At around 10:20, the fleet's air defense operations began.

The first thing I arrived was the first batch of enemy planes that I discovered from the northwest direction.

"Finger-6C" did detect bombers, but the one flying in front was actually an escort fighter jet, but the distance forward was not very far, less than 100 kilometers. Because the reflected radar signal was not obvious enough, "Finger-6C" failed to detect those fighters as soon as possible.

Fortunately, after detecting the bomber, the "Fing-6C" took the initiative to retreat to the southeast, where the aircraft carrier was located.

In fact, this is a typical defensive tactic.

Although no escort fighter was detected, the captain of the early warning aircraft could definitely think that somewhere in the northwest, there must be an enemy escort fighter.

The key is that this "Finger-6C" has flew to the farthest end of the patrol area.

That's why the four "War-9Bs" sent by the fleet arrived after 15 minutes of flight, that is, at about 10:15.

The "Finger-6C" with the call codename "Taotai 01" had turned to evacuation before 4 o'clock.

It can be seen that it is this seemingly ordinary tactical maneuver that saved "Tower 01".

At about 4:00 pm, the "Tower 001" detected the fighter jet that began to accelerate, and the distance between the two sides had been shortened to 250 kilometers. If the "Tower 01" did not turn away 10 minutes ago, the distance would be shortened to 150 kilometers.

Because "Battle-9B" will arrive in 5 minutes, "Tower 01" will definitely be attacked before this without turning.

Given the situation at that time, the four "War-9Bs" that arrived were unable to intercept the enemy planes rushing towards the early warning planes in time.

At 4:15, the "Battle-9B" group arrived.

At this time, "Tower 01" had accurately detected that there were at least 8 enemy aircraft invading, and they were divided into two groups according to their height. The four aircraft flew at medium and high altitudes of about 8,000 meters, and the four aircraft were lagging at a height of 13,000 meters, maintaining a height difference of 5,000 meters.

Obviously, this is a very typical forward escort tactic.

The key is that they are all "Storm" AVD fighters from the Taurus Empire.

Although according to the claim of the Troman Empire, the "Storm" AVD is a fourth-generation fighter and a heavy air combat fighter with advanced performance, strictly speaking, it can be considered a second-generation and a half at most. There have been many different opinions on how it is, or it is worth discussing.

The key is a pneumatic layout.

Among all the fourth-generation jet fighters, only three use variable sweep wings, and the two except "Storm" are carrier-based fighters. The Imperial Navy's "War-9" and the Newland Navy's F-14. The main purpose of carrier-based fighters using variable sweep wings is to obtain excellent low-altitude and low-speed performance while ensuring high-altitude and high-speed performance, especially the handling of the landing stage.

It can be seen that when choosing the airfoil, the "War-9" and the F-14 have to compromise with reality.

To be said, "Storm" chooses variable swept wings, which is also a compromise with reality, and the root cause is the same, the engine's thrust is not large enough.

As long as the thrust-weight ratio is improved, other wings, such as trapezoidal wings, can also achieve low-altitude high-speed performance. For example, the Imperial Navy's "War-12" relies on an air combat thrust-weight ratio of more than 1.1, and the trapezoidal wings still have the fastest high-altitude flight speed of Mach 2.0, and the acceleration ability is not too bad. The handling of low-altitude and low-speed also meets the requirements of the Navy.

Of course, it is understandable to make compromises on carrier-based fighters.

Because the descent speed during landing is relatively fast and it is exposed to harsh environments of high humidity and high salt for a long time, the structural strength of carrier-based aircraft must be greater than that of the Air Force fighter jets of the same type, and the structural quality must be greater, resulting in the thrust-to-weight ratio of carrier-based fighter jets is often not as good as that of Air Force fighter jets.

In this way, carrier-based fighter jets need to work hard on their aerodynamic appearance.

But the problem is that "Storm" is not a naval carrier-based fighter, but a heavy air-control fighter invested and developed by the Air Force from the very beginning.

It can be seen from this that the aircraft engines of the Taman Empire are not ordinary.

Because the engine's thrust is insufficient, during the design stage, engineers from the Western Land Group had to choose to adopt variable swept wings that were widely adopted in the third-generation fighter jets, and which have been abandoned on the fourth-generation fighter jets, which have outstanding advantages and defects.

The widespread adoption of variable swept wings by the third-generation fighter jets is still because the engine is not good enough.

Whether it is the "Ocamp-8" of the Liangxia Empire, the F-111 of the Newland Republic, the "lightning" of the Goman Empire, and the MG-23 and MG-27 of Xiluosha are all due to insufficient engine thrust and have to meet the "Double 2" performance indicators, so they use variable swept wings in unison.

To be said, the Liangxia Empire and the Republic of Newland abandoning variable swept wings were not only due to the serious structure, but also had a lot to do with the maintenance troubles.

For fighter jets that pursue extreme performance, these are two difficult flaws.

In fact, after the design of "Storm" was completed, the Tsuma Air Force was not very satisfied, so it did not use it as an air-control fighter.

In the Tsuman Air Force, the "Storm" AVD is more like an interceptor.

Of course, Xiluo Group does need high-performance interceptors.

The reason is very simple. The Liangxia Empire had thousands of strategic bombers, and it was able to build bombers at a speed of tens of thousands every year during the war.

For a long time, the top priority of the Tzoman Air Force has been to intercept strategic bombers.

For this reason, the Tauman Empire specially formed a land defense air force after the war, but because its organization was too complicated, it was incorporated into the Air Force more than 20 years ago.

In the Torman Air Force, intercepting air force is a separate army.

However, the "Storm" is not only AVD type.

A huge benefit of variable swept wings is that they can provide a high lift-resistance ratio equivalent to a straight wing, and obtain more prominent low-altitude stability by increasing the wing load.

This feature is particularly suitable for heavy attack aircraft that mainly focus on low-altitude penetration.

In addition, bombers such as "H-10A" and B-1B that require supersonic penetration at low altitudes and require high range also use variable sweep wings.

The Imperial Air Force's "Occasion-8" is a typical heavy attack aircraft with low-altitude penetration as its main attack method.

Although the F-111 of the Newland Air Force is called a heavy fighter, it is indeed designed according to the fighter jet. However, after formally put into service, it also became a real fighter bomber with its excellent low-altitude flight stability brought by the variable swept wing.

That's why "Storm" also has its own special attack aircraft model, namely IDS.

The "Storm" IDS and AVD use the same body, but it greatly simplifies electronic equipment, including canceling fire control radars that are not available for attack aircraft, and replacing them with a slightly smaller thrust, but with higher reliability and lower fuel consumption.

To be said, the "Storm" IDS is an excellent heavy attack aircraft.

Because the development time was later and a large number of more advanced electronic equipment was used, compared with the "Occurrence-8" and the F-111, the "Storm" IDS was more advanced and had more outstanding performance in some aspects. It can be regarded as the most advanced heavy attack aircraft or multi-purpose fighter today.

However, the Thaoman Air Force is obviously not satisfied with the performance of the "Storm" AVD.

According to the information provided by the Military Intelligence Bureau, as early as a few years ago, the Thuman Air Force had instructed companies that produced "Furious Wind" to use advanced engines that are still under development to improve the performance of "Furious Wind". In the event of tactical indicators, imported engines can be considered.

However, this so-called "advanced storm" has not yet been seen.

The problem still lies in the engine.

Because the new engine developed by the Thuman Empire has not met the mass production standards, the Thuman Air Force was considering introducing engines a few years ago.

Only two third-generation high-thrust turbofan engines from the Republic of Newland are available, namely the F-100 and F-110 used on the F-15 and F-16.

Unfortunately, these two advanced engines are not enough for the Newland Air Force and Naval Air Force, so how can they be provided to the Western Continental Group?

It is precisely because of this that the "Advanced Wind" project always only hears the sound of stairs and does not see anyone coming down.

However, the Tsuman Air Force did not give up, or it was expected that it would be very difficult to introduce advanced engines, so it prepared an alternative solution in advance.

Four years ago, Dassault, a twin-engine heavy fighter developed by the "Phantom 2000" fighter, achieved its first flight through simple amplification processing, and its main performance indicators exceeded that of the "Storm" AVD.

If you want to say it, this kind of deck-wing aircraft is a fighter.

Although in some aspects, the "Phantom 4000" has obvious flaws, such as the air combat thrust-weight ratio is only 1.0, and when relying entirely on internal oil, the combat radius is only a pitiful 600 kilometers. Even if three large secondary fuel tanks are hung, it is only 1,200 kilometers, but compared with the "Storm" AVD, it has very outstanding advantages, such as being more agile and faster climbing speed.

The problem of short combat radius is not a big problem for the Western Land Group.

The reason is also very simple. The Western Land Group does not need to arrange fighter jets to escort bombers. The main mission of heavy fighters is to seize air supremacy and control the battlefield. It is a typical tactical task and does not require too high a combat radius of fighter jets.

Most of the time, short-legged fighters like the MG-29 are enough, let alone the "Phantom 4000".

The result is that after more than two years of choice, to be precise, completely giving up on the "Advanced Furious Wind", the Thuman Air Force made the final decision at the beginning of last year to use the "Phantom 4000" to supplement the gap in the "Sheng Wind" AVD through joint production.

To be precise, it is actually equipped with 40 fighter squadrons.

Because the performance of the "Storm" ADV did not meet the tactical indicators proposed by the Thaman Air Force and the procurement volume did not increase, there were 40 squadrons not redesigned. The purchase of "Phantom 4000" was to replace the 40 squadrons and let the main squadrons use new fighter jets.

Of course, after the beginning of the Torai Empire, other member states of the Western Continental Group will follow.

According to the information provided by the Military Intelligence Bureau, the Kingdom of Raleigh and the Kingdom of Sban said that they would purchase the "Phantom 4000" to improve the combat capabilities of the Air Force. Because the Kingdom of Bran prefers to use "Storm Wind" with production licenses, or directly purchase advanced fighter jets from the Republic of Newland, while Xiluosha prefers the MG series fighter jets they produce, so they can be accepted by the other two major member states. The "Phantom 4000" is likely to become the main fighter jet of the Western Continental Group and will be used until the fifth-generation fighter jets are put into service.

Interestingly, Rock Air Force did not purchase the "Phantom 4000".

Although the reason given by the Rock Air Force is that it has purchased hundreds of "Phantom 2000s" and the performance of the "Phantom 2000" is not bad, and there is no need to purchase heavy fighter jets to expand the scale of the aircraft group for the time being, in essence, the Rock Air Force does not want to pay for such fighter jets.

To put it bluntly, the "Phantom 4000" has become a fighter of the Tyrannosaurus Empire.

The Thuman Empire not only owns all the intellectual property rights of the "Phantom 4000", but also establishes a production line and even exports it to other countries.

In order to decouple from Rock State, after formal equipment, it will be named the "Tornado" fighter.

In addition, the price of "Phantom 4000" is about 60% more expensive than "Phantom 2000", and the combat power is improved by less than 20%.

Because of some defects and the use of triangular wings, the "Phantom 4000" is still not an excellent fighter.

The problem is that the engine is not good enough.

The fighters designed by Locke Dassault are almost all delta wings. The key is that the lift-drag ratio of the delta wing in the supersonic stage is the best, so that it can achieve faster speeds with smaller thrust. The "Phantom" series of fighters have always been famous for their agility, but their vertical maneuverability is very poor.

Obviously, simple amplification and installing an extra engine will definitely not solve the problem of insufficient power.

Otherwise, the Rock Air Force would not insist on using light fighters and had not considered purchasing and equipping heavy fighters for decades.

The key is that the first batch of "Phantom 4000" ordered by the Tiaman Air Force is still in production and has not been delivered, let alone serving and forming combat effectiveness.

This time, the "Storm" ADV is still here.

To be said, this is also the first fight between two variable sweep wing heavy fighters.

However, it was also a battle with no fairness at all.

The first thing that was fighting was the fighter jets at medium and high altitudes, that is, 8,000 meters, 2 "War-9B" and 4 "Storm" AVDs.

Strictly speaking, it is actually a surprise attack and cannot be considered a war.

When they gathered for 150 kilometers, two "War-9Bs" locked the target with fire control radar and then launched missiles.

At this time, the four "Storm" AVDs on the opposite side had not detected the "War-9B". The fire-controlled radar was only more than 100 kilometers to detect the fighter's effective detection range, and the "Sky Flash" missile it was equipped with had a head-on interception range of less than 30 kilometers.

Among all medium-range air-to-air missiles, "Sky Flash" has the shortest range.

Strictly speaking, this kind of missile does not have the ability to attack beyond the visual range.

The result was that the four "Storm" AVDs did not avoid it at all and were shot down by KK-9D.

It was not until this time that the four "Storm" AVDs at high altitude discovered the danger, but the two "War-9Bs" flying in front were still not detected.

While these four "Storm" AVDs were accelerating and diving, trying to attack the two "War-9Bs" in mid- and high altitudes, they were hit by the two "War-9Bs" in high altitudes.

Although two of the "Storm" AVDs got rid of the KK-9D that had reached its maximum power range through dive turn, the two fighters did not come back to fight and fled directly, and did not provide cover for the bombers following behind and flying to the east.

From beginning to end, none of the eight "Storm" AVDs found any enemy in battle, let alone fire and fight back.
Chapter completed!