Empire Conquest-Chapter 848 - 94: Calamity Strikes

At around 10:45, less than five minutes after receiving an enemy attack alert from the Early Warning Aircraft, bombers flying from the north launched anti-ship missiles over the waters approximately 350 kilometers away from the "Bai Zhizhan" in the south of Antalya Bay, northwest of Cyprus Island.

This distance is far too close!

From this attack tactic, it can be seen that the enemy did not have the exact location of the two carriers, so they could only fire in a general direction.

In other words, it’s possible that they intercepted the electromagnetic waves sent from the two "Qingzhou" class cruisers.

Since they couldn’t find the carriers and were about to be intercepted, those "Fire God" bombers from the Tiaoman Empire could only launch missiles from the closest possible range.

In fact, with a maximum range of 500 kilometers, these anti-ship missiles could reach Alexandria.

This situation is very likely due to the Empire’s Air Force conducting a reprisal a few days ago, destroying reconnaissance satellites, causing the West Continent coalition’s military satellite system to crash and fail to rely on space-based reconnaissance platforms to search for the Imperial Navy’s carriers. Moreover, the Newland Republic may not have provided timely relevant intelligence.

This means that those anti-ship missiles are not only aimed at the carriers but will also attack other warships they encounter along the way.

Two minutes later, at 10:47, the missile interception battle began.

Since the bombers had already launched the missiles and turned to withdraw, the first four "War-9B" did not pursue the bombers but instead opened fire on the anti-ship missiles.

I must say, this is the harsh reality that must be faced.

Although it was a pity to let those bombers go, to protect the carriers and safeguard the fleet, they had to target the incoming anti-ship missiles.

The first few minutes are the most critical.

Although the "Destruction" heavy anti-ship missile, funded by the Tiaoman Air Force, has a range of 500 kilometers, the core technology comes from West Luosha, which is not only far from flawless but also has many defects, some of which can be quite fatal.

For example, in order to reduce the total mass, compromises had to be made on performance.

The heavy anti-ship missiles developed by West Luosha, such as the SS-N-19 used on submarines and large warships, and the Kh-32 equipped on bombers, are indeed true heavy anti-ship missiles, with the former reaching 7 tons and the latter also weighing 6 tons, and these missiles perform quite well.

But the problem is, they are too heavy!

The 6-ton Kh-32, under overload conditions, the "Fire God" can only carry two.

According to saturation attack theory, to deal with a carrier battle group with five Anti-Air Cruisers, at least 120 anti-ship missiles need to be launched, which requires 60 bombers. Coordinating and organizing 60 bombers to attack simultaneously is definitely not an easy task.

Strictly speaking, it’s not doable!

With the organizational and command capabilities of the Tiaoman Air Force, deploying 20 bombers in one direction at a time and ensuring that these bombers launch attacks simultaneously is already the limit.

This requires a bomber to be able to carry six anti-ship missiles.

Since the "Fire God" has a maximum payload capacity of only 10 tons, and suspending missiles externally increases flight resistance, the missile weight must be strictly controlled.

Therefore, some performance requirements must be reduced.

For this, the Tiaoman Empire’s engineers came up with a clever solution, which is to separate the warhead from the missile body, and equip the warhead with a small rocket engine to ensure that the warhead accelerates to Mach 2 during the sprint phase and flies the last several dozen kilometers at this speed.

Additionally, to achieve the maximum range of 500 kilometers, the midsection needs to fly at high altitude.

In fact, this is also the most severe defect of the "Destruction."

After completing the ascent, all the way to the preset terminal midsection trajectory, the "Destruction" must maintain a flight altitude above 10,000 meters. 𝒇𝒓𝙚𝒆𝔀𝓮𝓫𝒏𝓸𝙫𝓮𝓵.𝓬𝙤𝙢

Additionally, it flies along a pre-set route.

During this phase, regardless of what is encountered, the missile does not maneuver to evade, making it very easy to intercept.

Because of this, the four "War-9B" turned to intercept the anti-ship missiles.

Unfortunately, there aren’t enough fighters.

Over 100 incoming missiles, and only 4 fighters arrived at the first moment. Even if 4 more were added later, there were only 8 in total.

Intercepting heavy anti-ship missiles flying at high altitude is not much different from dealing with supersonic bombers.

Although supersonic bombers have long since ebbed, and the remaining few mainly focus on ultra-low-level penetration, the KK-9 was designed primarily for supersonic bombers flying at high altitude and later improved to enhance its capability against sea-skimming targets.

Moreover, the "Destruction" is not a genuine supersonic anti-ship missile; its midsection flight speed is only 1.5 Mach.

After two interceptions by fighter planes, about 60 anti-ship missiles still shot towards the 51st Special Mixed Fleet.

In addition, after the second batch of four "War-9B" interceptions, more than four-fifths of the "Destruction" dove to low altitude, flying close to the sea surface.

This is also a major feature of the "Destruction," or rather a trick borrowed from the SS-N-19.

The biggest issue, when attacking a carrier 500 kilometers away, is actually positioning the carrier, meaning accurately tracking the carrier’s movements.

Frankly, this is a world-class problem.

In response, West Luosha’s engineers thought of a very clever solution, which is to have a few anti-ship missiles perform forward reconnaissance tasks.

When initiating an attack, a few anti-ship missiles serve as "leader missiles," flying at high altitude before reaching the fleet’s sea area, using onboard radar to search for ships on the sea surface, then transmitting the acquired intelligence via data link to the missiles flying covertly at low altitude, and guiding these missiles to attack the most valuable targets within the fleet, often the ships with the strongest radar reflection signals.