Chapter 560: Tactical

"Enter without jumping?"

As soon as these words came out, Benelli, Muller, and Barak were all startled, as if time had suddenly stopped at this moment. Their confused eyes met at one point. For a moment, it was really difficult to understand Major General Stoner. The deep meaning behind these words.

Fleet battles are brutal and there is no way out, especially large-scale fleet battles. Every decision made by the fleet commander may affect the fate of countless lives.

The three of them looked at each other, their minds running through various possible scenarios as fast as lightning.

"Do you mean that the opponent's fleet will just float over using the 'covert action' mode?"

The outspoken Major General Benelli was the first to break the brief silence. His words were like pebbles thrown into a calm lake, instantly causing ripples. There was a hint of joking in his tone, as if the idea was ridiculous.

However, Major General Stoner did not pay attention to the joking in this junior's tone at all. Instead, he nodded slightly, his eyes deep and resolute:

"If the other party has this intention, it is not impossible for this situation to happen. Compared with the large-scale space fluctuations caused by the fleet's collective jump, we can detect it, giving us time to occupy this battle.' "Go first' and keep the 'covert action mode close' may be more feasible."

Major General Stoner's words immediately made everyone fall into deeper thinking, because what he said was not unreasonable.

"You are right, but the problem is that our four fleets can form all-round detection, including the massive early warning terminals that we have deployed along the ecliptic plane in advance. If the opponent conducts a 'stealth mode' maneuver on the scale of an entire fleet, It will still be noticed by us, not to mention there is such a huge super flagship. "

Barak, the commander of the 23rd Fleet who spoke relatively few words, spoke slowly. His voice was calm and powerful, and was immediately recognized by others.

In their view, the "super flagship" of the Atlas Combat Fleet is undoubtedly a high-risk unit that is difficult to handle, but it is not without flaws - the overly large hull, as well as a large number of sophisticated electronic equipment inside, The fusion furnace group and other facilities, while taking advantage of its powerful power and excellent performance, also significantly reduced the stealth ability of this giant ship.

Especially with the detection network composed of nearly a thousand warships from four federal fleets, as well as the presence of a large number of early warning terminals, it is difficult to approach this warship through conventional concealment methods.

In other words, apart from jumping into the field, it is actually difficult for the endless super flagship to attack suddenly.

However, Major General Stoner ignored the doubts of others. His tall and straight figure looked particularly firm under the lights in the command room.

He continued calmly: "What if the other party uses some kind of celestial activity as a cover?"

Major General Benelli, who had not yet reacted, looked puzzled: "How do you say this?"

"This is a report on recent astronomical activities in the Lubion Galaxy." Major General Stoner said as he displayed a report from the astronomical observation team, instantly attracting everyone's attention.

"Comet C/517 B2 Hyakutake. This is the largest periodic comet in the Rubber System. It will pass near the Rubbian along its elliptical orbit during this time." Stoner The major general's voice echoed in the command room.

After seeing the report, Major General Mueller's eyes flashed with a flash of enlightenment. He immediately understood the intention of the commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet:

"You mean, Atlas's fleet will use the cover of this comet to approach?"

Major General Stoner nodded slightly:

"Yes, according to the astronomical observation group's observations of the comet's orbit, it can be determined that the comet's tail, which is the largest comet in the galaxy, is nearly 120,000 kilometers long. It will hit the orbit of Rubian 5 and be blown away by the solar wind. Debris may even fall into Lubion 5's atmosphere, and the meteor shower will even be directly visible to the naked eye from the ground.

The comet's traveling orbit also happens to coincide with the ecliptic plane of Rubian 5. The 120,000-kilometer long tail is enough to hide Atlas's fleet. If the opponent is hidden in the tail, it only relies on its attitude to control the nozzle. If the amplitude is adjusted and the angle is adjusted, the early warning terminals we arranged will not be able to detect their traces! "

As Major General Stoner recounted his guesses and explanations, the other three fleet commanders suddenly broke into a cold sweat and asked themselves why such mistakes had occurred.

Perhaps due to inertial thinking, most fleet commanders in this era, including Major General Benelli and the other three, have begun to become somewhat rigid in their tactical thinking.

In other words, the "tactical creativity" of a naval fleet general is far lower than that of an army commander on the surface of the planet.

Because on the surface of the planet, army commanders can use the influence of weather, terrain, planet curvature, and other factors, plus a little bit of luck, to create an attack battle that will "go down in history."

But when it comes to the navy, especially after humans enter space, the universe is cleaner and broader than the surface of the planet, making the implementation of tactics extremely difficult.

In addition, the activities of battleships in space are actually strictly limited by physical laws. Therefore, as humans fight more space battles, the corresponding tactics and theories become more and more cold and rigid.

After all, in dangerous space, the reliability and stability of tactics and regulations are far more important than the so-called "magic stroke".

But occasionally, the vast universe will throw out some interesting scenes and celestial bodies to make the battle less boring.

For example, the "wholesale places" of various famous battles - asteroid belts, nebulae, planetary ring belts.

For example, the comet just mentioned by Major General Stoner.

Soon, the other three people also immediately set out to verify the feasibility of this sneak attack tactic.

According to the description of the observation report, when the "Comet Hyakutake" approached Rubion V, the relative speed was about 40 kilometers per second, and this speed was not difficult for the warships of the human navy to keep up.

Especially after jumping to the orbit of the comet in advance and starting to accelerate, the fleet can completely use the attitude control nozzle to maintain a state of relative stillness with the comet after the acceleration.

The only difficulty is actually in the calculation of the orbit and the attitude control of the entire fleet, and it is still in the case of turning on the "stealth action mode".

But in everyone's opinion, with the strength that Atlas Group has currently demonstrated in artificial intelligence and information technology, it seems that it is not impossible to do this.

"If this is true, then our early warning is actually completely ineffective."

Major General Barak said:

"The detection capability of the early warning terminal is limited, and it is impossible to penetrate the tail of the comet for reconnaissance, not to mention that the comet and the large amount of debris in the tail of the comet will also damage all the early warning terminals on the path."

The combat meeting room fell into silence again.

Because everyone knew that they had only made a guess now, which had not been verified and could not be verified.

The only way to verify it was to wait for the Atlas fleet to jump out of the tail of the comet and then fire at itself.

However, when the fleets of both sides had completely completed the battle, entered the early electronic warfare attack and were still at a disadvantage, there was not much time left for the four to make a decision.

Barak: "The other fleet commander is a tactician."

Mueller: "I've seen how dirty he is when I was with A. Bava Ku."

Bernelli: "No, isn't this the right time to talk about this?"

Before Bernelli could continue, Major General Stoner interrupted the three people:

"Okay, stop talking. Since I am now the commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, I will dare to give orders in this capacity."

As soon as these words came out, the other three people immediately became serious and sat up straight. No matter what they thought in their hearts, they would obey the orders of the fleet commander without hesitation after entering the battle.

"The next fleet's key detection direction will be concentrated on the 'Comet Hyakutake'. After all, there is no better detection direction at this time, and the possibility that the opponent is using the comet to hide is indeed very high.

And when the distance is shortened, relying on the high-performance composite detection unit of the main battleship, we can also detect the internal situation of the Comet Tail.

In addition, the entire fleet enters the combat search state. After capturing the traces of the enemy in front, wait for the flagship's order to be ready to launch a preemptive attack at any time!"

"Yes, General!" ×3——

After several hours of maneuvering near the orbit of Rubion V, the Atlas combat fleet and the federal fleet almost simultaneously captured the traces of the other party after entering a distance of 150,000 kilometers.

Because in the long-term 'stealth action mode', the working capacity of the active cooling system and black body coating of all warships has begun to decline.

After all, even if the main propulsion array is not turned on, just maintaining the warship in the 'quasi-combat state' will generate heat - 'heat control' and 'infrared feature control' are also compulsory courses for warship captains and fleet commanders.

But what these "compulsory courses" can do is to extend the time that the warships do not expose their infrared characteristics as much as possible, and they cannot prevent the warships from exposing their infrared characteristics forever.

Not to mention, the light and heat radiation emitted by the star "Great Rubion" in this galaxy will be spread unimpeded in the space where both sides are located.

Therefore, in addition to controlling the heat generated by the warships themselves, each warship must also find a way to reduce the temperature rise on the surface of the ship after being illuminated by the stars, which further shortens the time for both sides to remain invisible.

When the two large fleets locked each other's positions, Randall and Stoner almost simultaneously ordered the entire fleet to remove the disguise of optical camouflage, radar wave cancellation and black body coating.

Because both sides knew that at this stage of the battle of such a large-scale fleet, the role of camouflage has been infinitely close to zero.

"Warning! The enemy fleet has been detected to start accelerating and is expected to enter the engagement distance in forty minutes!"

The words of the shipboard controller of the "Infinity" sounded, and at the same time, the piercing alarm sounded like a sharp arrow that suddenly pierced the silence of the bridge.

The shrill sound seemed like a desperate cry from the abyss of the universe, and it suddenly turned into a red warning light, instantly pushing the tense atmosphere to a suffocating boiling point.

Randall, the fleet commander who had just taken office and encountered many high-intensity battles in succession, had passed the test of "blood and fire". His eyes had changed from the anxiety, entanglement, and timidity half a month ago to a look as hot and firm as a bright star.

He stared closely at the holographic projection platform in front of him. On the huge three-dimensional battlefield situation map displayed above the platform, the densely packed light spots of the four federal fleets were like surging tides, rapidly moving toward Art with an unstoppable momentum. The location of the Lars battle fleet is approaching.

At this moment, the part of the combat fleet he is leading is arranged in a 'guerrilla' formation with two unmanned fleets as the core of the battle and the third task force surrounding it.

Randall, Cliffs, even Guterres, who was thousands of light years away, and Dr. Mephisto, the creator of the unmanned fleet, had no objections to Amber's arrangement.

Although the unmanned fleet was still in the battle sequence of the Federation Navy, it existed more as an 'auxiliary fleet'. In battle, it basically relied on flawless maneuvering and precise long-range bombardment. Supplementary output'.

But in Amber's view, the biggest advantage of the unmanned fleet is not perfect coordination or precise long-distance attacks.

It's that they don't have the influencing factor of 'morale bar'.

Unlike the human fleet, which will begin to experience a decline in morale when it suffers 10% losses, morale will drop significantly after 30% losses, and the fleet may even collapse after more than 50% losses.

After receiving the order, the unmanned fleet can directly stay in the fighting position until it sinks the last battleship.

This feature was also discovered by Amber and other players in the previous game after a fierce battle with the unmanned army led by Lilith.

To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that players have a chance to resurrect after being killed in the game, so they endured casualties and fought against Lilith's unmanned army, Amber felt that it would be impossible to defeat Lilith simply by relying on the humans of this world.

After all, you can't expect flesh-and-blood soldiers to fight for their lives against fighting machines that have no fear, no pain, and no emotions.

Perhaps human elite troops can indeed do this, but such troops account for less than 10% of the entire human battle sequence.

Amber has seen too many NPC troops on the battlefield that were quickly defeated after encountering the unmanned army. Even if the supervising team used up all their ammunition, they could not stop the collapse - not to mention most of the supervising teams. In fact, It collapsed immediately.

So when Amber proposed the plan to use two unmanned fleets as the backbone to 'resist the line' at the pre-war meeting, it didn't take much effort to get everyone's approval.

After all, Randall's combat fleet will definitely engage in a head-on firefight with the federal fleet. In this case, the two unmanned fleets are indeed more suitable to attract firepower.

Although at first Dr. Mephisto felt that this might still be a bit cruel to the commanding artificial intelligence and high-level shipboard control personalities in the unmanned fleet.

However, after learning that Amber and Lilith had already backed up the 'sisters' of the three unmanned fleets and stored them in A. Bawa Ku's data center, the doctor no longer had any objections.

"Commander Randall, the second and third unmanned fleets have been deployed according to the preset instructions. If there are no other instructions, we will start the attack according to the plan after entering the attack distance."

The voice of Selene, commander of the Second Unmanned Fleet, sounded in Randall's ears. The latter did not issue other instructions at this moment, but nodded and said:

"There are no other orders issued. The unmanned fleet is fighting according to the combat plan. The third task force and the 'Infinity' will assist you."

Speaking of this, Randall sighed and then looked up at the federal navy fleet rushing towards him, his eyes seeming to penetrate the top deck of the Infinity.

"Amber, you have to arrive on time!"