Thunder Strikes Back

Chapter 117
The old port of Karachi, a port city in southern Pakistan.

The unloading operation of the cargo ship is proceeding in an orderly manner. Since the start of the war, the MiG-29 aircraft of the Indian Navy has only occasionally flown over Karachi a few times without dropping any bombs.Currently, several units of the 12th Army are gathering here. Most of the army companies of the 12th Army only existed in the army's system table two months ago, because this is a reserve force with only empty shelves.Now reservists from all over the country have been mobilized and come here to wait to be armed. When the freighter was still at sea, the main work of these companies was just queue training, but the soldiers already knew that their official designation was not infantry regiments, It is the independent anti-tank regiment of the group army. This strange name seems to imply that this group of rabble will soon become a well-known armored force.Perhaps the Chinese will provide some advanced tanks that outperform the Indians and make this nascent force an elite division?
Corporal Abad is from Balochistan in the rear. He used to be a soldier and participated in the last India-Pakistan conflict (as a reserve force, but failed to go to the battlefield). For this, he also received a war wound medal (Indian army air strike When he fell from the car and fractured), Abad was equipped with an 82mm recoilless gun mounted on a jeep, and his position was the gunner.He has been praying that the Indian Navy will not attack Chinese cargo ships, because he is looking forward to the new tanks infinitely, except that he has been a tank fan since he was a child. In his opinion, hiding behind the armor and firing is better than standing in the back of the jeep. It's much safer, at least it won't be blown off by the blast.

As the first tank was hoisted off the ship, the corporal struggled his way through the crowd, and he saw a strangely shaped armored vehicle being unloaded onto the dock.Aside from a huge heat-sheathed enrichment gun, the vehicle looked nothing like a modern tank, and Abad felt like he was back in World War II.

"This is not a tank? This is a self-propelled artillery." Some people shouted in disappointment.

"Who told you that we are a tank regiment, we are an anti-tank regiment." The battalion commander said from the side.

"Anyway, they didn't intend to let us go to war," someone booed, "I heard that the road was washed away by the flood, and we must be too late to reach Fort ***. That's fine, we can't do it with such outdated weapons Indian Russian tanks."

"Whoever the hell spreads defeatist remarks again, I will not be polite." The battalion commander immediately stopped the group of ordinary people in military uniforms from complaining. These people are not very clear, and they are currently under military law.

In any case, Corporal Abad was not completely disappointed, he knew that this self-propelled gun had the deadliest gun in the world, thanks to the fact that this obsolete weapon was designed without cutting the size of the turret, the 120mm smoothbore gun had a very good charge chamber Long, that is to say, this artillery is still quite bright in terms of power.However, the fire control system of this self-propelled gun is relatively backward. It is an early integrated sight with a line-of-sight follower barrel. It is difficult for this gun to hit the target while moving. As far as the complex image stabilization system is concerned, it also has its own advantages, that is, it is quite simple to train a gunner.

Abad just read the instruction manual once, and he grasped the essentials.In fact, he felt that it was simpler than an optically aimed recoilless gun. Just find the target in the scope, press it with the aiming line, wait a while until the range measurement is completed, and the fire control computer will generate a target in the sight. A light spot that calculates the height and azimuth lift, and then the gunner only needs to manually adjust the gun to aim the light spot at the target, and then press the launch button to achieve a hit rate of more than 9%.Even for a complete layman like Abad, it took only one morning to master the shooting of this cannon.

The crew that Abad was assigned to temporarily only had 3 people, except for the gunner, there was only one loader and one driver, but there was no commander, so Abad was appointed as the temporary commander. His military rank was also raised by one rank.

The officers of the 12th Army generally believe that the fort is tight now, and some decent forces have gone to the north, while the 12th Army has remained in the south. This shows that the possibility of this army participating in the war is extremely low. Perhaps this motley army Like the previous few times, they will pretend to gather in a place far away from the battlefield, and then wait until the end of the war.The order of the Army Staff Department also indirectly confirmed these conjectures. The superior only required the reservists of the independent anti-tank regiment to conduct some basic driving and shooting training while saving gasoline and ammunition as much as possible. If this unit is really needed When they go to the battlefield, they will try to transfer a few car commanders from the frontline troops to take command. Of course, in the eyes of many people, if this messy army really has to wait for the battle, Pakistan is probably not far from the collapse of the country.

In the hinterland of the Thar Desert in Rajasthan, India, the scorching sun in June is mercilessly scorching the sand and rocks on the ground. The daytime temperature here is as high as 50 degrees Celsius. An army could cross the desert in summer.

In the steaming hot air, a group of camels lined up slowly across the west side of the Rajasthan Canal.A turbaned Naek nomad leads the procession.He saw rows of tanks hidden in the Populus euphratica forest to the east, where soldiers were jumping up and down nervously, as if they were preparing for something.The nomad thought it was a little funny, because he already knew that these tanks were fake. When he returned from Balmer last month, he saw a series of trucks transporting "tanks" by the edge of these artificial forests, about 6 people Soldiers can lift a tank off a truck and push it into the woods, covering it with branches.A tank's gun barrel fell off the truck, and it took a soldier five minutes to put it back in place.Obviously this was a trick used by the soldiers to deceive the Pakistani reconnaissance plane, but why did they use real people to match these props? The nomad didn't know.
Surrounded by a contingent of officers, Lieutenant General Spanga walked up a dune overlooking his men for final preparations.The sun here is so vicious that an adjutant tried to hold up an umbrella for the commander out of good intentions, but Spanga waved him away.

"Go away, the army will not work for an officer who is afraid of the sun. So, you should pay more attention to the heatstroke of the soldiers." The lieutenant general scolded, "How is your army assembled?"

"The 31st Armored Division has completed its assembly and is ready to launch an attack as planned at any time," said division commander Markani.

"How is the other side? Still no movement?"

"I think our plan deceived them. Last night my reconnaissance force cut the barbed wire and crossed the border. Now they are still 2 kilometers west of the border for reconnaissance. Their defense is very lax and their troops are scattered."

"How is the situation at the headquarters," the commander said, took a bottle of water, took off his military cap, and poured water on his head.

"There is a battalion headquarters 15 kilometers west of the border, manned by about a platoon, and the first round of artillery fire on an offensive day will smash it to pieces."

"What about the minefield?"

"Desert minefields are always fixed. In the past 10 years, they have not laid out new minefields. So we have a detailed map of minefields, and we can bypass them." Makani said.

"They really thought we were full of wooden tanks here that would blow away. Maybe they were just kidding themselves."

"It is true. We have been monitoring their radio communications. They have been using wooden boxes or cardboard boxes to imply fake tanks. Their drones will come over every two or three days to see if these tanks are still there. But drones and satellites will hardly notice that we replaced tanks at night."

"I heard that a new armored regiment has been formed near Karachi?" the commander said as he walked towards the jeep under the dunes.

"I have no new information on this, but it is 650 kilometers away from here. By the time they arrive, my vanguard should have reached Sukkur. If the paratroopers can completely capture the bridge over the Indus River, then this war will probably be over." It can be over."

"Listen, I'm relying on you for this attack, understand? So don't make things too simple, you can't make mistakes."

"I know this."

"So I want to give you the 43rd regiment. Originally, I wanted this regiment to belong to the reserve team of the group army, but Minister Singh specially called and asked to put it into the front line, so I decided to give this regiment to you."

"I don't want the 43rd regiment, and I don't want this regiment to appear on my flank and occupy a breakthrough passage. You can give me another regiment, or the army's engineering unit. I may need the engineer to build a bridge."

"You're embarrassing the minister."

"Those Arjuna tanks are too heavy to keep up with the speed of the White Tiger Division, and they will add a lot of trouble to logistics. Resupply in the desert is very difficult. I can't just consider firepower. Speed ​​​​is the best guarantee, and I also see We will rely on firepower for this attack."

"Okay, since you say so, I can only give the 43rd Regiment to the 6th Armored Division. The Prime Minister and the Minister of Defense have been looking forward to seeing that regiment achieve something in this offensive. I can't take their sex away."

"Commander, the morale is high right now. The enemy is completely unprepared. If we delay, the morale will be wiped out by the hot weather."

"In a few hours, the north will start to fire. When the artillery fire extends to the city of ***, they will fall into the trap completely. We need their transport planes to fill the bottomless pit with troops and equipment day and night, so we will Be patient, I hope the Mountain Division Pasade has worked so hard to assemble will not disappoint me too much."

"But the Air Force lost an AWACS, which could be a problem."

"Minister Singh has transferred the last early warning aircraft in Agra to the western front, and the air force can only temporarily give up the surveillance in the direction of China. This is a very dangerous moment, so we must make a quick decision." "Please rest assured , The White Tiger Division can completely break the speed of the US 2003rd Infantry Division when it marched into Baghdad in [-]."

"I'm relieved that you can have such confidence."

After Spanga finished speaking, he got into the jeep and drove away. He had to be in the north to direct the attack there within a few hours.

(End of this chapter)