#1409 - Amphibious Operations

A luxurious, oversized Saudi delegation visited China for four days, during which multiple meetings were held, covering political, economic, cultural, and military fields.

Saudi Crown Prince Salman personally met with Saudi students in the capital, Beijing, and engaged in discussions with them.

The two sides signed a cooperation agreement to further strengthen their collaboration.

The cooperation agreement encompasses political, military, economic, and cultural fields, including promoting exchanges in various areas.

The luxurious, oversized Saudi delegation concluded its visit to China, with some members remaining in China, not departing with the delegation.

Meanwhile, China also ushered in the "Two Sessions" period.

As the world's largest industrial nation, a veritable world factory, the largest trading partner of over a hundred countries, and one of the most important players in the world today, China's every move affects the entire world, even in the peripheral areas of world geopolitics such as Africa, South America, and Oceania.

And this influence exists whether China wants it or not; it is a reality.

The "Two Sessions" are the most important meetings of the year in China, where one can observe the direction in which China will continue to focus its main energy on solving domestic problems or shift towards outward expansion, which is extremely important.

Also, China's new leadership team, each member is closely watched, and their personalities will be the subject of research by various countries, and how to deal with them is crucial.

And these will all be revealed at the "Two Sessions."

When seeing that the focus of the "Two Sessions" is on domestic issues, and that China's new year's military expenditure continues to maintain single-digit growth, with the proportion of military expenditure to GDP controlled within 1.5%, many countries can't help but breathe a sigh of relief.

China's certainty adds much certainty to a world where uncertain factors are constantly increasing.

Compared to the United States' nearly trillion-dollar military expenditure, China's military expenditure is far less than that of the United States, and the per capita military expenditure is even far less than that of the United States.

Foreign countries breathed a sigh of relief, but many Chinese people expressed dissatisfaction with the new year's military expenditure accounting for less than 1.2% of GDP, believing that other countries generally spend 2% to 5%, and China's military expenditure ratio is indeed low and should increase the proportion of military expenditure to GDP.

It should be known that the Qing Dynasty did not invest money in national defense construction, and as a result, it was all used to pay reparations to the great powers, which is considered by many to be a lesson to be learned.

There are also many objections to maintaining the total number of troops unchanged, believing that China has a vast territory, many neighboring countries, and is facing the risk of war in today's turbulent world, and the number of troops should be increased, after all, the current number of Chinese troops is really not that large.

Whether it is increasing the number of army personnel, navy personnel, or air force personnel, many people think it is very necessary.

After all, even Russia maintains its army at 1.3 million!

Not to mention far away, even Japan, separated by a strip of water, had a defense budget accounting for 5.1% of GDP in the 2013 defense budget!

In European countries, defense budgets generally account for no less than 2% of GDP.

As for the United States, more than 100 billion US dollars are used for ongoing global operations, and more than 800 billion US dollars are used for the basic budget.

The lineup of 'chiefs' of various ministries, with 9 new appointments among the 25 chiefs of various ministries, is not something everyone pays attention to.

Liu Tao also paid close attention to public opinion, and couldn't help but smile at the low proportion of military expenditure reflected by many people.

The reason why China's military expenditure accounts for less than 1.3% of GDP is, in the final analysis, that China's foundation is still too weak, and money is needed in all aspects, retirement pensions need to be increased, on-the-job employee wages need to be raised, more funds need to be invested in education, and a lot of money needs to be invested in regional integration!

And the national fiscal revenue is limited!

How to conduct fiscal expenditure is a profound subject.

If military expenditure accounts for a larger share, other things will have to account for a smaller share.

According to the judgment of the future situation, the possibility of a large-scale war breaking out within ten years is not high.

Besides, if a large-scale war really breaks out, China's current military strength is enough to use, enough to buy enough time for a troop surge.

There is also the number of troops, and the current number of troops is enough.

With the increasing number of drones and robots in service, and the application of high technology, the problem of the number of military personnel can be greatly compensated.

As for the ASEAN Allied Forces, the military expenditure here is paid by ASEAN and is sufficient.

In the final analysis, the current problem is still the problem of development.

Now that the national strategic security defense system has been gradually built, China is not actually urgent in terms of security. It can be said that with sharp spears and the strongest shields, China is actually the safest country in the world.

End of March.

In the southern Indian Ocean, 300 nautical miles from Lanfang, the ASEAN Allied Forces Navy is holding a live combat exercise.

Landing warfare has always been a difficult point in war.

The most famous amphibious landing operation in human history is still 'Normandy Landing'!

The 'Normandy' landing involved a full 2.88 million troops and 385,000 logistics support, including 1.53 million army personnel, more than 170 military services and coordination units, divided into more than 180 combat levels, lasting two months and 14 days, starting with the beach landing on June 6, 1944, and ending with the Marne River on August 9, under the background of 'favorable weather, geographical advantages, and the support of the people', war resources, and the overall situation favoring the Allied forces, finally crossing the English Channel and gaining a foothold at the cost of 140,000 casualties.

Among them, the main battlefield for the beach landing was divided into five routes, namely "Sword", "Gold", "Juno", "Omaha", and "Utah", and two other strongholds were attacked, Cherbourg and Caen. The United States basically invested all the trump card troops except the Third Army in this operation, including the famous 1st, 4th, 90th, 92nd Infantry Divisions, the 5th Ranger Regiment, the 101st Airborne Division, the 82nd Airborne Division, and so on. Britain even threw the Royal 6th Airborne Division over there as if elite troops were free. When there was really no one on Juno Beach, Canada took out an entire army group to top it off.

So the Normandy landing is also called a desperate battle. It was the most arduous battle fought by the most powerful forces on Earth at that time with the most elite troops. The difficulty and gold content are unparalleled throughout history.

The reason why landing operations are so difficult is mainly due to the extreme difficulty in coordinating command, involving penetration, reconnaissance, radar, fixed-wing aircraft, spies, air supremacy, close air support, interdiction tactics, bombing, aerial fire suppression, dynamic airspace control, naval warfare, sea control, aviation operations, anti-submarine warfare, surface-to-air defense zones, mine clearance, troop transport, rubber boat landings, heavy equipment transport, landing of land mechanized units, laying of rubber and plastic pipes, obstacle clearance, camp establishment, battlefield rescue, dynamic battlefield artillery control, artificial lake filling, firefighting, multi-barrel rocket launcher site defense, breakwater engineering, sea waves, weather, air currents, ocean currents, wind direction, and all logistical supplies, a series of subjects, military branches, training, and hardware.

In recent decades, the trend of human warfare has become increasingly three-dimensional and comprehensive with the development of technology, making landing operations much more difficult and complex than the 'Normandy landings' of the past.

This three-dimensionality and comprehensiveness come not only from the increasingly dominant air superiority of the air force, but also from the development of various technologies, such as the development of missiles and radar technology.

The largest landing operation in modern warfare was the Iraq War, with the US aircraft carrier fleet launching a landing operation in Iraqi waters.

Even with the powerful US Navy, they dared to launch a landing operation only after the army had made breakthrough progress and completely controlled the airspace.

Within the ASEAN region, there are a large number of islands, many of which are very suitable as landing operation training areas for exploring amphibious operations.

This time, the ASEAN Navy formed a special task force, which included two amphibious landing ships.

Aircraft took off from the aircraft carrier to seize air supremacy and attack important military targets on the island.

Reconnaissance aircraft scouted the entire island's defense works, and the situation of the entire island was fed back to the command ship in real time, clearly visible on the large screen.

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Instead of directly launching a landing operation, the carrier-based aircraft first seized air supremacy and destroyed important military targets, including air defense positions, radar positions, missile positions, and anti-ship positions.

On the command ship, the commander issued an order to deploy drones, including suicide drones, reconnaissance and strike drones, combat drones, and bombing drones, to compensate for the lack of fighter aircraft and strengthen air strikes.

Suicide drones directly attacked enemy soldiers.

Although suicide drones are somewhat expensive in this kind of landing operation exercise, it is worth sacrificing more suicide drones in order to explore landing operations.

After the cleanup was almost complete, the commander issued an amphibious operation order, and Type 81 amphibious tanks disembarked from the amphibious landing ship and launched an attack on the island, conducting a beach landing operation.

At the same time, aircraft dropped robots onto the island.

Letting robots act as paratroopers to tear apart the defenders from within.

In the general directorate, Liu Tao watched the exercise situation constantly being reported, and he was very supportive of this kind of military exercise in this field.

Although the possibility of a landing operation in the future is actually not very high, it is necessary to be prepared for everything, better safe than sorry.

The army can only deter war by being ready for war at any time!

An army is raised for a thousand days, to be used in a single moment!

If you don't strengthen actual combat exercises on a regular basis, then when the time comes to use them, they will be completely useless.

This amphibious operation exercise was classified as top secret. Soldiers were not allowed to take photos with their mobile phones. There was a special military film crew to shoot, and the video data would be classified as top secret and would only be discussed internally and would not be made public.

After all, this involves the military secrets of the army.

Modern landing operations are difficult, and one very important reason is that the target island may lack ports suitable for large ships to land. The few deep-water ports may be strategically destroyed and blockaded during wartime to prevent the other side from landing smoothly.

For example, this island is such a situation. The shallow beach is not suitable for large warships to dock, which means that large warships will be anchored at a position far from the beach. In this case, using small ships to transport troops for landing operations, then these landing troops may be annihilated on the beach in large numbers.

After all, small landing craft will be directly exposed to dense artillery fire after leaving the protection of large ships.

The current situation is completely different from the 'Normandy landings' of the past. For the defenders, the firepower has been increased, and the reconnaissance methods have also been improved, which will increase the difficulty for the attacking side to carry out a landing operation.

But at the same time, the attacking side's military equipment is also far ahead of the 'Normandy landings' of the past. They can gain air supremacy through carrier-based aircraft, first destroy important military targets through air strikes, and then disrupt the opponent and disperse their forces through drones and robots.

After all, during the 'Normandy landings', aircraft were not as advanced as they are now, missiles were not as advanced as they are now, and there were no drones or robots!

In modern warfare, if the attacking side does not care about civilian casualties, then the war is very cruel. Facing the air superiority strikes, they can even destroy an army by missiles and aircraft bombing.

The reason why street fighting is cruel is because there are a large number of buildings that are easy to conceal individual soldiers.

However, when the US military was in the Afghan and Iraqi theaters, they destroyed buildings one by one, without even engaging in street fighting. After destroying the cities and leveling them to the ground, there was naturally no so-called street fighting.

Now, for the exercise troops, the amphibious operation side can use various advanced weapons.

Of course, this is based on the premise that the other side's strength is relatively weak. If the military strength of the two sides is similar, then it will not be so easy to launch a landing operation in the current mode.

By the time the sky was about to darken, the Marine Corps had completely controlled the entire island, declaring the victory of this landing exercise.

In the evening, there was a summary meeting.

This is also a good tradition, to improve one's command level through continuous summarization, which is also the meaning of actual combat exercises.

Liu Tao also attended the summary meeting, listening with great interest, even though he didn't actually understand a lot of it, it didn't prevent him from personally feeling the atmosphere of the battlefield.

Looking at the mental outlook of these commanders and fighters, like howling wolves, Liu Tao felt relieved.

If a war really breaks out, then the army will definitely not be afraid of war, but will actively seek war.

But that's also true, it has been a long time since there has been peace, and there are few battles. It is not easy to gain military merit. It is very difficult to gain military merit in peacetime. But it is different during wartime, it is much easier to gain military merit.

For soldiers, the military medal is the soldier's medal, and no soldier does not yearn for the military medal.

At the end of the meeting, when Liu Tao was invited to speak, Liu Tao emphasized three points. First, the principle of the Party commanding the gun cannot be changed. This is an iron rule; second, combat must be brave, and daring to fight can stop war. Be ready for battle at any time; finally, emphasize the need to dare to accept new equipment, dare to use new equipment, explore the use of new equipment, and give full play to the combat effectiveness of new equipment, so as to become a force multiplier for the army. (End of this chapter)