Empire Conquest-Chapter 839 - 90: Absolute Main Force

Nothing significant happened last night.

If anything, the Anti-submarine Guard Ship detected several possible underwater targets that could be submarines, but they were all later confirmed to be false alarms.

The Imperial Navy has painstakingly built a tight anti-submarine net in the East Continent Heart Sea over the decades.

About 20 years ago, before the Boi War, the Ter Republic had not yet declared permanent neutrality, nor had it been dismembered by the national independence movement, and it still maintained good relations with the Empire. The military bases on Crete Island were controlled by the Imperial Army.

After the outbreak of the first national independence movement, the Imperial Navy seized the last opportunity to lay a submarine anti-submarine sonar base array between Crete Island and the Xuan Continent, connecting it with undersea cables to Arisa Port, thus establishing an anti-submarine barrier on the west side of the East Continent Heart Sea.

The Imperial Navy spent 600 million Gold Yuan to create this underwater sonar system.

Since the related funding did not receive approval from both houses of debate, they misappropriated veterans’ pensions, and later made up the deficit by falsifying accounts, leading to all the major officials and generals involved being sent to military court once the matter was exposed, even implicating Li Mingbo, the then Commander-in-chief of the Maritime Transport.

Moreover, there was significant controversy at the time over whether this underwater sonar system was valuable.

Had it not been completed and functioning properly, the two houses of debate might have ordered the dismantling of this system to save the tens of millions of Gold Yuan in annual maintenance costs.

After the Ter Republic declared permanent neutrality and Greece became independent, this underwater sonar system demonstrated unparalleled value.

The Imperial Navy only needed to focus on the northeast of Crete Island, specifically the strait between it and Karpaso Island, to prevent submarines from the West Continent group from entering the East Continent Heart Sea.

Because the Casos Strait is very shallow, with an average depth of less than 100 meters, making it unsuitable for submarine activity, the difficulty of monitoring isn’t very high.

Therefore, the anti-submarine pressure on the Imperial Navy in the East Continent Heart Sea is not very high.

In the following 20 years, the Imperial Navy could firmly control the East Continent Heart Sea and advance into the North Sunset Ocean, closely related to this.

In addition, by operating this underwater sonar system, the Imperial Navy gained a lot of experience in submarine search and anti-submarine operations, and established a comprehensive maintenance and management system, which provided significant help for the subsequent deployment and operation of several other underwater sonar systems.

In fact, this underwater sonar system is the reason the Imperial Navy is unwilling to give up the East Continent Heart Sea.

If not for this underwater sonar system, the threat from submarines alone would be enough to force the Imperial Navy to abandon the idea of deploying a fleet in the East Continent Heart Sea.

To put it bluntly, as long as submarines from the West Continent group that carry heavy anti-ship missiles can break through this anti-submarine net and travel more than 300 kilometers west, they could launch saturation attacks on the Imperial Fleet operating in the East Continent Heart Sea with heavy anti-ship missiles that have a range of 500 kilometers. 𝘧𝘳𝘦ℯ𝓌𝘦𝒷𝘯𝑜𝑣𝘦𝓁.𝒸𝘰𝓂

Clearly, under the threat of submarines, the fleet cannot focus all its efforts on air defense.

With this anti-submarine net, arranging just a few large attack submarines can block enemy submarines to the west.

This way, the fleet can confidently carry out other combat missions.

Moreover, if troops were really to withdraw from the East Continent Heart Sea, even for the sake of secrecy, the laid sonar on the seabed would have to be dismantled, which is a troublesome task.

However, Li Shenzhi dares not take any chances.

During breakfast, he issued an order to double the number of air patrol anti-aircraft fighters from the usual 4 to 8, and both carriers must have 4 "War-9B"s on the highest alert, not only mounting missiles but also having pilots sit in the cockpit, with at least 2 at the catapult point to ensure they can launch immediately upon receiving orders.

In addition, one more "Zhi-6C" needs to be dispatched to 150 kilometers northwest of the fleet.

This way, it can overlap with the 2 "Zhi-6C"s deployed 450 kilometers northwest and west of the fleet, ensuring no suspicious targets are missed.

Lastly, all fighter pilots should be prepared.

If Li Shenzhi has to make a choice, he would rather rely on the ship-borne fighters than the few Anti-Air Cruisers in the battle group.

In fact, the "War-9" was developed specifically to counter "saturation attacks" as a heavy ship-borne fighter.

Before starting the design, the Imperial Navy set only one specific tactical index for the "War-9," to be precise, it had to meet certain tactical performance.

Upon receiving an order, it should urgently take off, fly 500 kilometers in 15 minutes, and use its long-range missiles to intercept bombers 150 kilometers away. From the time the order is issued by the fleet air defense command center to the interception of the bomber with missiles, the total time must not exceed 20 minutes.

Of course, this requirement could be said to be extremely stringent, almost impossible to achieve.

Not to mention, even the most advanced Air Force interceptors cannot do this, let alone ship-borne fighters that must sacrifice some performance for carrier deployment.

In the end, the Navy only managed to relax the time constraint to 25 minutes.

Clearly, this was not a decision made on a whim.

This 25 minutes is actually a conclusion drawn after repeated deductions.

Even in the most ideal scenario, where the Shipborne Early Warning Aircraft operates 400 kilometers out and its radar has a detection range of no less than 450 kilometers for high-altitude bombers, sounding the battle alarm immediately upon discovery, and the bombers launch anti-ship missiles 500 kilometers from the carrier, the time for the ship-borne fighters to intercept is, at most, only 25 minutes.