Thunder Strikes Back

Chapter 315 Erratic Ballistic Trajectory

Contrary to what Lin Huaisheng expected, the infantry fighting vehicles on the preset positions began to practice their own ideas. Under the leadership of a company commander, the tanks left the infantry who had dismounted, and the whole team charged towards the target.The general knowledge of the commander is that if the thermal imager of the Indian tank is sufficiently cooled, it can accidentally detect a target the size of an infantry fighting vehicle at a distance of about 4000 meters, but the poor low-light night vision device on the infantry fighting vehicle cannot be used The range advantage of laser beam driving weapons.But the commander is very clear that only by getting close to the target can he gain enough time to destroy the enemy. He decided to find a new launching position at a suitable distance before Li Ping's troops fired the second wave of flares with 35mm launchers. For this reason, he did not hesitate to challenge the accuracy of the enemy's tank artillery.It is known that the kinetic energy pole projectile stabilized by 4 fins will lose its aim at a certain distance due to the decrease in speed, even if it is fired from a rifled gun, the same is true for the armor-piercing projectile with a tail fin and a belt, but this distance is No one has any idea how big it is, so they can only rush over to try it.

When the commander briefly reported his attack purpose to Lin Huaisheng in the shaking chariot, the convoy had already started to move, and he didn't mean to wait for Lin Huaisheng's approval.

Lin Huaisheng hesitated, but in the end he didn't stop the company commander's risky behavior. He thought that the company commander should be very aware of the risks he was facing.Using flares to guide targets for guided weapons that require white light aiming is not a mature method of warfare, and no troops have ever practiced it.Although the current windless environment allowed Li Ping's troops to launch concentrated flares that could effectively stay in the air for about 50 seconds, but after observing the first round of shooting, it was only a short 20 seconds that they could really illuminate the entire battlefield well.As the height of the flare decreases, its illumination range decreases rapidly.Lin Huaisheng hadn't thought about this question carefully beforehand.He only made this plan based on his experience in the past, using the short-term illumination of flares to check the impact of mortar shells, and he thought that the time was enough.But in fact, the flight process of the missile is much longer than that of the shell.It is indeed a difficult thing for the shooter to quickly capture, find the target, then launch the weapon, and then guide the whole process.The only solution he could come up with was to get closer to the goal.Looking at the battlefield, he and his troops are facing a dilemma. The main battle tank has far better night vision capabilities than infantry fighting vehicles, but there seems to be a gap between the effective range of its thermal imager and the effective range of the main gun. There is also a dangerous distance to exploit. Is this distance worth the risk for a commander to let his troops jump out of position?he does not know.It is fair to say that Lin Huaisheng is not a decisive and hard-hearted commander. Most of his whimsical use of partial divisions to surprise soldiers is the ultimate goal of reducing casualties.

The commander, Lieutenant Colonel Sandel, found himself caught in the crossfire of 3 sides, and he could only use the road embankment to resist one direction, but he was unable to defend two of them.

He is very clear that in the dark village 900 meters away, there is an infantry lurking. This unit has just fired intensive flares. Due to the distance, the time of the flares they fired is limited, and this unit has no anti-tank Firepower, but that was the direction he was most afraid of, because they could fire again at any time, exposing their long snake array.If the lieutenant colonel had infantry to command, he would spare no effort to sweep up the ruins of the village that was out of reach of direct fire.But there was only one infantry battalion and one gendarmerie company in the city of Jebri, and they were not under his command.The infantrymen were now in great disarray, and kept calling Sandor to rescue them.

For Sandor, another big threat is about 2 rows of tanks in the west, which cannot be penetrated. He has already judged its model from its outline, and after several rounds of shooting, he also weighed the opponent's tanks. Strong strength, it should be said that both offense and defense are above Arjun.

He had already ordered his company commanders to shoot the front with grenades first, and then attack the same position with armor-piercing projectiles, but the timely retreat of the enemy made them hide the chassis.

The third enemy was to the north and had just fired a ton of missiles, but after night fell in time, the laser beam missiles only damaged 2 tanks.The lieutenant colonel could tell from all the signs that this three-sided ambush pocket was aimed at him. In the enemy's order of attack, the 43rd regiment was undoubtedly ahead of Jebri's bridgehead. "How despicable a guy can come up with this method of attacking the transportation line and luring himself out?"

Of course, the most puzzling part for the Lieutenant Colonel was the appearance of the enemy itself. How did this large-scale mechanized force get here through the defense zones of several divisions?It's nothing short of a mystery.

Around the same time, Ding Keguang and Ghiyam had been huddled in the commander's position of the T90, listening to the communications of the nearby Indian troops.They were waiting for the best time to get close to the chaotic Jebri's flank, and then touched the edge of the railway bridge. The firepower of the task force could not destroy the bridge, but Lin Huaisheng hoped to intercept the enemy's important units here .

Gyam's biggest concern was that the S300 battalion would never show up again.Compared with this battalion, Jebri's forward base seemed insignificant.The mountains of ammunition, shoes and socks, and food and fodder piled up here are no longer the focus.

However, from the communication, it is difficult to find clues about this unit. Ghiam has received professional monitoring training and can find the most important information from the enemy's casual words, but the enemy's rekeying operation after midnight , The eavesdropping function of this command T90 quickly disappeared. Now near the railway bridge, only low-level units are still calling their neighbors through non-frequency hopping or non-encrypted equipment, which made Giyam momentarily confused.

"What's wrong, your unmanned reconnaissance drone didn't work either." Ghiam complained.

"In the past few hours, all the drones approaching here have been shot down. The anti-aircraft firepower in this area is unfathomable, not as simple as an S300 position." Lao Ding replied.He guessed that there are also some mobile short-range bearing systems here, used to defend the S300 position itself.If the guess is correct, the enemy should have planned this action for a long time. "By the way, have you heard what's famous?"

"I know a channel used by the enemy military police, let me try it."

Soon, he found a new unit calling in plain language on this channel. Someone was reporting to the military police commander that a heavy convoy was going the wrong way on the narrow road, violating the command's assignment to the 471st Pontoon Bridge Brigade. road priority.The Corps of Engineers continually called the military police to the area to resolve the disputed road.The spot he pointed to was on the road just south of the railway bridge.

"Give me the map."

Lao Ding hurriedly handed over the map and at the same time turned on the internal lighting of the tank.

"'Heavy convoy'?" Ghiam murmured to himself for a moment. "How does your Army generally define heavy convoy?" Gyam asked in English.

"We don't have such a word in our military language," Lao Ding said slowly, he didn't want his words to misunderstand the other party. "However, it sounds like a tracked vehicle. In the northern military region, they sometimes call the tracked bridge bridge vehicle a heavy convoy. However, Indians never use such a word to describe the main station tank."

"Could it be a trap?" Ghiam asked.

"How is this possible?" Lao Ding shook his head.He really couldn't imagine that the Indians would come up with any schemes or tricks at such a juncture. Obviously, on the road near the railway, there are two convoys refusing to give in to each other. But, is it the S300 that the superior wants? Camp, he dared not say it.

"What do you think?"

"I'd say if it's an armored force, it should give way to trucks in a pinch, and all armies should be the same, tanks don't need roads to drive. So I'm leaning towards that being one of the other convoys. But I can't either Guaranteed to be what you want."

The two discussed for a while, but no one dared to draw a final conclusion. Finally, Giyam decided to go to investigate alone.After agreeing on the contact information with Lao Ding, he got out of the T90 and returned to his thin chariot.He knows that this is likely to be a reconnaissance with no return, because there is a whole company of enemy military police there, and it is impossible for him to easily fool him, but he knows that this is also the only chance. If the air defense battalion escapes across the river Go, there will be endless troubles.So he told the driver to turn on the headlights and headed straight for the railway bridge.

A few kilometers away, the charging Type 97 infantry fighting vehicle finally began to slow down.Now these tanks are blinded, and they can't see the target at all, but the Arjun tank under the command of Lieutenant Colonel Sander can clearly see the frontal outlines of these tanks through thermal imaging equipment.He had already deployed half his tanks to point their muzzles at these enemy tanks sneaking in from the side (the design flaw of the Arjun tanks made it impossible for them to use thermal imaging equipment to fix the forward field of view without turning their muzzles).

The vigilant lieutenant colonel asked the gunner to constantly update the enemy's distance figures, so that the laser range finder was always alarming because of the high temperature.It seemed to the lieutenant colonel that the group of lightly armored tanks was either mad or there was a conspiracy waiting to be carried out.

Soon the gunner gave the final report. The nearest tank was 2.8 kilometers away, and the rest were 3 kilometers away. Not any more.

"Damn it, it would be nice to be closer." Sandel cursed.The enemy has been calculating himself step by step, not reckless at all.He suddenly remembered the final confrontation between good and evil in Bollywood movies.These movies always have similar scenes, the hero is besieged in the dead zone and cannot escape, while the enemy is gathering troops around, preparing for the last fight.Of course, he knew that even at such a distance, the tungsten-core armor-piercing projectile still had enough kinetic energy to penetrate two BMP-2 tanks. The real problem now was fire control and accuracy.Unlike the ammunition fired by ordinary rifled guns, the sub-caliber tail shell-piercing shell needs to be stabilized by the tail instead of rotating. The accuracy of this kind of projectile that depends on the muzzle velocity will be greatly reduced at long distances, not to mention that the enemy is still constantly maneuvering .

"Aim at the nearest tank and prepare to fire," the lieutenant colonel ordered.

The gun has a standard range of 3.5 kilometers, but this is the distance for shooting fixed targets. The distance for calculating moving targets using image stabilized fire control is definitely not so large. Even in normal training, the 43rd regiment rarely Shoot at targets over 1500 meters, because according to long-term observations, the long-rod projectiles produced in India will sway and shake when flying beyond this distance, and it is often impossible to determine where the shells will fly. predicted.

"First sub-caliber armor-piercing shell, second grenade."

"understood."

The gunner used about 10 seconds for stable tracking, during which the rest of the Arjun tanks were still fighting the Pakistani tanks to the west 2 kilometers apart.

When the gunner pressed the launch button, he had already lost confidence. He had never shot such a distant target before, and he couldn't believe that the shells fired by this gun could hit such a distant moving target after a full 2 ​​seconds.

The gunner can see from the eyepiece of the scope that the second half of the shell begins to accelerate and fall, and finally falls to the ground in front of the target.He shook his head helplessly. This is a ballistic problem that no matter how precise the fire control is, it is obviously not caused by the sudden change in the crosswind; The shell can still maintain a relatively stable trajectory at a distance of 2000 meters.On the contrary, the domestically produced shells fired by the L11A5 artillery on the Arjun tank decelerate very quickly at long distances, and the problem that follows is the instability of the shells. This situation will also increase with the wear of the barrel. And intensified, in fact, every 20 shells fired will cause some changes in the ballistic characteristics of the gun.Many years ago, when the Arjun tank had not yet been finalized, Sandel, an officer of the test force, kept reporting this situation to his superiors. He believed that these problems, such as uneven cores or flaws in the tail fin processing, would make the tank Tankers will pay a huge price in future battles, but the technical department has a mediocre attitude and forcibly installs this outdated artillery and its supporting domestic ammunition.In the end, as Sandor expected, the consequences of all this must be borne by the frontline troops.

(End of this chapter)