Munitions Empire-Chapter 758: It’s our turn in the 717th round

Han Zhiyuan, utterly incompetent, was leading his available troops in a counterattack, but the challenges he faced were like insurmountable mountains.

His troops had barely assembled when they had to confront the bombardment from the Tang Country’s air force, suffering heavy losses, which made their attack much weaker.

There was no helping it, as the temporarily assembled heavy weaponry clearly couldn’t have fixed and concealed shelters, resulting in losses far greater than when they were stationed in defensive positions.

Because the hastily assembled troops lacked transport equipment, securing ammunition was also a big problem. In any case, Han Zhiyuan did his best, striving to assemble the troops, desperately blocking the Tang Army’s advance.

At this point, he finally understood the might of the Tang Army—tens of thousands of troops were advancing at a rate he had never seen before, as if nothing could stop this Tang Country force from moving forward.

The tactics of both sides were completely different, not even operating on the same level: Tang Army’s small units were usually ad hoc combat teams made up of soldiers from different units, who sometimes even had overlapping unit numbers.

Tanks from the 1st Armored Division were mixed up with armored vehicles from the 1st Mechanized Grenadiers, accompanied by a group of 1st Motorized Grenadiers soldiers following in trucks.

Sometimes it was even more chaotic, with assault artillery from infantry divisions and tanks mixed together, followed by engineer support squads.

In short, a Tang Army combat team was wildly diverse, with a myriad of armored vehicles alone, causing some confusion within the Dahua military.

They didn’t know which Tang Army unit was attacking them, nor could they determine how many front-line combat troops had been deployed by the Tang Army.

These people were seeing the Tang Army’s armored reconnaissance battalion for the first time, which was assigned to the Armored Division and equipped with the latest Lion armored reconnaissance vehicles.

The new eight-wheeled armored reconnaissance vehicles rapidly pushed forward along the highways, eliminating Dahua troops attempting counterattacks and deeply penetrating into the Dahua military’s defensive areas, slicing their forces into smaller segments.

Then, the arriving armored corps started to compress these divided and surrounded Dahua units, which had no idea what was happening.

Before the commanders of these surrounded Dahua troops confined to narrow frontlines could figure things out, Stuka dive bombers roared down from the sky, sending the densely packed troops to their demise.

This belonged to the Great Tang Kingdom’s information warfare, no different from the US military slaughtering Iraqi forces during the Gulf War.

With a complete communication system, the Tang Army’s armored reconnaissance vehicles, tanks and some armored vehicles, as well as the air force bombers, were all equipped with a large number of radios.

They could maintain relatively smooth communication—although there was still a significant gap compared to the instant communication of the 21st century, compared to the completely incommunicado Dahua military, the Tang Army was already advanced to another dimension.

One of the crucial factors determining a commander’s decision-making ability is the transparency of the battlefield. For Tang commanders, the battlefield was almost unilaterally transparent, with agile and timely commands at the battalion and even company level, while the Dahua troops resembled paralyzed zombies stuck in place.

The Dahua military didn’t even know that the Tang Army was attacking while they were assembling; their confused reports claimed they were being attacked by friendly forces.

They couldn’t even describe what the weapons attacking them looked like, so these reports led to a series of misjudgments, creating even greater chaos.

In fact, tactics are determined by the composition of weapons and equipment. Even the most brilliant commanders cannot lead armored units into the mountains for flanking maneuvers.

If the Eighth Route Army during the anti-Japanese war had tanks and armored vehicles, as well as anti-aircraft guns and self-propelled artillery, do you think they would still be burrowing into mountain ravines to engage in guerilla warfare?

No, they would push straight along the roads, then divide and encircle enemy forces near Beiping, and call in bombers to eliminate these unfortunate invaders.

Similarly, the more chaotic the battlefield, and the more dispersed it is, the more it tests a force’s battlefield awareness and communication capabilities. Without good communication, it’s impossible to maintain operational effectiveness on a chaotic battlefield.

This is no joke. That kind of approach, relying solely on the initiative and sensitivity of the troops to fight a disorderly battle, is something that very few countries in the world can truly grasp.

In the 21st century, the US could carry out long-distance infiltrations by small units, which was supported by helicopters and an overwhelming electronic system network.

But seventy years prior, there was a force that managed, in a near-total absence of radios, to virtually allow the majority of participating forces to conduct unlimited flanking and bypass maneuvers—a marvel in the history of warfare.

You need to understand that in such a confused state of combat, letting a commander know where his troops are positioned is a century-old dilemma—this determines how you reinforce and redeploy these troops, and how you resupply them.

It’s impossible to stick rigidly to battle plans; such static planning only leads to more chaos in subsequent relocations.

So relying entirely on instinct, solely on the combat effectiveness of small units, and trusting the decisions and tactical arrangements of grassroots officers and soldiers is the most core and powerful key to this set of tactics.

In the battles against Qi Country and the mirage nation, the Tang Army had already verified and completed this set of tactics. They utilized combined and intermingled troops to achieve widespread radio use at the company and platoon level: although battery technology still couldn’t meet the standards, couldn’t be lightweight and miniaturized, it was not possible to reduce the size of radio equipment to make it easy to carry.

However, tanks and armored vehicles are all equipped with radios, so the grenadiers following these tanks and armored vehicles can also be located and directed.

This was the significance of the German Army’s mixed combat teams at the beginning of World War II. It achieved the commanders’ comprehensive control over grassroots units and allowed various types of equipment and weapons to be tactically coordinated.

Such a tactical system that seems not new today was actually world-leading in an era when radio equipment had just begun to spread.

The German Army relied on this set of tactics to be invincible in the early days of World War II, coordinating the Army and the Air Force, and creating the exquisite synergy of blitzkrieg.

In the twenty-first century, mixed units were presented to the world in another, more advanced form: the Synthetic Battalion and Brigade System.

Today’s advanced troops are once again combined, forming a massive and complex tactical system. Unlike 80 years ago, the significance of such a tactical equipment system is no longer in the widespread use of radio communication but rather in striving to support the informatization of frontline troops, enhancing situational awareness and battlefield control.

There is no way around it, as today’s communication systems, information warfare equipment, including various small individual soldier weapon systems such as drones, are all too dependent on power supply replenishment.

So while the equipment doesn’t need to rely on heavy vehicles for transport and deployment, power supply replenishment does need vehicles to complete it, causing the troops to once again transform from combined arms at the division level to functionally dispersed and highly integrated at the brigade and battalion level...

The demands of war actually haven’t changed from the beginning; it’s just that, in order to meet these demands, the equipment of the troops keeps improving and evolving, one could say it’s simply finding the best solution for the time, converging on the same goals time after time.

The Tang Country troops, adopting German tactics and forming combat teams at the battalion level, were able to maintain the integrity of their communication systems while advancing quickly.

They charged towards the Southwest, capturing the villages and towns along the way before Han Zhiyuan was ready.

What was more terrifying was that, due to the swift pace of the assault, the Tang Army captured countless more Dahua Empire prisoners of war than expected.

They surrendered en masse, not even having time to unload their weapons from the trains. Now in control of the railway lines, the Tang Army’s supply became even more plentiful, which then allowed them to advance faster and repurpose the painstakingly constructed railway network of the Dahua Empire for their own use.

Soon, the Tang Country’s Engineer Corps following the combat troops quickly repaired and reopened the railways destroyed by the Dahua Empire’s military, strongly supporting the advancing troops.

As the weather gradually improved, the Tang Army’s offensive became even more ferocious. Liu Guozhu stood beside his covered tank, watching the scenery endlessly retreat on both sides of the train.

He had not joined the 1st Armored Division in entering the Dahua Empire immediately but had waited within the territory of Tang Country, following the train into the Dahua Empire only after the railway was repaired and operational.

During this period, he trained relentlessly in the rainy weather, learning how to operate the complex and expensive Panther Tank.

Now he and his crew had become very familiar with the use of this tank and had a deep understanding of the performance of the new model.

The new tank’s side armor had already reached the frontal protection level of the Panzer IV, and the thickness of its frontal armor was incredibly strong.

The enemy’s tanks, equipped with short-barreled 90mm caliber cannons, were almost unable to penetrate the armor of the Panther Tank from any direction, while the Panther Tank’s long-barreled 75mm caliber cannon could easily penetrate the Dahua Type 1 Tank within effective range.

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Now, as the Tang Country military continued to push forward, Liu Guozhu’s elite Armored Corps was about to enter the battle. They planned to use the power of their weapons to crush the Dahua Army blocking their southward advance and cut off the supply lines of the Dahua Army near Xicong at the fastest speed possible.

"Looks like the rain has really stopped… Today is another good day," the loader said as he walked over on the slightly swaying flatbed car, holding a can of fruit.

This item was very common in the Great Tang Army’s supplies because Qi Country had a large amount of land that was previously planted with various fruit trees, with peaches being the most abundant and growing best in the North.

Previously, due to transportation issues, these fruits couldn’t be preserved for long. Now with canning technology, a large amount of canned fruit had become the soldiers’ first choice for nutritional replenishment.

"Yes, the rain has stopped, and it’s our turn to take the field!" Liu Guozhu agreed, looking up at the long cannon barrel covered with canvas above his head.

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Hmm, couldn’t sleep because of back pain, woke up in the morning and wrote another chapter. Continuing to update, I still owe everyone… countless chapters.