What the hell is a private enterprise?

Chapter 475 Avengers

"No matter how strong an army is, it cannot ignore the difficulties that come with marching."

Brigadier General Michael Hunter glanced at the compass on his watch, then surveyed the dense, almost overwhelming forests surrounding him.

Ryan's squad did some work. For example, the valley where he and his thousands of troops are now will not be flooded by heavy rain in the near future, so it's not a big problem to hide there for a day or two.

The trees, nurtured by the tropical climate, provided ample cover, and Itamar was completely unaware that the Imperial army had completed its transfer right under his nose.

To ensure sufficient concealment, the convoy was being tracked by several RQ2 "Pioneer" drones. These aircraft, which entered service in 85, were small and rudimentary, far inferior to the MQ-1 "Predator," but had already proven their important role in the past.

This feint was initially for safety reasons. Traveling by water in unfamiliar territory is extremely dangerous, so it was necessary to conduct a test first.

Since the Naval Intelligence Bureau was said to be able to pass on misleading intelligence to the Second Fleet, they quickly reached an agreement and jointly formulated a plan.

Hunter believed he was sure he could catch something. Even if the Second Fleet doubted the source of the information, who could resist launching a surprise attack on a ground force that was struggling to fight back while on the move?

His thoughts were suddenly interrupted by discomfort in his stomach. Realizing something was wrong, he went straight to the makeshift medical tent and found the army doctor.

"Damn it, I feel like I ate something unclean. Give me some loperamide and electrolyte."

The military doctor examined his tongue and pupils, and while turning over the medicine, he said:

"It's not a food problem. It's because the weather is too hot and humid, and after a long voyage at sea, our internal organs need time to adapt, so everyone is experiencing a bit of diarrhea."

Just then, a soldier was helped in; he appeared to be somewhat delirious.

The companion who was helping him hurriedly saluted the brigadier general, then quickly grabbed the doctor:

"Quick, Billy seems to have been cut by some grass, and then he developed a high fever!"

……

Throughout history, marching has always been the most vulnerable and dangerous time.

As Tang Wen spoke, he attached a magnetic nail to the map and examined the enormous wall-mounted map with his hands behind his back.

Driven by practical needs, a massive amount of information needed to be collected and analyzed. Even if he didn't want to, he unintentionally learned a lot of military knowledge and is now considered a half-baked commander. Seventy or eighty years ago, he might have been at the level of a new military commander.

He wasn't surprised when he learned that William had chosen water transport—they had no other choice.

Looking at the map alone, it's easy to think that Pakistan will build a highway along the Amazon River, but that's wishful thinking; the two locations simply cannot be connected by land.

If he absolutely had to take a huge detour of nearly 3,000 kilometers, and the road conditions were extremely bad—he had recently watched a lot of news footage of Nanmei on satellite TV, and the roads after the major floods were difficult for even people to travel on, let alone heavy vehicles.

If they don't go by water, it would be impossible for William to manage to acquire dozens of CH54K King Stallion aircraft and risk being shot down to pull off a miracle.

If it were the real Hans, in order to achieve results without being exposed and to fulfill his purpose of luring the enemy, the only answer would obviously be... a night raid.

There are now three air defense towers in the rainforest, the closest of which, tower number 2, is about 900 kilometers away. At night, the fleet will have traveled at least several hundred kilometers.

Tang Wen drew a fan-shaped area on the map with a radius of 700 kilometers.

With the plan in place, the next step was reconnaissance.

The three Q97 drones, equipped with retro-style electro-optical pods, have become fully operational, and their radar detection resistance is... decent.

While the aerodynamic layout, modeled after the Predator, doesn't conventionally emphasize stealth, its small size, coupled with the use of a significant amount of wood by Tang Wen, makes it less conspicuous to radar as a low-flying target. Its stealth performance might even rival that of the Su-57. However, Tang Wen then made a few minor modifications:
A rack was added to the back of the drone, and a T6 six-axis large drone with a small 40-liter fuel tank was placed horizontally.

This way, there's no need to risk losing the pod when conducting close-range reconnaissance, making the T6 drone much more stealthy. However, due to wind resistance and weight limitations, it can only use a small 40-liter fuel tank, giving it a maximum flight time of only 2.5 hours.

As he gave the order, the 500mm thick blast door at the entrance of the air raid tower in Pará state opened, and two Q-97s were easily ejected and slowly flew towards the Amazon River.

As the sun gradually set over the Amazon rainforest, the infrared sensors of drones thousands of meters in the air reacted.

Tang Wen switched his view to the monitor mounted on the belly of the drone and quickly spotted a fleet of ships traveling upstream along the river. There were dozens of ships, and by zooming in with a telephoto lens, he could see that a lot of equipment was placed on the decks, most likely for air defense purposes.

Upon spotting the convoy, the Q-97 UAV immediately returned to base, then separated from its T6 UAV on its back, allowing the latter to approach and observe more closely.

After monitoring the convoy for a while with the T6, Tang Wen tried to get the Q-97 drone to climb higher away from the river in an attempt to lure the escorting helicopters or fighter jets.

A piercing warning sounded.

Our aircraft has been spotted!

This is right.

Although it was unknown which direction the aircraft came from or what kind of aircraft it was, the Q-97 UAV immediately swooped down to the height of the treetops and successfully evaded radar by flying at extremely low altitude.

Should we lure them into making a move?

The ship girl saw Tang Wen retrieving the drone and guessed what he was doing. The latter nodded.

"That's right, I'm not sure if it was ground radar or a fighter jet that just locked onto the aircraft. Let's try it and see."

He actually suspected that there should be a sizable Imperial Air Force stationed in Suriname or Guyana, but at this time it was too difficult to obtain information, unlike in later years when you could open a certain website, switch to the local IP address, and maybe find photos taken by the local garrison themselves.

Eight gnats were launched from anti-aircraft tower No. 2 in two batches, and then formed a formation to fly close to the treetops and attack the convoy.

……

Meanwhile, in the airspace bordering Sullinan and Appalama, an E-3 Sentry AWACS aircraft was frantically relaying information:
Unidentified flying object spotted!

A slow-moving object just appeared at an altitude of about 2000 meters. It was not even much faster than a race car, but it was definitely not one of our own or our allies' aircraft!

With the sun about to set, the 10 F-15s stationed at Guyana Airport, which had been on standby for a long time, immediately began taxiing and then hovered in place for a while after takeoff.

The distance from the airport to the fleet is only 500 kilometers, which the F-15 can cover with just an afterburner, so there is no need to worry about untimely support.

Meanwhile, the E-3 early warning aircraft also increased its vigilance, cautiously crossing the border, with its mechanical scanning radar on its back constantly refreshing its downward field of view, trying to find low-altitude penetrating fighters from the complex echoes.

……

"All alert!"

In the turbulent Amazon River, Hunter's warning put the soldiers on the line into combat readiness.

Although it was a decoy, the ship still had very strong low-altitude air defense measures:
The Avenger System – which is essentially a Humvee armored vehicle equipped with a Stinger, the kind of Stinger that personnel can shoulder-mount.

Most soldiers also carried several portable Stinger launchers, which would be very useful against fighter jets that launch surprise attacks.

(End of this chapter)