Empire Conquest-Chapter 868 - 104: Long-Distance Raid

"Boss Liu!"

After the driver’s reminder, Liu Zunshan also saw the red flare ascending into the night sky, signaling the official start of the assault operation.

At this moment, it was exactly 5:15.

There was still some distance from the forward assembly position to the border, and reaching there would take almost until precisely 5:30.

Liu Zunshan didn’t think much more about it. After instructing Fu Xiaobing to start the tank, he took out a glow stick and waved it in circles above his head.

This was to signal the tanks behind to follow the company commander’s vehicle.

As for the vehicle radio, it could only be used after crossing the border, and before that, radio silence had to be maintained to ensure the operation’s secrecy.

To this, Liu Zunshan and other frontline soldiers felt it was unnecessary.

The Iraqi army had already been bombed into collapse, and even if some units still had a certain combat capability, they wouldn’t be deployed in the desert near the border.

Judging the Alliance Army’s attack action through radio activity was even more absurd.

When determining assault tactics, there had been very serious analysis within the Alliance Army.

Although in late July, the Joint Force Headquarter adjusted the operation objectives, not only to liberate Kuwait but also to attack Iraq, at the very least to occupy the Two River area, thereby controlling and utilizing the road and railway from Boss Bay all the way to the Armenian Plateau.

When the plan was formulated, it was actually primarily aimed at controlling the oil fields in southern and northern Iraq.

Until the outbreak of the war, the Imperial Authority adjusted to no longer make controlling the oil fields a primary objective, considering that the Boss Bay area had an abundance of oil.

Compared to decades ago, the Empire’s dependence on imported oil had greatly reduced.

In the last major war, the Empire, due to its high dependence on imported oil, was strategically very passive, having to prioritize ensuring oil supply at many critical moments. In fact, this was also the primary reason for the Empire’s early advance in the Fan Flame Ocean, capturing and controlling Boss Bay during the war.

Furthermore, during the two waves of post-war national independence movements, the Empire’s influence was weakened, significantly reducing its control over oil-producing regions.

For example, Nigeria on the Xuan Continent, Venezuela on the Nangu Continent, and the Kingdom of Viking on the West Continent all freed themselves from the Empire’s control post-war.

These factors forced the Imperial Authority to exert significant effort in solving the energy issue.

Mainly searching for oil fields in the homeland and surrounding areas to reduce dependence on imports.

In the decades following the war, five super oil fields with reserves of hundreds of millions of tons each were discovered in the Empire’s homeland. A few years ago, three world-class giant oil fields with theoretical reserves of tens of billions of tons were found in the Extreme North area. In the Flame Sea, oil fields comparable to those in Boss Bay were also discovered.

In the surrounding areas of the Empire, particularly in the southeastern region, several large oil fields were similarly discovered.

Development to this day has kept the Empire’s oil self-sufficiency rate above 75%.

After the second wave of national independence movements, to enhance the strategic security of energy, the Imperial Authority expanded and improved the national strategic reserve system.

According to the latest standards, the Empire’s oil reserves reached 270 days, equivalent to 9 months of normal consumption.

Although this standard is lower than the 12 months before the last war, economic development has influenced the increase of stored oil nearly twentyfold!

Of course, establishing a strategic oil reserve is also aimed at manipulating international oil prices.

In summary, after the efforts of the Zhou Yongtao administration, the Empire’s dependency on oil imports has been reduced to a negligible level.

Theoretically, once the Empire enters a state of war, domestically produced oil can meet wartime consumption needs.

As for controlling oil-producing countries on the southern shore of Boss Bay, aside from the inherent strategic value of Boss Bay itself, it is mainly to manipulate international oil prices.

Regardless of whether or not the oil fields need to be controlled, Iraq must be occupied.

The question is whether to focus on the south or directly attack Iraq’s capital?

In the initial stages, the primary focus was on liberating Kuwait, so the drafted operational plans mainly involved operations in southern Iraq.

Among the operation plans drafted by Ding Zhennan, the most was only to capture Basra.

For this purpose, deploying forces of two divisions would be sufficient. There was even no need to go deep inland; a battle centered around Kuwait would suffice.

Although after adjustments, the forces increased from the initial two divisions to three, with not only the 7th Armored Division and the 17th Armored Division of the Army but also the enhanced 5th Marine Division, in addition to an armored brigade from the Gaoju Kingdom and other Allied Forces, this amount of force was still insufficient compared to the tasks at hand, even unable to ensure the completion of all combat tasks.

This resulted in the ground war having to proceed in stages.

This was at least the viewpoint of most soldiers.

However, this conflicted with another requirement.

If the ground war were to be segmented into stages, even if it were two stages, such as initially liberating Kuwait and then advancing to attack Iraq’s capital, it would be absolutely impossible to complete the major operational actions, like occupying Baghdad and other major cities, within the one-month time frame set by the Imperial Authority.

Theoretically, just liberating Kuwait and occupying southern Iraq would require a month.

It was against this background that Ding Zhennan proposed not deploying too many ground troops in Kuwait and directly advancing towards Iraq’s capital, Baghdad.