Apocalypse: My Items Can Upgrade Infinitely

At Lin Feng’s call, Ling Yi quickly walked over.

When she saw the footage playing on his phone and the battle-scarred Tanks nearby, she frowned slightly and explained in a low voice,

"This is a variant attack method of the Tier Two Wind-winged Zergs. They’re roughly equivalent to human attack aircraft—support-type fighter-bombers."

"Because they carry a large number of Suicide Bugs on their abdomens, their flight speed isn’t actually that fast, slowing to around Mach one—just over three hundred meters per second."

"But after this modification, these ’egg-carrying’ Wind-winged Zergs pose a massive threat to ground troops!"

"Each Tier Two Wind-winged Zerg can carry a payload of over a ton, while a Suicide Bug, which doesn’t even qualify as a Tier One Zerg Race member, weighs only five kilograms..."

"That means a single Tier Two Wind-winged Zerg can carry two hundred Suicide Bugs, with a bombardment area large enough to cover twenty thousand square meters—the size of three entire soccer fields."

"Furthermore, because the Suicide Bugs have such a low Level, their incubation and production speed is extremely fast. To put it simply, they’re just biological stomach sacs, similar to the liquid hydrogen sacs inside a Red-Armored Beetle. Their only raw material is water, which undergoes electrolysis. This gives their explosions an extremely high thermal energy value. Combined with the hard, thick armor on their surface, they can create widespread shrapnel damage."

At this, Ling Yi offered a suggestion:

"Although the Suicide Bugs are powerful, their volatile nature also makes them exceptionally fragile after being dropped by the Wind-winged Zerg. The slightest impact will instantly detonate the hydrogen-oxygen mixture inside."

"Therefore, the Heavy Machine Guns on the Tanks, as well as the shrapnel from other nearby explosions, can detonate them in mid-air."

"However, doing this requires an even higher density of firepower. Tanks that are over a decade old will have a hard time dealing with continuous bombardment from a squadron of Tier Two Wind-winged Zergs."

"The Suicide Bugs are too small, and some have even grown tail fins to control their descent. It’s inevitable that some will slip through the net."

"When thousands of Suicide Bugs are diving in from all directions, it’s incredibly difficult to intercept them without an overwhelming amount of firepower."

After hearing Ling Yi’s explanation, the group exchanged glances and fell into deep thought.

Lin Feng took a deep breath.

"Ling Yi is right. The quickest solution is to increase our firepower density. We need to weave a web of fire in the sky and do our best to keep them from getting close."

"That’s why wars are won with logistics. We need to build more Tanks! We’ll use the Tanks as firebases to lock down the entire airspace!"

He then turned to Li Ran, who was standing nearby.

"Can the fortifications on the second line of defense withstand the Suicide Bugs?"

Li Ran thought for a moment, then shook his head.

"It’ll be difficult. When we built them, we never considered that the Zerg Race would have bombing capabilities, so the firing ports are all parallel to the ground."

"The reinforced concrete on the roof is only about a meter thick. Based on the data Ling Yi just gave us, a Suicide Bug’s explosive force is comparable to an anti-tank shell. It’s not as terrifying as an anti-tank mine, but if it hits with enough velocity, the blast can still penetrate a fifty-centimeter-thick concrete wall."

"So if the same spot gets hit by two Suicide Bugs in a row, they’ll definitely punch through the roof."

"But that’s not even the worst part..."

Then another possibility occurred to Li Ran.

"If a Suicide Bug is hit by machine gun or Cannon fire from our defenders while it’s in front of the defense line, the mid-air explosion will send high-speed shrapnel and a shockwave straight through the firing ports, causing massive casualties!"

"Actually, from what I’ve just seen, much of the damage to the Tanks in the column was caused by the same thing: Suicide Bugs being hit by bullets at close range, exploding in mid-air, and showering the weaker top armor with shrapnel."

Ling Yi nodded. There was no simple counter to air superiority.

The Zerg Race hadn’t used this tactic extensively when invading other worlds. The Alien Races on those planets either lived in the oceans or, like the Red Race, had already bored out most of their red world, their entire civilization living Underground.

Now, however, it seemed this tactic was most effective against a surface-dwelling species like humanity.

The prerequisite, however, was that the enemy’s air power had to be suppressed first. The Zerg Race needed to seize air superiority.

In truth, as a surface-dwelling civilization possessing a rare and bountiful world like Blue Star, humanity should have vigorously developed its aerospace technology.

But because their civilization had not yet unified, was rife with internal conflict and attrition, and had existed for a relatively short time, their aerospace power was incredibly weak.

Before the Zerg Race invasion, only a handful of major powers across the entire globe had the ability to manufacture their own fighter jets, and the total number of combat-ready aircraft was just over twenty thousand.

That might sound like a lot, but don’t forget, there were over a thousand Zerg Race Mother Empresses alone. The combined number of Cyan-winged Zergs and Wind-winged Zergs easily exceeded one hundred thousand.

Therefore, even though aerospace power was supposedly a long-standing weakness for the Zerg Race, they could still overwhelm Blue Star’s humanity.

It was only because the Federation, the world’s foremost superpower, possessed nearly five thousand fighter jets that the coastal Mother Empresses hadn’t dared to mobilize large-scale aerial bombardments at the outset of the war.

But now...

While ground-based air defenses could still handle the raids from the Cyan-winged Zergs, there was only one way to deal with the high-altitude strikes from the Wind-winged Zergs:

They had to be killed from the sky. It required sending out aerial units that could match their speed, approaching Mach two or three.

However, Blue Star’s satellites were now mostly disabled, and its ground-based radar was hampered by electromagnetic interference, making it impossible for surface-to-air hypersonic missiles to track and lock onto targets.

Furthermore, the Wind-winged Zergs possessed the same high maneuverability as the Cyan-winged Zergs. They could halt their flight instantly, hover, and execute 180-degree turns. In terms of flight performance, they far surpassed any large fighter aircraft ever developed by humanity.