From cannon fodder to sweeping across thousands of stars.

Chapter 560: Playing Tactics
"Not relying on warping to enter?"

As soon as these words were spoken, Bernelli, Muller and Ballack were all stunned, as if time had suddenly stopped at this moment. Their confused eyes met at one another. For a moment, it was really difficult to understand the deep meaning behind Major General Stoner's words.

Fleet battles are brutal and there is no way out, especially large-scale fleet battles. Every decision made by the fleet commander may affect the fate of countless lives.

The three of them looked at each other, various possible situations running through their minds at lightning speed.

"Do you mean that the other fleet will just come here in 'covert action' mode?"

The outspoken Major General Benelli was the first to break the brief silence. His words were like a stone thrown into a calm lake, instantly causing ripples. There was a hint of joking in his tone, as if this idea was absurd.

However, Major General Stoner paid no attention to the teasing tone of the junior. Instead, he nodded slightly, his eyes deep and firm:
"If the other party has this intention, it is not completely impossible for this to happen. Compared to allowing the large-scale spatial fluctuations generated by the fleet's collective jump to be detected by us, thus giving us time to take the 'first hand' in this battle, maintaining a 'covert action mode approach' may be more feasible."

Major General Stoner's words immediately made everyone fall into deeper thought, because what he said was not unreasonable.

"You're right, but the problem is that our four fleets can form all-round detection, including the massive early warning terminals we have deployed along the ecliptic plane in advance. If the enemy conducts a 'stealth mode' maneuver at the scale of an entire fleet, we will still detect it, not to mention that there is such a huge super flagship."

Barak, the commander of the 23rd Fleet who was relatively quiet, spoke slowly. His voice was steady and powerful, and was immediately recognized by others.

In their view, the "super flagship" of the Atlas combat fleet is undoubtedly a high-risk unit that is difficult to deal with, but it is not without flaws - the overly large hull, and the large number of sophisticated electronic equipment, fusion reactors and other facilities inside, while exerting powerful power and excellent performance advantages, also greatly reduce the stealth capability of this giant ship.

Especially with the detection network composed of nearly a thousand warships of the four federal fleets and the existence of a large number of early warning terminals, it is difficult to approach this warship through conventional stealth means.

In other words, apart from jumping into the battlefield, it is actually difficult for an Infinity-class super flagship to achieve suddenness in its attack.

However, Major General Stoner ignored the doubts of others. His upright posture looked particularly firm under the light of the command room.

He continued calmly, "What if the other party uses some kind of celestial activity as a cover?"

Major General Benelli, who hadn't reacted yet, looked puzzled: "What do you mean?"

"This is a report on the recent astronomical activities in the Rubion galaxy." Major General Stoner said as he displayed a report from the astronomical observation team, which instantly attracted everyone's attention.

"Comet Hyakutake (C/517 B2 Hyakutake), the largest periodic comet in the Rubion system, will pass by Rubion along its elliptical orbit during this period." Major General Stoner's voice echoed in the command room.

After reading the report, Rear Admiral Mueller's eyes flashed with enlightenment. He immediately understood the intention of the commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet:
"You mean, Atlas' fleet will approach under the cover of this comet?"

Major General Stoner nodded slightly:

"That's right. According to the observations of the comet's orbit by the astronomical observation team, it can be determined that the largest comet in this galaxy, with a tail nearly 12 kilometers long, will hit the orbit of Rubion V. The debris blown off by the solar wind may even fall into the atmosphere of Rubion V. At that time, people on the ground will even be able to observe the meteor shower directly with the naked eye.
The orbit of this comet happens to coincide with the ecliptic plane of Rubion V. The 12-kilometer-long tail of the comet is long enough to hide the Atlas fleet. If the other party hides in the tail of the comet and only relies on the attitude control nozzle to slightly adjust the angle, the early warning terminals we have deployed will not be able to detect their traces!"

As Major General Stoner expressed his guesses and explanations, the other three fleet commanders broke out in cold sweats and questioned themselves why such a mistake had occurred.

Perhaps because of inertial thinking, most fleet commanders of this era, including Major General Benelli and his three companions, had begun to become somewhat rigid in their tactical thinking.

In other words, the "tactical creativity" of naval fleet commanders is far lower than that of army commanders on the surface of the planet.

Because on the surface of the planet, the army commander can take advantage of the weather, terrain, planetary curvature, and other factors, plus a little bit of luck, to create an attack battle that will go down in history.

But when it comes to the navy, especially after humans entered space, the universe, which is cleaner and vaster than the surface of the planet, made the implementation of tactics extremely difficult.

In addition, the activities of warships in outer space are actually strictly restricted by the laws of physics. Therefore, as humans fight more and more space battles, the corresponding tactics and theories become more and more cold and rigid.

After all, in dangerous space, the reliability and stability of tactics and regulations are far more important than the so-called "stroke of genius".

But occasionally, the vast universe will throw in some interesting scenes and celestial bodies to make the battle less boring.

For example, the "wholesale sites" of various famous battles - asteroid belts, nebulae, planetary rings.
Just like the comet that Major General Stoner just mentioned.

Soon, the other three people also immediately set about verifying the feasibility of this sneak attack tactic.

According to the observation report, when Comet Hyakutake approached Rubion V, its relative speed was about 40 kilometers per second, which was not difficult for the warships of the human navy to keep up with.

Especially after jumping to the orbit of the comet in advance and starting to accelerate, the fleet can use the attitude control nozzle to maintain a state close to relative stillness with the comet after the acceleration is completed.

The only difficulty lies in the calculation of the orbit and the posture control of the entire fleet, and this is when the 'stealth action mode' is turned on.

But in the eyes of everyone, with the strength that Atlas Group has currently demonstrated in artificial intelligence and information technology, it seems not impossible to achieve this.

"If this is the case, then our early warning is completely ineffective."

Major General Barak said:
"The detection capability of early warning terminals is limited, and they are simply unable to penetrate the comet's tail for reconnaissance, not to mention that the comet and the large amount of debris in the comet's tail will destroy all early warning terminals in its path."

The operations meeting room fell silent again.

Because everyone knows that they have only made a guess, which has not been verified and cannot be verified.

The only way to verify it is to wait for Atlas' fleet to jump out of the comet tail and then fire at us.
However, as both fleets had already completed the battle, entered the early stages of electronic warfare attacks and were still at a disadvantage, the four men did not have much time to make a decision.

Barak: "The other fleet commander is a tactician." Muller: "He has a dirty heart. I have seen this before when I was in A. Bawa. Ku."

Bernelli: “No, is this the time to talk about this?”

Before Benelli could continue, Major General Stoner interrupted the three of them:

"Okay, stop talking. Since I am now the commander-in-chief of the Grand Fleet, I will boldly use this identity to issue orders."

As soon as these words were spoken, the other three immediately became serious and sat up straight. No matter what they thought in their minds, they would obey the orders of the fleet commander without hesitation after entering the battle.

"The fleet's next focus of detection will be on the 'Comet Hyakutake'. After all, there is no better detection direction at this moment, and the possibility that the enemy is using the comet to hide is indeed very high.

And when the distance is shortened, we will be able to detect the internal situation of Comet Tail by relying on the high-performance composite detection unit of the battleship.

In addition, the entire fleet has entered combat search mode. Once the enemy's traces are detected, wait for the flagship's order and be ready to launch a preemptive attack at any time!"

"Yes, General!" ×3——
After the fleets of both sides had been maneuvering for several hours near the orbit of Rubion V, the Atlas Combat Fleet and the Federal Fleet almost simultaneously captured each other's tracks after entering a distance of 15 kilometers.

Because of the long-term "stealth action mode", the working capacity of all warships' active cooling systems and black body coatings has begun to decline.

After all, even if the main propulsion array is not turned on, just maintaining the battleship in a 'quasi-combat state' will generate heat - 'heat control' and 'infrared signature control' are also compulsory courses for battleship captains and fleet commanders.

However, what these "compulsory courses" can do is to extend the time that the warship does not expose its infrared characteristics as much as possible, and they cannot prevent the warship from exposing its infrared characteristics forever.

Not to mention, the light and heat radiation emitted by the star 'Great Rubion' in this galaxy will be spread unhindered in the universe where both parties are located.

Therefore, in addition to controlling the heat generated by the warships themselves, each warship must also find a way to reduce the temperature rise on the surface of the ship after being illuminated by the stars, which further shortens the time that both sides can remain stealthy.
When the two large fleets locked each other's positions, Randall and Stoner almost simultaneously ordered the entire fleet to remove the optical camouflage, radar wave cancellation and black body coating.

Because both sides are well aware that at this stage in a battle involving such a large fleet, the effect of camouflage has become infinitely close to zero.

"Warning! The enemy fleet has been detected accelerating and is expected to enter engagement distance in forty minutes!"

The words of Gserena, the ship controller of the Infinity, rang out, and at the same time, the piercing alarm suddenly pierced the silence of the bridge like a sharp arrow.

The shrill sound seemed like a desperate cry from the abyss of the universe. It suddenly turned into a red warning light, and instantly pushed the tense atmosphere to a suffocating boiling point.

Randall, the fleet commander who had just taken office and encountered many high-intensity battles in succession, after passing the test of "blood and fire", his eyes have changed from the anxiety, entanglement and timidity half a month ago to as blazing and firm as the bright stars.

He stared closely at the holographic projection platform in front of him. On the huge three-dimensional battlefield situation map displayed above the platform, the densely packed light spots of the four federal fleets were like surging tides, rapidly approaching the position of the Atlas combat fleet with unstoppable momentum.

The combat fleet he led at this moment used two unmanned fleets as the combat core, and the third task force was deployed in a "guerrilla" formation around them.

Randall, Cleves, even Guterres who was thousands of light years away, and Dr. Mephisto, the creator of the unmanned fleet, had no objection to Amber's arrangement.

Although the unmanned fleet was previously in the battle sequence of the Federal Navy, it existed more as an "auxiliary fleet". In battle, it basically relied on flawless maneuvers and accurate long-range artillery fire as "supplementary output".

But in Amber's opinion, the biggest advantage of the unmanned fleet is not the perfect coordination or accurate long-range attack.
But they don't have the influencing factor of "morale bar".

This is different from the human fleet, which will begin to experience a decline in morale after suffering a 10% loss, a sharp drop in morale after a 30% loss, and the fleet may even collapse after a loss of more than 50%.

The unmanned fleet can stay in the battle position after receiving the order until the last battleship is sunk.
This feature was also discovered by Amber and other players in the previous life in the game after a fierce battle with the unmanned army led by Lilith.

To be honest, if it weren't for the fact that players in the game have a chance to revive after death, and if they had to fight Lilith's unmanned army with casualties, Amber felt that it would be basically impossible for humans in this world to defeat Lilith alone.
After all, you can't expect flesh-and-blood soldiers to fight for their lives against fighting machines that have no fear, no pain, and no emotions.

Perhaps humanity's elite troops can indeed do this, but such troops account for less than 10% of the entire human combat sequence.

Amber had seen too many NPC troops on the battlefield being quickly defeated after encountering the unmanned army. Even if the supervisory team ran out of ammunition, they could not stop the collapse - not to mention that most of the supervisory team actually collapsed immediately.
Therefore, when Amber proposed the plan of using two unmanned fleets as the backbone to "hold the line" at the pre-war meeting, it didn't take much effort to get everyone's approval.

After all, Randall's combat fleet will definitely engage in a head-on firefight with the federal fleet. In this case, the two unmanned fleets are indeed more suitable to attract firepower.

Although Dr. Mephisto initially felt that this might be a bit cruel for the commanding artificial intelligence and high-level shipborne control personalities in the unmanned fleet.

However, after learning that Amber and Lilith had already backed up the "sisters" of the three unmanned fleets and stored them in the data center of A Bawa Ku, the doctor no longer had any objections.

"Commander Randall, the second and third unmanned fleets have been deployed according to the preset instructions. If there are no other instructions, we will start the attack according to the plan after entering the attack range."

The voice of Selene, the commander of the second unmanned fleet, rang in Randall's ears. The latter did not issue any other instructions at this time, but nodded and said:

"No other orders have been issued. The unmanned fleet will fight according to the combat plan. The Third Task Force and the Infinity will assist you."

Having said that, looking at the large Federal Navy fleet rushing towards him, Randall sighed and raised his head, his eyes seeming to penetrate the top deck of the Infinity.

"Amber, you have to get there on time!"

(End of this chapter)