The evolution of insect swarms from XNUMX million years ago

Chapter 153 Flying Artillery

The current situation reminds Lin Yi of the famous blitzkrieg in the history of human warfare - what he needs now is such a rapid and continuous advance to quickly solve the target.

In such a battle, after the high-speed mobile combat troops break through the enemy's defense line, they need to immediately move in depth to seize high-value targets.

In the battle of the nest group, after the army composed of the giant horseshoe crab spider and the mesoporus spider is destroyed, they rush inside as soon as possible, destroy the enemy's mother nest group, and establish their own mother nest group.

The fastest and most agile saw-toothed saw ants are unable to destroy those solid mounds. They can only wait for the follow-up army to arrive before destroying them.

After analysis, Lin Yi has determined that those wingless cockroaches can secrete a viscous liquid similar to later termites, which acts as an adhesive to bind soil particles together and compact them, forming a structure similar to later concrete.

If you want to destroy such a solid structure, you can only dig a little bit by excavators, or use the most violent method - direct bombardment with large-caliber semi-armor-piercing bullets from the Mortar Cannon. The brand-new hammer armor should also be able to hammer it open.

But these level individuals have one problem - they are slightly slower.

Although the speed of the main battle armor is not bad, it still does not meet Lin Yi's needs. The speed of the mortar spiders is even slower. The walking and fixed foot structure will inevitably affect the movement speed, making it difficult for them to keep up with the advancing speed of the saw ant army on the front line.

This means that currently, the biggest obstacle to the nest group is the insufficient speed to destroy the enemy mound group, making it difficult to quickly destroy the enemy mother nest group. Greatly affects the speed of expansion and advancement

And this kind of situation is not unheard of in the history of human wars in later generations - a certain failed art student also encountered this problem when he launched a blitzkrieg with no worries in his heart.

That is, a large number of solid fortifications are blocking the way. The light tanks designed for lightning raids in the early days were difficult to break through the shells of these hard targets, and the speed of artillery could not keep up with the raids of armored forces, making these fortifications quite difficult to attack.

In response to this, their response strategy at the time was to study a close-ground support dive bomber that could carry large-yield armor-piercing bombs as a highly mobile artillery substitute to provide close-ground support strikes for fast-moving armored forces. Open these hard shells.

Its product is the famous JU-87 dive bomber. Because it has a special buzzer structure installed under the wing, it will emit a piercing scream when diving, and it was attacked by them for a long time. The Allies called him the "Screaming Death".

This tactic of using dive bombers to dive and drop bombs to provide close-ground fire support and replace the role of artillery is indeed efficient when air superiority is ensured.

Coincidentally, the opponent's flight level means that the ancient net-winged cockroach cannot fly high or far, and the winged breeding insect has no combat effectiveness. The air superiority is firmly in Lin Yi's hands, allowing him to use such tactics. conditions of.

What Lin Yi currently needs is a flying reconnaissance aircraft that is larger than the current flying reconnaissance aircraft and can carry heavy "aerial bombs" with the same amount of ammunition and lethality as those launched by the mortar gun spider. level to destroy those mounds more efficiently.

After several rounds of improvements, the potential of the original template has been basically tapped out - after all, it is just an emergency transitional product, a level made before Lin Yi actually landed on land, and it still retains a large number of aquatic life. The features and degraded remnants of the structure are not entirely suitable for air flight.

Therefore, Lin Yi did not intend to simply amplify and improve it, but to create a completely new level of individual from scratch. Nowadays, the gene sequences of the two winged species, the ancient web-winged cockroach and the winged breeding insect, have been absorbed by Lin Yi. Although their wing structures are still sub-elementary compared to later insects, they are still real wings after all. Become a reference object - if it doesn't work, it can also be used as a negative teaching material

Since it is a flying grade, the design must start with the wings.

Previously, the two-pair wing layout of the flying reconnaissance aircraft has proven to be successful. Therefore, for the new grade, Lin Yi still uses a layout of two pairs of wings arranged front and back, one pair providing lift and one pair providing thrust.

Among them, the forewing is still a long and narrow straight wing layout. Of course, the flexibility advantage brought by the biological structure also allows them to adjust the sweep angle of the forewing within a certain range to achieve something similar to a variable sweep wing, but The flexibility is even better.

Therefore, the forewings are still mainly composed of relatively solid materials, but the difference is that this time, due to their larger size, there are also inner shell supports in the forewings, and a hydraulic-fiber dual muscle system is installed to facilitate more flexible control. .

As for the structure of the hind wings, drastic changes will be made.

The hind wings of the flying reconnaissance bug are based on the membrane wings of later generations of insects, which is more suitable when the body is small. However, now that the body size is enlarged, such membrane wings are no longer suitable and will inevitably expose various problems.

After all, in later generations, the membrane wing structure of some large beetles has been different from that of their smaller counterparts, not to mention that the expected wingspan is at least close to the body length of the giant horseshoe crab spider, reaching a new level of several meters or even nearly ten meters. To take off successfully, you must have a pair of wings with a special structure.

The new grade's hind wing structure refers to the fleshy wings of later bats and pterosaurs, but the structure is after all specialized from the appendages of arthropods, and the structure is far from the structure that is specialized from the appendages of vertebrates.

The endoskeleton, or inner shell, lacks the trochanter compared to later generations of insects, and is only composed of three segments: femur, tibia and tarsus, but its structure is very different.

On the thick femur and tibia, there is a slender spine-like protrusion structure growing downward on each side. At first glance, it is reminiscent of a bat, or the phalanx of a mythical flying dragon that supports the wing membrane, but the actual structure But completely different.

At the end of the tarsus, one of the tarsal claws is also elongated to form the outermost supporting bone of the hind wing. The wing membrane, or padding layer of leathery exoskeleton, is attached to these supporting structures.

Between the upper and lower exoskeletons of the filling layer, there are also certain living cells that form muscles and blood vessel tissue, so that the new grade of hind wings will not be so fragile that they can be damaged and irreparable like the membrane wings of later generations of insects.

The structure that combines the advantages of the membrane wings of insects and the fleshy wings of later vertebrates will give the new class considerable mobility and power, allowing it to carry heavy weight while having a heavy weight due to its huge size. It became possible for heavy aerial bombs to fly into the sky and drop them on the enemy's heads.

(End of this chapter)