the side. It could be seen that the opponent was not a fool. That team should be attracting attention, they will grasp the fire, and will not be close to the fighting distance, but whether they can fight or not is not what they say.

"Captain, it's like a Super Cobra, not an Indian Mi-35." The pilot in the front seat said, the target has already entered the line of sight, and both sides can see each other.

"So they only have 7.62mm machine guns. But don't be careless, 1 at least there is a longbow in the back, we can't see it yet."

The three Cobras approaching from the front began to decelerate and hover. Obviously, they knew where to measure. The front of this helicopter is very narrow, so it is not easy to be hit by machine guns. In addition, after installing the infrared signal suppression system, it is not easy to be guided by missiles. Head locked from the front.Therefore, they plan to tease the Chinese helicopter by teasing the tiger's beard in a safe zone of about 3 to 4 kilometers. There is a longbow sitting in the back, which can play the role of command plane to some extent, so that it will not get out of play.

Chang Yong observed that the target in front was hovering, but another group of enemy helicopters on the left were sneaking up.The enemy's strategy is already very obvious.

The distance between the frontal enemy was indeed embarrassing. Based on his experience, the fully cooled Tianyan missile seeker could only lock on to the helicopter target at a distance of 1.5 kilometers at most, which was only a small half of the current distance between the two sides.However, he does have a few millimeter-wave radar-guided anti-tank missiles, which can give the enemy a little surprise at a distance they think is safe; especially if these ammunition is fired, it is also beneficial for him to deal with different batches of targets at the same time.

After making up his mind, he decided to go head-to-head. Fortunately, there was another wz19 in the formation, which also had a millimeter-wave radar on it, so he could take over the command if necessary.

He operates the radar to continuously scan the targets in the frontal 180° sector to determine every move of the enemy.He must keep abreast of the stealthy attack formations on the side and the seductive enemy formations that are immovable on the front.

After his own formation was deployed, he fired millimeter-wave anti-tank missiles at the two planes 4 kilometers away from the front. If the target maneuvered more than 1G, such inflexible missiles would be impossible to hit. However, the opponent's large hover made him unable to It is possible to gain enough speed in a short period of time to perform a side turn of more than 0.5G, or -0.5G of the putter with negative overload.

The two missiles flew straight towards the target. Chang Yong prayed that they would detect it a few seconds later to increase his chances of winning. The missiles flew about halfway. The two helicopters began to roll and avoid, while the other three that were trying to sneak attack were not close enough to fire their weapons.

The two WZ2s in the formation had already turned around, ready to use their machine guns to push back the sneak attack at any time - the range of action of the machine guns may be a little farther than Tianyan's distance to lock the front of this helicopter.

The frontal target began to make a series of countermeasures. If it fell headlong to the ground, it could use the 1 G acceleration given by the earth to get rid of the missile. However, it could not confirm the type of threat, but chose to turn sideways and fired a large number of tracers.After this kind of thing explodes, it always has a miraculous effect against infrared-guided guided missiles, but it is almost useless against millimeter-wave guided guided missiles. Of course, because there is no need, this kind of helicopter is not equipped with chaff.

Commander Eichmann waited steadily for his afterglow tactics to take effect. His third formation was outflanking from the other side. If he killed the one carrying the millimeter-wave radar in the opponent's formation, he expected to wipe out the opponent completely.It is really a mistake for the opponent to choose to fight instead of fleeing. In any case, they have an absolute advantage in their numbers. Even if they also have millimeter-wave radar, in order to obtain the update rate of frontal enemy information, they must follow up the targets in the front hemisphere, thus giving up the 360° cycle. scan, so...

So he saw his 2 helicopters suddenly exploded and fell to the ground.In order to guard against fixed-wing fighters, he himself has been doing a 6° scan with a period of 360 seconds, but he did not see the missile attack.

(End of this chapter)