Empire Conquest-Chapter 911 - 125: Successful Raid (Part 2)
In theory, the Precision Sniper Rifle has an effective range of up to 800 meters.
However, once a silencer is equipped, the effective range surely won’t exceed 400 meters, and it only has sufficient lethality within 200 meters.
Of course, even with a range of just 200 meters, that’s enough.
Among the 4 special forces advancing, only 2 are assaulters, the other 2 are machine gunners, equipped with squad machine guns that fire small caliber bullets.
In each special task force, there are 4 machine gunners, equipped with 3 squad machine guns and 1 general-purpose machine gun.
The reason for equipping so many machine guns is mainly for the battle ahead.
Although when receiving the task, Lei Zhenting received Ding Zhennan’s verbal assurance that the Air Assault Forces could arrive within 15 minutes after they sent a signal, thus they only need to hold for 15 minutes, but Lei Zhenting believes that plans can never keep up with changes.
Moreover, Ding Zhennan also mentioned that they must hold until the Air Assault Forces arrive, not just for a quarter of an hour.
If they must fight alone, strong suppressive firepower is definitely needed.
That said, it’s not a bad thing.
After suffering more than 2 months of air strikes, the Iraqi army had hardly any main battle equipment left, and even heavy weapons were running low.
Guarding the Sinafiye Bridge is actually an infantry unit.
In other words, after controlling the bridge, Lei Zhenting only needs to deal with numerous infantry.
Evidently, squad machine guns are sufficient.
What’s more crucial is that both the squad machine guns and assault rifles use 6mm small caliber bullets, even if the machine guns use heavy bullets with steel cores, the rifle bullets and machine gun bullets can be interchangeable, except that using machine gun bullets in rifles will cause rapid wear of the barrel, and there are ballistic differences, necessitating the recalibration of aiming points.
Additionally, squad machine guns do not take up extra composition.
There are three inflatable motorboats, capable of carrying extra ammunition, so there’s no worry about running out of ammunition.
Soon, Lei Zhenting and the other 4 special forces touched the bridgehead.
Upon seeing a few Iraqi soldiers at the bridgehead, Lei Zhenting stopped and signaled to cease advancing.
Subsequently, he stealthily approached.
As mentioned in the intelligence, there’s only one squad, actually consisting of 8 soldiers, all fatigued, with several even dozing off.
Critically, there’s no movement from the barracks.
Of course, it’s understandable.
It’s not dawn yet, about half an hour until breakfast time, hence except for the dining hall and kitchen, other barracks are in pitch darkness.
While Lei Zhenting was observing the situation, the other 3 assaulters stealthily came up.
After confirming that the gunners behind were ready, Lei Zhenting signaled to start the operation.
Although he fired first, the other 3 assaulters didn’t give him much chance.
All these special soldiers belonged to the Tiger Camp and had participated in operations against Iraq since July and performed multiple missions deep within Iraqi territory. Moreover, they were all younger than Lei Zhenting, most around 25 years old, at their peak.
If it weren’t critical and heavily reliant on the Military Intelligence Bureau’s support, it wouldn’t be Lei Zhenting giving orders.
Front to back, it lasted just a few seconds.
Amidst the low gunfire, all 8 Iraqi soldiers were killed.
By the time the 3 shooters arrived, Lei Zhenting and his team had already controlled the northern position of the bridge, specifically the machine gun bunker north of the road.
Presumably, the Alliance Army is on the south bank, thus the northern defensive layout of the bridge is very simplistic.
There’s only a machine gun bunker built with sandbags and a sentry post made of wooden planks, which resembles a canopy for shading from the sun.
Regarding weapons, besides an AK rifle per soldier, there’s just one RPD machine gun.
Additionally, there are 2 boxes of machine gun bullets, including the ammo belt installed on the machine gun, totaling only 600 rounds.
The Iraqi army was indeed complacent or didn’t believe they would be attacked.
While Lei Zhenting’s team was deploying the defensive position, the 7 special forces of the second team also stealthily approached to monitor the enemy camp as planned.
Minutes later, Lei Zhenting received a report from the third team.
The southern bridgehead of the bridge has also been controlled.
The enemies there were also just one squad, although more vigilant, taking the 4 assaulters responsible for the sneak attack some effort to approach.
Fortunately, everything went smoothly, without alerting the enemy.
Since the enemy camp was north of the bridge, and there’s basically no enemy presence on the south, the third team, after controlling the position, deployed three special soldiers to the north bank.
Once the battle erupts, the main battlefield will undoubtedly be on the north of the bridge.
At this point, Lei Zhenting let the demolitions experts of the 3 teams go for disarming the explosives.
Only one hour, strictly speaking, less than an hour.
It’s already past 5 AM, and in the previous few days, the infantry squad changing shifts always appeared around 5:45. 𝙛𝓻𝒆𝓮𝒘𝙚𝙗𝒏𝙤𝙫𝓮𝒍.𝓬𝒐𝙢
The key is that the changing squad might not go to the dining hall for breakfast, but might bring their breakfast.
If so, the battle could start at 5:45.
If the intelligence provided by the Military Intelligence Bureau is correct, the enemy has installed a radio-controlled detonation device, which must be found and dismantled before then.
Best to remove all the explosives!
Lei Zhenting didn’t feel anxious or think along those lines.
For him, the immediate priority is actually constructing defensive positions.
Even if it’s impossible to build more bunkers, at least set up a few fire points in advance.
That said, this traditional positional warfare is not the preferred combat style of special soldiers.
If he could choose, Lei Zhenting would prefer fighting in the way special forces excel, like raiding enemy camps, or diverting enemies to other directions, causing them to be overwhelmed. Unfortunately, there’s no such choice but to stay with dozens of special forces here.
To accomplish the mission and survive the battle’s conclusion, Lei Zhenting and his team wasted not even a second.
In less than half an hour, 9 special forces took turns digging dozens of foxholes north of the road and did some basic reinforcement.
Lei Zhenting didn’t participate, not out of laziness, but because he had more important tasks.
Within this half an hour, he used a laser rangefinder to measure distances from several reference points and made detailed annotations on the map.
It’s an artillery small-scale map.
Although it’s based on battlefield photos taken by reconnaissance aircraft long since drawn up, the accuracy isn’t high enough and is unsuitable for long-range artillery to perform close support tasks.
Additionally, including the aerial support from the Air Force.
If the battle breaks out early or the Air Assault Forces fail to arrive on time, the only thing to rely on would be the firepower support from the rear.
For instance, in the Mechanized Infantry Battalion advancing on the south bank, there’s an Independent Artillery Company equipped with over a dozen 120mm mortars with a range of up to 16 kilometers.
Using a sufficiently precise map can shorten the suppressive distance of fire support to 50 meters.
In certain special circumstances, especially with favorable terrain, it can even shorten the suppressive distance to 20 meters, directly opening fire on the enemy before the position.
If the map is not precise enough, the safe zone needs to be expanded to avoid collateral damage to one’s own side.
Guiding long-range artillery and Air Force for fire strikes has always been a strength of special forces.
Don’t forget, modern special forces essentially evolved from reconnaissance soldiers, whose main task was providing fire guidance.
In large-scale wars, special forces are often dispatched to carry out operation-level and battle zone-level reconnaissance tasks, and after discovering high-value targets, provide guidance information for long-range firepower. When necessary, they also need to verify the results post-strike.
Directly participating in combat, or causing destruction behind enemy lines, is less important.
No matter how powerful the special forces are, their destructive capability can’t match heavy weapons, and directly engaging the enemy poses significant risks, with no cost-effectiveness whatsoever.
The Empire Army’s special forces have long stipulated that unless unavoidable, they are strictly forbidden from engaging the enemy’s regular troops during clandestine operations.
Most of the time, it’s actually searching for targets and pinpointing them.
For example, during the Boss Bay War’s onset, it was the special forces illuminating targets for armed helicopters, successfully destroying mobile-deployed air defense radars. During that battle, special forces stayed outside the battlefield until the strike ended and they cleaned up the site.
Although Lei Zhenting doesn’t wish for scenarios requiring fire support, he needs to be prepared.
If unforeseen circumstances arise, they must hold out until the Air Assault Forces arrive, or find a way to break through and escape.
