One Thousand Three Hundred and Ninety-Two Iron Wall Encirclement
Time goes back to not long ago.
The expeditionary fleet is heading towards Jupiter. The main force is moving forward all the way. All the alien bases encountered along the way are bombed with nuclear bombs. In addition, some warships are scattered around the main force to deal with alien bases close to the main route.
Not to mention the alien warships encountered along the way, all those that can be killed are killed, and those that cannot be caught up are driven away.
The Jizhou fleet is composed of five aircraft carrier battle groups, which is the largest in the history of the expeditionary force.
This does not count the international expeditionary fleet composed of nine battle groups. The international fleet rushing to Jupiter from another direction is a few points stronger than the Jizhou battle group.
The two fleets went in different directions, clearing and advancing at the same time. Before reaching Jupiter, they destroyed dozens of alien bases and sank more than ten alien warships.
Along the way, we did encounter more alien bases than alien warships. At first, we thought it was because the aliens transferred the warships to Mars, but after approaching Jupiter, we found that this was not the case at all. The aliens only transferred some warships to Mars. There are still a large number of enemy ships hidden in the asteroid belt near Jupiter.
Because the human fleet destroyed the alien bases along the way, forcing the enemy ships to show up, these alien warships probably won't show up. It's hard to say which corners they are hiding in, waiting to attack the human fleet.
But Huo Qiang and the US commander Halsey were very clear-headed. They deeply understood that the fleet only cleared the alien bases near the channel and only opened two channels among the many enemy bases. There were more bases in other directions, and it was impossible to say how many enemy ships were hidden in the dark.
Huo Qiang and Admiral Halsey discussed countermeasures more than once, and finally decided on a battle plan for the main force to march into Jupiter and the detachment to attack the reinforcements.
As for which warships are the main force and which warships are the detachment, it is up to the two supreme commanders to decide.
Let's not talk about the main battle plan for now. The battle plan of the detachment refers to the wolf pack tactics in World War II, which can be called the space version of the wolf pack tactics.
The two generals had a good idea, but the aliens were not fools. As the fleet moved forward, the aliens played a trick of clearing the countryside, actively abandoning the bases along the way, shrinking the troops, and withdrawing the alien warships back to Jupiter.
And they did not withdraw to the range of Jupiter, but to the inner layer of Jupiter - Jupiter is huge and has amazing gravity. Strictly speaking, Jupiter refers to Jupiter itself, but for both sides in the war, Jupiter refers to Jupiter itself and the entire satellite group surrounding Jupiter.
This range is huge. The farthest satellite from Jupiter is s/2003J2, a Jupiter satellite that has not yet been named. Its semi-major axis is as high as more than 30 million kilometers. In other words, the spherical space with a radius of 30 million kilometers with Jupiter as the center belongs to the range of Jupiter.
In order to facilitate command, the joint command divided Jupiter into three layers: inner, middle and outer. The inner layer is within 2 million kilometers of Jupiter, basically outside the orbit of Callisto; the middle layer is between 2 million kilometers and 10 million kilometers; and everything outside 10 million kilometers is the outer layer.
In other words, the aliens withdrew all their warships back to Callisto, pretending to be on guard, waiting for the human fleet to attack.
Faced with this situation, Huo Qiang was not in a hurry at all. After the fleet arrived at Jupiter, it had no intention of attacking at all. Instead, it divided its troops to go to the satellites in the outer layer, using the materials on the transport ships to build space bases, intending to turn all satellites into strategic nodes to surround the aliens.
The captains suddenly realized that it was no wonder that they had invested so much money, both Ceres and Mars. They originally thought that it was to transfer the enemy troops and create conditions for the fleet to attack Jupiter; now it seems different. This is to create conditions for the fleet to gain a foothold in Jupiter, okay?
Due to various restrictions, it is impossible to leave people guarding these space bases, so they are all unmanned bases. The only function of these bases is to fire at alien warships that enter the range.
The size and texture of the satellites outside Jupiter are different, and the fleet materials are limited, so these bases are also different.
Some have a batch of lasers to disguise super cannons; some have a row of missiles to deter the enemy; there are even extreme cases with only two naval guns.
Anyway, Huo Qiang didn't expect these outer bases to play a big role. The key to these bases is not how strong Mars is, but that each small satellite has weapons and equipment left by humans, and has the ability to sink alien warships.
This method of gradually surrounding Jupiter layer by layer is too poisonous, and it is simply to kill the aliens.
Jizhou has always been very concerned about the movements of the enemy. Since the Jizhou fleet began to build a space base, the shrinking alien fleet has been ready to move, and it seems that it may rush out at any time, but in the end the enemy has stabilized.
The aliens can be stable, so Huo Qiang is not in a hurry, and repeatedly requires each ship to take steady steps.
"At the critical moment, we must keep calm and be as steady as a mountain!" Huo Qiang said.
If you think about it carefully, this is also a lesson learned from the past, and it is intended to solve the Jupiter problem once and for all. In the past, expeditions were all directed to the inner layer of Jupiter, but the result was that the aliens were never solved.
Now it is different. Although the method of gradual encirclement is a bit stupid, the effect is definitely much better than the direct attack on the inner layer - it is not that we did not learn lessons in the past, but that we did not have such strong manpower and material resources, and it was impossible to send so many supplies to Jupiter.
The supplies sent this time are not as rich as expected, otherwise the outer space base would not be so rough.
According to Huo Qiang, a complete space base must be equipped with at least three types of weapons: lasers, missiles, and close defenses, and have all-round strike capabilities at various distances, including long, medium, and short ranges. Each base must also be equipped with a reactor.
His idea was good, but it was a bit out of touch with reality. The fact was that the weapons were not fully equipped, and there was no need to even think about the reactor. In order to power the equipment, photovoltaic cells had to be laid on the satellites.
This damn place is Jupiter, where the light intensity is only 4% of that on Earth. There are only a few devices that can be driven by laying a large area of photovoltaic cells, which almost made Huo Qiang worry to death.
A few days later, the international fleet arrived at Jupiter and began to build a space base in another direction.
The two fleets had different directions but the same goals, and the construction speed was unprecedentedly fast. Six space bases were built in just a few days. If the outer satellites were not too scattered, this number could be doubled without any problem.
But then again, only the outer bases dared to fool around like this. The closer to the inner layer, the more complete the newly built space bases will be, with all the necessary equipment and more and more sophisticated weapons and equipment. Each base is equivalent to a scaled-down version of a battleship.
With so many space bases surrounding Jupiter, it would not be easy for aliens to leave.