Technology invades the modern world

Chapter 433 Your missiles are so accurate?
After the Freedom space station was put into service, the crew of the "Face to Face" program gathered at Johnson's private ranch in Texas.

This was all for the upcoming interview program.

In front of the camera, former President Lyndon Johnson sat in an old rocking chair, wearing a simple shirt that seemed out of place with the surrounding pastoral scenery.

His face showed a hint of anger.

Those eyes, which once commanded from the White House and exerted pressure on Washington bureaucrats, were now filled with dissatisfaction and disdain.

Nixon is shifting the blame onto me?
I also think that if GPS hadn't appeared so late, I might not have lost the presidential election!
He chose to give an exclusive interview to Walter Cronkite to defend himself.

To elaborate further, Lyndon Johnson's most important task after retirement was writing his memoir, "The Road to Power."

But that doesn't mean he doesn't have other jobs.

After his retirement, he gave numerous interviews, defending the decision to wage the Vietnam War, as well as his historical image and political career.

In the original timeline, Johnson was interviewed by Cronkite in 1970, in which he publicly and systematically defended his decision to handle the Vietnam War for the first time, explaining why he believed the war was necessary.

On the day of the Apollo moon landing in 1969, Cronkite spoke with Johnson by phone to ask for his opinion.

Johnson emphasized in the phone call that this was not a success for any one person or political party, but a victory for the people of America, a victory for humanity.

He also said that he had been a staunch supporter of the moon landing when he was a senator and vice president, and this has only increased since he became president, emphasizing that he felt his years of hard work and dedication had been worthwhile.

In short, the main point is to compete with Nixon for historical status.

This is even more true now.

These are clearly my achievements, yet you're shifting the blame to me and attributing all the success to yourself. Is that reasonable?

Lyndon Johnson's bitterness was palpable. If GPS had been developed sooner, if the space station had been launched sooner, if he had insisted on giving NASA more funding, would everything have been different?

He himself still held supreme power in the White House, while Nixon was still just a nobody on the sidelines.

Lyndon Johnson felt he hadn't given enough trust and support to the professors during his tenure.

I should have doubled the budget.

At the same time, the hatred towards Nixon was relentless, and the level of hatred towards Nixon rose sharply, second only to Fred.

“Mr. President,” Cronkite asked, “the Nixon administration has successfully stabilized public sentiment in the past few months by leveraging new space achievements.”

The successful application of the GPS system in the Vietnam War and the construction of the Freedom space station brought them immense prestige.

President Nixon attributed the difficulties of the Vietnam War to strategic mistakes made by the previous administration.

Cronkite paused, looking directly at Johnson: "He specifically implied that the Kennedy administration and you made an irreparable mistake on the Vietnam War."

What is your response to this?

Johnson leaned forward slightly. He didn't answer immediately, but instead picked up a glass of water and slowly took a sip.

He knew this was his chance to fight back, and he needed to organize his thoughts and his words.

Speaking of this, many people might think that being interviewed means you already know the answer to the question, and that you're just reading a prepared answer.

It's really not.

This is actually a performance, a performance rich in emotion.

For example, in Lao K's election, on Wang Qianqiu's "Thousands of Things" interview program, this was Lao Zhao's special event for Hao Baobao. He knew the questions perfectly well because he was holding a small notebook when he was interviewed.

But when faced with questions, Hao Baobao still has to take out her little notebook to answer. Just looking at it makes her look like a puppet. If you say you're not a puppet, no one will believe you.

“Walter,” Lyndon Johnson put down his water glass, speaking with a distinctively Texan accent, “I’ve heard those comments. They’re like flies from Washington, buzzing around but carrying no weight.”

He looked directly into the camera, as if speaking to President Nixon across time and space: "I want to say to all Americans that the Vietnam War was not my responsibility, nor was it Kennedy's responsibility."

This is the responsibility of history, and America's responsibility.

This is the inevitable result of our decades-long ideological struggle with our adversaries on a global scale.

His tone became more assertive: "When President Kennedy was assassinated, I inherited a mess that was riddled with problems."

I didn't start the Vietnam War, but it looms over me like a giant ghost.

What can I do? Can I give up? Can I let America's allies around the world think we are a weak and incompetent nation?

Johnson became agitated, pointing at the camera as if he were pointing at Nixon: "President Nixon can now use GPS to win, that's good."

But I want to ask him, where was this GPS when I was in the White House? Where was this GPS when our soldiers were lost in the jungle, risking their lives for a pitiful amount of intelligence?

He continued, "He can now talk about victory from his high position, but he forgets that everything he has is built on my efforts."

He forgot how much effort and resources I poured into the Apollo program and space exploration.

The glory he enjoys now is built upon the shade I planted back then.

Johnson angrily stated, "The professor was appointed NASA administrator during my tenure, and the GPS satellite system was built under my Star Wars program, which is why Congress gave NASA a large amount of additional funding."

Only then can we restart the development of nuclear-powered satellites and begin large-scale development of the GPS system.

He can blame me, he can blame Kennedy.

But he cannot blame history.

He cannot blame us for all the efforts we have made for this country.

Everything he has now is built upon my sacrifice.

After a pause, Lyndon Johnson said quietly, his voice carrying a prophetic power: "He can win this war, but he can never win history. History will remember who chose sacrifice and responsibility in this country's darkest hour."

Lyndon Johnson's accusations are not without merit.

Indeed, after he took office, he faced immense pressure from conservatives within the Democratic Party. Conservatives in the southern states generally opposed appointing an Asian-American official to lead such an important project as the space race.

Lyndon Johnson withstood the pressure, even orchestrating events to find relevant members of Congress to exert pressure privately, ensuring that Lin Ran could pass the pre-appointment hearings in Washington.

Even today, American media outlets consider this appointment to be Lyndon Johnson's second greatest achievement during his term, with his greatest achievement being the advancement of civil rights legislation.

Some media outlets believe that the Civil Rights Act should be attributed to Kennedy, and Johnson's greatest achievement was appointing the professor as NASA administrator, laying the foundation for winning the space race.

While Washington was in turmoil, changes were taking place on the front lines of the Vietnam War.

In summer, the rainy season arrives as scheduled in the Mekong Delta, with torrential rains turning the jungle soil into a vast expanse of water.

North Vietnamese guerrilla fighters huddled in underground tunnels, the air thick with the damp, musty smell and the pungent odor of diesel fuel.

This situation has been going on for six months.

Whether it was North Vietnam, the Soviet Union, or America herself, as reported in the newspapers, all indicated that America was advancing frantically using satellite navigation systems. B-52 strategic bombers no longer dropped bombs blindly, but instead surgically pinpointed supply points along the Ho Chi Minh Trail. Napalm bombs, guided by GPS, struck the tunnel entrances directly, turning the entire war zone into an inferno.

North Vietnam's air defense forces, which relied mainly on outdated Soviet-made SA-2 missiles, were already exhausted under such circumstances.

The hit rate is less than 20%.

The US pilots became increasingly brazen, with low-altitude helicopter formations using satellite signals to correct their course in real time, weaving through valleys and cutting off North Vietnam's retreat.

The advance at the front was as rapid as a tidal wave.

Recently, the entire Asau Valley position has lost three strongholds in just one week, and the command in Hanoi heard desperate cries for help on the radio: "They know where we are!"

Such treatment used to belong to the American army. The North Vietnamese "tree men" played a ghostly role, while the American soldiers wailed on the radio.

Now that North Vietnam has lost its geographical advantage, it has lost all its advantages and is now only at a disadvantage.

"Comrades," Engineer Li and his team from Yanjing brought the first batch of samples, a total of 20 gray missiles, each about 6 meters long and 0.4 meters in diameter, with a low-reflection coating that could disguise them as jungle clutter on radar.

He told Nguyen Van Thai, the battalion commander of the North Vietnamese air defense battalion, "This is the Dragon Shadow missile. It's different from the missiles of the past. It's designed to take down those eyes in the sky."

Engineer Li pointed to the unloaded wooden crates, which contained missiles.

The core of the missile is a new type of surface-to-air system that utilizes China's latest integrated circuit modules.

A palm-sized aluminum circuit board contains an embedded silicon-based MSI chip array, a pulse-Doppler radar processor, an infrared composite seeker, and an analog adaptive jammer.

Unlike the SA-2's radio command and guidance, the Dragon Shadow uses a semi-active mode.

After launch, the missile itself carries an antenna array and a thermistor sensor that can capture the target's thermal signal and S-band echo in real time with an error of less than 10 meters.

In response to America's logistical support system, Dragon Shadow also integrated a low-power jamming transmitter, which uses analog circuitry to generate pseudo-satellite signals to briefly disrupt the receiver.

China had anticipated that America's plane would eventually use the GPS system.

Their prediction was correct; by this time, America's plane had already been equipped with GPS navigation.

This module can cause GPS-guided aircraft to deviate from their course at critical moments.

Even in electronic warfare environments, it can dynamically switch frequencies through analog filtering networks on the circuit board to evade America's electronic interference.

While not as precise as future digital algorithms, the preset curve based on historical ballistic data allows for fine-tuning of the trajectory via servo motors during flight, making it ideal for precise low-altitude maneuvers.

(The U.S. military is using computers to direct the war, on the Annan front, 1968)
Nguyen Van Thai squinted as he examined the gifts.

His face was covered with scars from shrapnel, a survivor of the Dien Bien Phu battle.

The past six months have been particularly agonizing for them.

The frequent reports of losses at the front lines often kept him up at night, and America's satellite positioning turned the guerrilla warfare into a cat-and-mouse game.

"Comrade Li, can this thing shoot down those F-4 Ghosts with their 'Sky Eye' technology? They're advancing too fast; our supply lines are about to be cut off."

Engineer Li smiled and took the training simulator out of the box.

A bulky oscilloscope device, connected to a vacuum tube amplifier and a mechanical turntable, about the size of a small radio, with a 5-inch diode display screen, requiring external battery power.

"It's simple. You'll be able to get started in two weeks of training."

The circuit has a built-in feedback loop that records the analog data from the last transmission.

We will regularly come to collect the US military's flight data and trajectories, and optimize your missiles in Yanjing to improve their prediction accuracy.

For the next two weeks, the valley echoed with a low hum and the high-frequency howling of oscilloscopes.

North Vietnamese soldiers were divided into small groups and took turns operating the Dragon Shadow launcher, a mobile platform modified from a GAZ-66 truck. The roof of the vehicle was disguised as a haystack, and a simple control console was installed inside: the instrument panel was covered with pin switches, an analog voltmeter, and a small CRT display for real-time display of radar echoes and jamming signal strength.

Training starts from the basics: Engineer Li explained the design principles of missiles using a blackboard, and although most of Nguyen Van Thai's soldiers were illiterate, he simplified it with metaphors.

The reason for explaining the principles is that this is the style of training soldiers in China, and it also aims to motivate them to be sufficiently proactive when collecting data.

On September 15th, the first real-world test took place.

The location is A Sao Valley in Quang Nam Province, where the US 1st Cavalry Division's airmobile force is carrying out Operation Lancaster II: twenty AH-1 Cobra attack helicopters escort CH-47 Chinook transport planes to airdrop supplies, with the objective of completely cutting off the Ho Chi Minh Trail.

Thanks to GPS's meter-level positioning, these helicopters fly at low altitudes close to the ground, avoiding mountain ridges in real time, and their speed is 30% faster than before.

The sky was overcast, and raindrops pattered against the trees.

Nguyen Van Thai's camp was hidden on a hillside, under camouflage netting, where three Dragon Shadow launchers were poised to fire.

When the radar alarm sounded, the battalion's radio buzzed: "Enemy aircraft, bearing 270 degrees, altitude 500 meters, speed 180 knots, they're heading straight for our supply point!"

On the control panel, the CRT screen flickered with noise. The soldiers manually adjusted the gain knob, and the pulse Doppler circuit eliminated the noise, barely revealing the rotor heat signal of the US military helicopter.

"Ready to launch!" Nguyen Van Thai said.

locking.

With three seconds left in the countdown, the first dragon shadow tore through the rain curtain, its tail flashing like a shooting star in the clouds.

Instead of the SA-2's cumbersome arc, it hurtled straight at the target at Mach 1.5. The circuit board's analog filter corrected the deviation, avoiding a dazzling decoy flare launched from an F-4. Although there was a slight tremor, the servo system stabilized the trajectory.

At the same time, the jamming signal took effect: the GPS coordinates on the instrument panel of the US pilot suddenly jumped, showing that the airspace was ten kilometers away from Ashau Valley.

"Damn it, navigation malfunction! Pull it up!" came a panicked voice over the radio.

The explosion occurred next to the Cobra's fuel tank; the fireball engulfed the rotor blades, and debris rained down.

A second missile followed immediately, locking onto a Chinook that was attempting to pull up.

The 20 missiles threw the US formation into chaos, causing three Cobras to crash and two Chinooks to make a forced landing with serious damage.

Without the accuracy of GPS, they lost their way in the rain and fog, and their progress came to an abrupt halt.

Although it required soldiers to monitor the CRT in real time, it worked, and the balance of air superiority quietly shifted.

The battle lasted only seven minutes before the air force retreated in panic, and the supply airdrops were lost.

"Are the Chinese missiles that accurate?" Nguyen Van Thai thought to himself.

　Please feel free to point out any technical issues. This is based on "Computers, Electronic Data".

　　The technical content was written based on the paper "and the Vietnam War".

　　Beginning in 1968, America's Pentagon deployed a large cluster of computers in Saigon to command the war effort on the front lines.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)