You promised to build cars, so why did you go into the military industry?

Chapter 83 Attack and Defense Drills

The soldiers detected the drone's control signals almost simultaneously.

Twenty scout birds took off simultaneously from the soldiers' hands.

The hum of the propellers echoed over the training field.

Under the soldiers' control, they dispersed in the air at different altitudes and along different routes.

The images transmitted from the cameras are stitched together in real time by the Mesh network to form a complete overhead view, which is then overlaid on the battlefield model in the HUD.

After the soldiers spent more than an hour familiarizing themselves with the armor's performance, the testing officially began.

As the testing progressed, some unexpected problems emerged one by one.

The first round was an offensive and defensive drill in an open area during the day.

In the scope of the defending sniper, the light spots projected by the Cheetah helmet HUD were particularly glaring behind the dark building windows.

Snipers don't even need to see the target itself; they can pinpoint the approximate firing position just by the flickering light at the edge of the window.

The second round incorporated a competition using infrared thermal imaging.

The heat generated by the battery during continuous power supply is considerable, and the location of the eight slots on the back of the exoskeleton is particularly eye-catching in the infrared image.

The entire Cheetah was clearly marked under the thermal imager, making it impossible to hide.

But at the same time, another set of data also caught everyone's attention.

In an obstacle course test simulating town ruins, a warrior wearing a "cheetah" suit sprinted at full speed and vaulted over a 3.5-meter concrete wall.

As he approached the wall and prepared to climb over, the torsion springs in his legs had already released their stored energy, allowing him to jump almost horizontally. He gently gripped the edge of the wall with both hands, then exerted a little force, and in the next second, he was already on the other side of the wall.

After landing, it continued to sprint, and the speed did not change significantly to the naked eye.

The same obstacle requires multiple infantrymen to coordinate or go around, while a single Cheetah soldier can jump over it.

Therefore, the final conclusion is contradictory.

It has very poor concealment, but its mobility and protection are stronger than expected.

In open terrain or long-range combat scenarios, the cheetah is a large target.

But in close combat, the "Cheetah" becomes a human tank.

In order to obtain more realistic test data, a simulated urban warfare exercise was launched.

At the start of the battle, twenty Repulse Bird drones took off simultaneously, hovering at different altitudes over the exercise area.

The defending 100 soldiers were divided into several groups and scattered in various buildings. Their mission was to use the buildings for cover and fight a defensive battle.

But as soon as the scout bird took off, the defending commander realized almost instantly that something was wrong.

To avoid revealing their positions, some commanders issued orders to "destroy the scouts".

The result was obvious: the destruction of the four scouts exposed the defenders' positions.

Immediately after the first shot was fired, the exercise turned into a one-sided information war.

The "twenty cheetahs" split into four groups and attacked different buildings simultaneously, following the optimal paths marked on the HUD.

They don't need to search floor by floor and room by room; the battlefield model on the HUD has already clearly marked how many people are in each room.

The ceramic armor withstood almost all bullets fired from the front, and the shockwave-absorbing layer prevented the defenders' suppressive fire from causing any substantial casualties.

A "Cheetah" soldier was hit in the chest by three bullets in succession in the corridor. He looked down at the three gray-white bullet marks on the ceramic plate, then continued to charge forward. After rushing into the room, he raised his weapon in an attack stance. The director then announced that the soldier was killed.

Less than forty minutes after the exercise began, all one hundred soldiers on the defending side were judged to have been killed in action.

The one who survived the longest was the sniper lying on the sixth-floor rooftop.

But he didn't fire a single bullet from beginning to end.

From the very beginning, a scout bird flying high in the sky had already locked onto him from afar.

No matter how he moves his position, the Mesh network will calculate the optimal movement route in real time based on the positions of other "Cheetah" warriors in the building and the building structure.

This resulted in obstacles appearing in the trajectory of the bullet every time the sniper was about to aim and fire.

During the nearly forty-minute exercise, he couldn't find any opening to fire, and was finally blocked from behind by a "Cheetah" soldier who could climb the wall with his bare hands.

Three combat exercises were conducted in just three hours.

In the first two matches, the "Cheetah" squad achieved a score of 0 to 100, with the defending team failing to secure a single effective kill.

Before the start of the third exercise, more than half of the twenty "Cheetah" armors were without power due to the previous two high-intensity battles.

The exercise began, and a dozen or so soldiers wearing "Cheetah" armor lost all electronic assistance due to their batteries running out.

But the skeletal support is still there, the impact transmission is still there, and the torsion springs of the joints are still there.

They can still run, jump, and scale walls.

Without the support of information, the "Cheetah's" advance slowed down, and casualties began to occur.

But they still managed to overwhelm the defenders within fifty minutes.

The final casualty ratio was 5 to 100, with the defending team wiped out and the "Cheetah" squadron judged to have lost five men.

After watching the three drills in the director's room, Xing Yan didn't say a word, but stood up and paced back and forth.

Seemingly puzzled by something, he strode up to Zhou Rui and asked, "Why do I feel that the 'Cheetah' should be equipped with a man-portable rocket?"

Imagine, the drones come up and sweep the entire battlefield clean, marking the locations of all the enemies.

With this level of information advantage, we don't need to engage in hand-to-hand combat at all.

Why resort to hand-to-hand combat when a problem can be solved remotely?

He pointed to the Bird Reconnaissance drone that was charging: "This thing can fly directly to its target's face with TNT attached after scanning the battlefield."

Precision bombing, targeted destruction. It's simply a matter of bringing more aircraft.

"Drones are expensive. Wouldn't it be better to defeat the enemy with minimal cost?"

Zhou Rui looked at Xing Yan with some confusion, not understanding why he would propose such a costly combat mode.

Xing Yan suddenly turned around and stared into Zhou Rui's eyes: "No matter how expensive drones are, can they be more valuable than human lives? If we could overwhelm the enemy with money, we would have done it long ago."

Xing Yan's reaction made Zhou Rui suddenly realize that this was not the Europa Federation.

In the European Federation, a human life can be very expensive or very cheap. While the compensation for deaths in military operations seems high, the criteria for determining death are extremely stringent. In most cases, soldiers are classified as missing, meaning their families not only don't receive compensation but also face desertion penalties. The difference between people and supplies lies more in the accounting treatment.

But it's different here. Here, people are not consumables, nor can they be counted as consumables.

Zhou Rui walked up to Xing Yan and said, "You're right. We're going to the armory now. I need to find a batch of heavy firepower equipment that's compatible with the armor."

Led by Xing Yan, Zhou Rui crossed the training ground and entered the military region's armory.

The warehouse was large, with various individual weapons neatly arranged on iron racks on both sides, and the air was filled with the smell of gun oil and gunpowder.

Xing Yan walked straight to the heavy firepower zone, took a rocket launcher from the shelf, and handed it to Zhou Rui.

Zhou Rui took it, checked the size of the interface and handle, nodded, and put it in the shopping cart.

In less than 15 minutes, the shopping cart was already piled high with all sorts of selected equipment.

Rocket launchers, grenade launchers, several boxes of marking rounds and smoke grenades for the exercise, and some demolition simulation devices.

Xing Yan suddenly stopped as he passed a row of display shelves.

His gaze fell on the middle shelf.

"Electromagnetic Pulse Grenade, EMP."

Xing Yan took a grenade from the middle shelf and tossed it around: "Do you think that in a conventional battlefield, if the 'Cheetah' were to encounter an electromagnetic catapult, would it be completely rendered useless?"

>