Rebirth of the 1980s: The Military Industry Empire

In the 1980s, relations between the East and the West were very harmonious. During their closest period, the Americans even initiated the Perry Plan, intending to arm the Eastern armies with American-made weapons and build several armories in the East as strategic reserves for a potential war with the Soviets. Of course, the Easterners weren't foolish enough to turn their homeland into a battleground for dominance.

After so many years of ups and downs, it should be understood that there are no permanent friends or enemies in the world, only eternal interests. For a weak navy, how to strike a powerful enemy has always been a major problem.

How to solve this problem?

Qin Yang offered a solution: ballistic missiles!

In this era, ballistic missiles were still impossible to intercept. Although the Americans were ambitious and wanted to create a Star Wars program, attempting to establish a complete defense system to solve this problem, it was ultimately just a hoax. Anyone with insight knew that much of the technology involved exceeded the capabilities of the time.

Therefore, using ballistic missiles to strike aircraft carriers was a sure bet. When a ballistic missile came down at a speed of Mach 10 or more, even without a warhead, the impact alone would send an aircraft carrier to the bottom of the sea!

The Soviets had studied how to strike American aircraft carriers for decades, and their conclusion was saturation attacks. Therefore, the Soviet air force had the Tu-22M, capable of launching long-range anti-ship missiles. Soviet surface ships carried a large number of anti-ship missiles, lavishly deployed on both sides of the warships, firing directly during the attack. The Soviets also had specialized cruise missile nuclear submarines, ready to launch attacks from three directions, overwhelming the American navy.

Even the Aegis system would be overwhelmed by the Soviet saturation attacks.

However, in addition to these, the Soviets also developed the technology of using ballistic missiles to strike aircraft carriers.

After the death of the big-bearded leader, the new leader was a staunch missile advocate, believing that missiles could solve everything. By simply pressing the launch button, the enemy could be completely annihilated. Therefore, the Soviets initiated the UR-200 project on their intercontinental missiles, attempting to use this missile to strike enemy aircraft carrier formations. However, it was too difficult, and after nine failed tests, it was abandoned.

However, the Soviets learned from their experience and decided that large missiles wouldn't work, so they created a smaller one. They modified it based on a submarine-launched intermediate-range missile, code-named R-27K, launching it from land with an 80% success rate. When transferred to sea launch, the success rate exceeded 90%.

But what happened next?

Surprisingly, there was no follow-up!

Why was this? Some say it was due to immature ballistic missile technology, while others say it was due to internal power struggles within the Soviet Union, with those supporting the project being ousted, and so on. In reality, the most important reason was simple: if the leader could eliminate American aircraft carrier formations by pressing a button in the office, what was the point of the Soviet navy?

Obviously, the navy wouldn't need to develop and could simply become a coast guard!

Therefore, the navy was the most unwelcome to this type of missile. The navy also wanted to create a massive fleet like the Americans! A weapon that could solve everything once and for all would replace the navy!

Of course, these were things of the future. Now, although the Soviet anti-ship ballistic missile project had been canceled, it was still a secret project, and ordinary people couldn't know about it. Qin Yang couldn't talk about the Soviet project and could only talk about his own.

"Currently, we already have suitable solid-fueled ballistic missiles, and we can completely replace them with a brand-new warhead and improve the trajectory to gain the ability to strike moving targets at sea."

Some things need to be kept secret, and some things need to be brought out to intimidate people. Ballistic missiles are like that.

During the National Day in 1982, the East announced to the world that it would launch a carrier rocket into a certain sea area. It was said that the launch failed on October 7th, but a few days later, on October 12th, the launch experiment was a complete success. This was a declaration to the world that the East had a second-strike nuclear capability.

If a nuclear war breaks out, the warring parties will definitely destroy the enemy's nuclear missile launchers in the first instance. Therefore, after the enemy's first round of nuclear strikes, having sufficient nuclear weapons to launch a counterattack is a must. This is the second-strike nuclear capability.

Fixed silos are not feasible; only mobile ones are. These can be mobile launchers on land or submarines underwater. Submarines come and go without a trace and are the best choice. Therefore, only by possessing the ability to launch carrier rockets underwater can one be considered to have a second-strike nuclear capability.

Prior to this, from Dongfeng-1 to Dongfeng-5, all used liquid-fueled missiles, which undoubtedly led to a very slow reaction speed during launch. At sea, it was impossible to do this kind of work at all. Therefore, nuclear submarines underwater are best suited for solid-fueled ballistic missiles.

This is the famous Julang-1. After the successful development of this missile, everyone thought it was good and wanted to transfer it to land. After all, there were only a few submarines, but there could be many launchers on land. Thus, the Julang landing project began. The product of this project was the famous Dongfeng-21 ballistic missile, and from then on, the East's ballistic missiles entered the solid-fueled era.

There are many versions of the Dongfeng-21, and the one codenamed Dongfeng-21D is an anti-ship ballistic missile, specifically designed to strike aircraft carriers! Now, Qin Yang is idle anyway, so he might as well tell Old Liu about this idea.

Old Liu was very excited. Over the years, the navy has been very weak. When facing a strong enemy, the navy's warships cannot go out, otherwise, it would be a one-way trip. If there could be a powerful weapon that constantly threatened the enemy's fleet, preventing them from approaching, that would be great!

However, he also knew that striking moving targets at sea was not easy. After all, ballistic missiles strike fixed targets, and the target is determined at the time of launch. To strike moving targets means that the ballistic missile needs to change direction during flight!

"General Qin, can you explain in detail?"

"First of all, we must have the ability to detect enemy aircraft carriers, which requires dedicated maritime reconnaissance satellites."

Qin Yang said, "This is also why I say that aerospace determines victory or defeat. If we cannot detect the enemy's aircraft carrier, then everything is in vain."

The first step in an attack is detection. The Argentinians have the most to say about this. Their maritime patrol planes flew around the sea every day, trying to find the British Invincible fleet, but they just couldn't find it.

Aircraft carrier formations are large, but the ocean is even larger!