I can upgrade the shelter-Chapter 787 - 685: How to Reduce Consumption

The so-called quality war is a type of warfare where both sides engage in delivering as much material mass to the battlefield as possible.

In such wars, the superiority of weapons and equipment, the quality of soldiers, and even tactics and strategies no longer influence the outcome of the war.

Even the outcome of one or more battles cannot affect the overall war unless a quality advantage is established on the battlefield and the opponent’s material delivery is cut off.

This is the ultimate manifestation of logistics influencing warfare.

In this respect, alien species have already demonstrated all the characteristics of this kind of warfare.

No matter how many alien individuals humans annihilate, it has no effect on the aliens. There is no decline in the quality of troops, no collapse of morale, and no reduction in combat capacity after technical weapons are depleted.

What exists is an endless mass of entities seemingly meant to exhaust human bullets, like a massive flood aiming to inundate human positions and defenses.

This is a quality war, where there is no need to worry about the disparity in combat power or even consider any tactics or strategies. As long as the opponent’s rate of annihilation is slower than their rate of material delivery to the battlefield, the offensive cannot be stopped.

Whether the weapons are advanced, whether the soldiers are brave, or whether tactics and strategies are effective—all these factors become meaningless.

Because when you have painstakingly wiped out an army and are celebrating victory, reinforcements ten times the number you exterminated may have already joined the battle from the rear.

Even if you can achieve victory continuously, winning great battles every time and annihilating large numbers of the enemy, unless your rate of elimination exceeds the enemy’s rate of replenishment, you will ultimately be overwhelmed.

Even before being overwhelmed by sheer numbers, you will have likely already lost combat capability due to the depletion of ammunition, wear of weapons, and loss of personnel.

In this regard, alien species have proven with their reproductive speed faster than human bullet production, that it is true one could be buried under sheer numbers if they don’t kill quickly enough.

But while alien species can conduct a quality war, humans cannot.

Despite the front having shown tendencies of a quality war, where the contest is in the speed of humans delivering steel to the battlefield versus the aliens delivering biomass, humans do not have the capital for a quality war.

Chen Xin has studied the mother alien entities responsible for reproducing the progeny, which are efficient reproductive machines capable of directly extracting energy and materials from magma.

With Blue Planet’s seemingly endless underground magma and geothermal energy, the resources of alien species can be considered infinite, the only limitation to their reproductive speed and production numbers being the speed at which they acquire energy.

In Flame Country, because the alien species were confined to the Dongting Lake battlefield, their avenues for acquiring energy and material were restricted, thus their numbers were always contained, unable to break through the Flame Country’s military defenses, and now even in counterattack.

But in Europe, it’s different. The alien species, having spread across the entire Mediterranean region, face no limits on acquiring energy and materials, allowing them to launch seamless tide-like offensives along the entire Mediterranean coast.

Along the lengthy defensive line, just the bullets fired daily weigh tens of thousands of tons, not to mention the vast consumption of shells, missiles, and other explosives.

One could say that every moment, this defensive line acts like an endlessly deep pit, constantly devouring massive amounts of supplies to withstand the wave-like numbers of alien species.

Such consumption is something humanity cannot sustain.

After all, mines will eventually be exhausted, oil wells will eventually run dry, and no matter how many reserves of soldiers exist, they cannot withstand consumption.

It takes sixteen years to raise a generation to battlefield readiness, yet the alien species can nurture their combat progeny faster than humans produce bullets.

Therefore, for Chen Xin, the focus is on ensuring that every bullet, every gram of steel used by humans can be as efficiently used as possible for damaging alien species, achieving an aesthetically pleasing exchange ratio.

Ultimately, in a quality war, aside from possessing more substantial material delivery capability than the opponent, it’s all about making more efficient use of the material at one’s disposal.

Alien species can achieve material recycling by recovering biomass from the battlefield, but humans do not have this advantage, so they must maximize the exchange ratio of every gram of material against the opponent, using the least to kill the most.

For humanity, this is not an impossible feat.

After all, humanity’s talent in killing is exceptionally strong. One could say that since their inception, humans have always been adept at killing and destruction.

Looking at human history, it’s a chronicle of how to kill and wage war, with humanity constantly researching how to kill more efficiently.

In the era of cold weapons, there may have been efficiency issues, with a person’s capability to kill only extending so far.

But in the era of hot weapons, one button can easily kill thousands, tens of thousands, or even hundreds of thousands of people.

The equation of mass-energy conversion not only explains the relationship between matter and energy but also provided humanity with the weapons to easily destroy themselves.

However, Chen Xin does not plan to use nuclear weapons.

On one hand, the impact of nuclear weapons is significant, not only concerning environmental pollution but also the problem of sustained damage.

What Chen Xin needs is to reduce overall consumption and alleviate the logistical and production pressure on the rear. Using nuclear weapons might simplify things but does not alleviate the material consumption pressures on ordinary soldiers.

It’s like modern anti-aircraft guns compared to old-fashioned ones from the Cold War era. The frontline prefers using older guns because they have slower firing rates and consume less ammunition.

After all, the frontline situation is similar to the overall situation in the European Region; the ammunition supplies they can receive in unit time are limited, so they cannot fire indiscriminately.

Using modern anti-aircraft guns, with firing rates of thousands of rounds per minute, is indeed thrilling, but they are not designed for ground targets. Hundreds of shells might not even last a minute, which is unacceptable on a battlefield where combat time offers no pause.

Old-fashioned anti-aircraft guns perform better in this respect, with firing rates of a few hundred rounds per minute. As long as there is slight control not to hold the trigger down continually, letting loose all ammunition, a few hundred rounds can sustain for a short time.

So for Chen Xin, what he must do is reduce the firing rate of current weapons while enhancing their power.