Chapter 1082 War

Why is your word "Ming" not on the Forbes list?" Zhang Qi once asked Zhewu'er a question.

"Because I have threatened them and dared to put my name on the list. Be careful that they will not be able to survive." Fan Wubing replied.

In fact, the Forbes rankings look like a list of honor to foreigners, and everyone is proud to be on the rankings. However, it is obviously very different in China, and everyone avoids it because one of the principles pursued by the Chinese is that People are afraid of being famous and pigs are afraid of getting fat. When pigs are fattened they have to be slaughtered.

Under the current domestic system, people who can become rich in just a few decades or more than ten years basically get rich when there are loopholes in the system. It can be said that basically all the money they earn is It's not very clean, and coupled with the interference of some local government officials, there are often some shameful things happening here.

Therefore, this has caused the country's richest people to be less confident. After all, the first pot of gold came from a bit of a mystery. Once someone pursues this matter, they will definitely end up in jail, and hundreds of millions of family wealth will be confiscated. Confiscation is also expected.

In this case, everyone must be extremely disgusted with the Forbes rankings concocted by Hurun. In fact, when many people were notified that they were about to be on the list, they wanted to hire people to kill those nefarious people. Isn’t this right? It’s harmful!

The reason why Fan Wubing can keep a low profile is mainly related to his business strategy, because of the companies and industries he owns. They are not publicly listed, so outsiders have no way of checking, and no one knows how much money he actually has. If we only relied on estimates, the results would be very different, and Forbes did not dare to take the risk to offend Fan Wubing.

After all, if a wealthy man at this grassroots level wants to kill someone, as long as he expresses his attitude, a large number of international killers will be willing to do it. It is simply a joke to track down the murderer.

So far, no one has dared to take the warnings issued by the intelligence department under the Fan Investment Group lightly.

Another important topic in the second half of this year is that the United States has finally launched a war in Afghanistan.

The U.S. military's most important military operation in Afghanistan, "Enduring Freedom," officially started on October 7, less than a month after the terrorist attack. The U.S. military has launched a new kind of war in Afghanistan to overthrow the Taliban regime and destroy al Qaeda.

Since Afghanistan is located deep in the interior, it is obviously impossible to rely on large-scale offensive operations by ground forces. Therefore, the US military mainly relies on cruise missiles and various combat aircraft (including Kawasaki blades, strategic bombers and fighter jets equipped with precision guiders) to carry out operations against the enemy. Precision strikes in the air and marking of ground targets are completed by special forces using satellite devices, laser equipment and defense systems in conjunction with Predator drones. New air precision strikes and surface offensive operations jointly implemented with the Northern Alliance forces in Afghanistan using information networks,

This paved the way for the upcoming follow-up actions.

At first, the U.S. military's combat operations progressed slowly. This is because it takes a lot of time to deploy troops in the theater, establish appropriate logistics support bases, and obtain cooperation from neighboring countries, including Uzbekistan and Pakistan.

As of October 19, US special forces and CIA agents have successfully contacted the Northern Alliance. The number of combat aircraft and warships available to the Central Command has reached 400 and 32 respectively, including two aircraft carriers.

In the time that followed, they achieved major victories.

The US military quickly destroyed the bases, headquarters and air defense facilities of the Taliban armed forces through air strikes, and cut off their logistical supplies. The Northern Alliance forces on the ground lack heavy equipment and have only half the number of enemy troops. However, with the support of US air strikes, they have steadily defeated the resistance of the Taliban and al-Qaeda.

Major towns in northern Afghanistan, including Taloqan, Kunduz, Colt and Mazar-i-Sha'i Sharif, were captured within three weeks. On November 9, Kandahar, the last enemy fortress in southern Afghanistan, was captured. On November 13, the enemy troops voluntarily abandoned Kabul.

On December 22, U.S. government officials participated in the victory celebration in Lobul, and the pro-U.S. regime led by Hamid Karzai was established on that day.

Although the enemy troops have withdrawn from the main battlefield and the Taliban regime has collapsed, the war is not over.

Intelligence indicates that remnants of the Taliban and al-Qaeda militants are gathering in the White Mountains on the border with Pakistan in northern Afghanistan. in particular. Many enemy forces, including militants and other key members of Al Qaeda, gathered in the Tora Bora area.

On November 30, ground forces composed of the US Army Rangers and Afghan allied forces, who were working together with each other in a coordinated air strike, launched a large-scale attack on Tora Bora. The Afghan allied forces participating in the war this time were the Preston Self-Defense Forces under the command of the Zaet warlord, rather than the experienced Northern Alliance forces.

The U.S. military's air strikes were fierce, but the Preston Self-Defense Forces performed poorly.

As a result, although hundreds of enemy soldiers were killed and defeated in this battle, more enemy soldiers fled to Pakistan.

There are reports that the policeman and his accomplices also escaped.

The failure of the Allied forces to effectively cut off all escape routes was the main reason for the huge number of fleeing enemies. At the same time, the size of the ground forces in Afghanistan was too large. In the many combat operations in the Afghan battlefield, the defeat in the Battle of Mount Torabo and the loss of fighter planes made the US military realize that if similar operations were to be carried out here in the future, the size of the ground forces would have to be expanded.

If it were a dozen or twenty years ago, the centralized air-to-ground strike mode like today would not have been adopted.

After the Vietnam War, the US Air Force and Navy abandoned the air-to-ground fire support method and began to emphasize air interception, blockade and strategic bombing. Although the Air Force was equipped with aircraft used for air-to-ground support, the number was very small, and jet fighters were the main combat equipment.

However, in recent years, air-to-ground support capabilities have made great progress. The biggest progress is the preparation of advanced avionics systems, which allows jet fighters to guide air-to-ground support fighters to carry out precise ground strikes, which is the biggest difference from the fighters used in the Vietnam War.

The advent of precision-guided weapons such as joint direct attack munitions has led to a huge change in air-to-ground combat. The development of laser guidance and anti-aircraft technology is equally important. When air-ground coordinated operations are carried out, these equipment can accurately determine the location of ground and air targets.

The use of modern information networks allows high-speed communication between air force commanders, early warning aircraft, fighters and ground forces. Therefore. Even if the original combat plan of some operations does not require air firepower, air forces can still quickly

In the current clearing operations launched by the US military in Afghanistan. The total number of aircraft available to the Mountain Task Force has exceeded 200, including bombers, fighters and other combat support aircraft jointly provided by the Air Force, Navy and the 6th Navy Squadron. Old, Blade and more other aircraft began to fly to the combat area to support ground operations.

The additional Apache attack helicopters and helicopters of the 6th Navy Squadron have also entered the war zone. In the next few days, combat aircraft dispatched an average of more than 60 sorties per day, and a total of 900 combat aircraft were dispatched for ground attacks throughout the combat operation. The US aircrew completed the task well with skilled technology and full courage.

Thanks to the establishment of an air-to-ground information network, U.S. combat aircraft can use a variety of weapons to attack the enemy, including precision-guided weapons such as joint direct attack munitions, conventional iron bombs, rockets and cannons. Most air strikes are directed to high altitudes. Air-to-ground targets are also strafed when necessary. A large amount of ammunition poured into the canyon, effectively suppressing the enemy's firepower and destroying a large number of enemy troops.

In the first few days, the air-to-ground fire support operation encountered some troubles, mainly due to the temporary nature of the mission and the uncertainty of the scope of operations, which need to be resolved.

Under normal circumstances, the 6th Army can achieve large-scale fire support using weapons such as artillery and mortars, and saturated artillery strikes can effectively suppress most of the enemy's counterattack firepower. In this way, the Air Force can carry out operations according to conventional intentions and carry out precise strikes on enemy targets that ground artillery cannot reach. In some operations, ground forces have no artillery and heavy mortars are very few, so the use of air firepower cannot be conventional, and they must replace ground artillery and mortars to play a role. No matter what the situation, the ability of air forces to complete the mission is unquestionable, but the adjustment and adaptation of combat procedures requires a process.

Of course, the US military's operations in Afghanistan are not smooth sailing. On the contrary, it is really difficult to deal with these local armed forces that are already familiar with mountain warfare.

One prominent problem is the command relationship in close-ground support operations. Although the ground task force and its subordinate forces are the main demanders of close-air fire support. However, the right to dispatch combat aircraft is initially in the hands of the joint command. Therefore, the ground force's air support request to the joint command must at least be given to the early warning aircraft hovering in the air before it can be approved.

Generally speaking, all urgent air-to-ground fire support requests will be approved immediately, and most support operations will be implemented within a few minutes after the request is made.

But for some less urgent support requests, the response time will occasionally be delayed to about half an hour.

There are many reasons for the delay, including target identification, deceiving the enemy to expose, determining the types of combat aircraft and weapons used, determining the route of action, and managing a large amount of request information from the ground. Sometimes these requests are even more than the aircraft on standby.

Combat aircraft can be deployed in cycles, but the geographical environment of the canyon is not conducive to the development of air-to-ground fire support. The canyon is only about five miles deep, so the number of aircraft sorties that can perform missions at the same time is limited by the area of ​​airspace. Enemy targets in the mountains are small and difficult to distinguish. Aircraft hovering in the air can only carry out precision strikes after the ground forces have accurately marked the targets.

Although some air force liaison officers and more than 30 air traffic controllers were assigned to ground forces, their equipment was very limited. Some people did not have laser markers, so they could not use concave to determine the exact coordinates of the target. They had to use tactical drawings to complete the task, but many drawings were not detailed enough to determine the exact coordinates of the target. Pilots sometimes had difficulty finding the designated target based on the drawings and had to communicate with ground forces.

In some cases, air force commanders would reject some less urgent air-to-ground fire support requests from ground forces, because in their opinion these requests did not meet the standards for dispatching aircraft.

On the other hand, the air force commander believed that the ground forces had not completely lured out the enemy and could not carry out accurate strikes. On the ground force side, the command sometimes felt that in order to better create opportunities for war. They had to actively lure the enemy to appear.

Sometimes. Because of radio frequency control, ground forces were prohibited from communicating directly with aircraft overhead. Once the troops carrying line-of-sight shortwave radios were blocked by the region, it was difficult to communicate. This brought inconvenience to their calls for air strikes.

Sometimes. Well-trained special forces, equipped with satellite communication facilities, guided air-to-ground fire support, but their voices were drowned out by the mountain task force's calls for air strikes. In the first few days, these frictions caused a lot of trouble for air-ground cooperation.

In addition. Due to the cover of the mountains, it is very difficult to carry out air strikes on enemy targets. The usual means is usually to carry out precision strikes on them, but even if the precision strikes are successfully implemented, they often only destroy the heavy machine gun strongholds guarded by two or three people. A large number of enemy troops are hidden in the mountains and on the ridges. Countless small targets have been formed, which must be hit one by one.

What's worse is that the enemy always hides in caves before the air strike is about to arrive, and runs out to continue resisting after the sound of artillery is far away. Relying on air firepower to clear the enemy is time-consuming and laborious, and the efficiency is greatly reduced. Therefore, air firepower strikes must last for many days to achieve the goal of killing a large number of enemy troops.

For various reasons, the joint command realized that it was a mistake to command by itself, so they quickly handed over the assignment of combat aircraft to the task force in the mountain, which made the designation of targets and the bombing sequence closer to the needs of ground forces.

The arrival of the additional old, blade and "Apache" attack helicopters also made the number of combat aircraft far exceed the requirements of the combat plan, and at the same time reduced the dependence on high-altitude fighters and bombers. The cooperation ability between pilots, ground commanders and 6th Army troops has also been steadily improved.

In recent days, the week-long air strikes have greatly weakened the enemy's strength. By destroying a large number of enemy targets, the enemy was forced to give up resistance, and the ground combat situation has also opened up a good situation. Some medium and heavy mortars were airlifted to the ground forces, allowing them to strike enemy targets at a distance.

The U.S. military's front-line forces finally blocked the last exit in the eastern part of the canyon. The Afghan allies have also returned to the battlefield one after another. The Northern Alliance forces have begun to sweep the canyon using a combination of infantry and tanks.