Gundam Fire Still

"I guess he's out of fuel to slow down."

"Attention approaching MA, please advise your affiliation and purpose."

"Bzzz, thank God we've finally met a friendly." An unfamiliar voice came over the standard channel of the Joint Forces, "This is Frog Jump Test Squad belonging to FG02, mission completion retreat in progress, please advise the nearest available landing location, the navigation system is malfunctioning and there is no deceleration fuel either, we must make an emergency landing."

Frog Jump Test Squad wasn't a familiar name, but there was no doubt that it was likely to exist, after all, the subject of the conversation he was having before him was also a test squad, and it was entirely understandable that the sick and desperate Combined Forces facing a situation more dire than expected had many squads testing new tactics and weapons.

Mu didn't have time to reply, the MA had spewed its last bit of fuel, propelling its fuselage in the right direction.

The spot where it could be forced down had come into view of the unfortunate friendly. The test area had a slightly flattened moon surface right next to it for special situations. Three Type 0's spread out in all directions, MA's with bullet marks and fuel spill residue on their bodies passing through the middle, skewed to point at the flat area, and Carl saw the emblem on the tail of the MA in the wrong moment. A few minutes later, at the end of a long scrape on the moon's surface, the head of the MA, which had deflated, finally came to a stop. The test squad, half expressing greetings and half watching the parade, flew over the top of its warped tail painted with the frog machine emblem.

"What luck that it didn't explode, is it still alive?"

"Probably," the strange pilot's voice seemed pained

"What do you guys do?"

"No comment. Hell, you know the secrets."

Moonface Base, Intelligence Fusion (Grey House)

Dan. Fritz didn't think it was a good idea for the Combine to shrink to the moon's surface, but his intelligence and analysis department didn't have any hard evidence to convince the senior officer on the screen in front of him. His fledgling department still had a ways to go, whether it was getting the intelligence officers from all sides to hide less, or getting the technicians to speak in a language that could be understood by non-specialists who were already burning him out, plus the multifarious test plans.

It wasn't easy to spot a few ships or a few new aircraft under test accurately in any random location in the vast expanse of the universe - there was enough drift, wreckage, and scrap metal in space, plus neutron jamming, that even if ZAFT fired off a large number of unmanned probes, the Not much chance of finding the target, and even if they do find something it's more likely to be a pile of metal scraps, wreckage from battleships, abandoned satellites, rather than a lucky chance of running into a coalition testing it, and even if they do, how do they determine the coordinates and break through the neutron jamming to get the signal to the target? Passing it on to the nearest friendly army was still a difficult problem; and if you contracted to the lunar surface, any shadow that crossed over the white lunar dust was conspicuous enough, like a fly on white paper, or a swarm. The orbiting lunar exploration satellites of the A.D. era many years ago were able to take high-resolution pictures of the lunar surface, and now, with military technology advancing by the day, there was no reason for those Zaft to do otherwise.

"The Staff is inclined to believe that the Zaft's next target is on the lunar surface, and the information provided by your Intelligence Fusion confirms this, so we can't afford to keep those fragile, barely combat-capable squads around the orbit of the moon, and once the Zaft starts attacking, those test squads are going to hit the Zaft's guns. "

"But it won't be any safer near the moon's surface than in cosmic space, instead they can see exactly what we're doing."

"I know, but to be safe, they have to be pulled back, the base commander wants to make sure those teams suffer as little damage as possible, and all you have to do is make sure they see as little as possible." The staff officer on the screen was grim, "Also, the Atlantic Federation's former MS development research team that you found last time has been reconstituted, you have another task to put that development team in a safe place, and until then, keep them safe as well, both the team itself, and the information about the MS development we are planning to develop. "

"The reorganization is just as urgent as when it was disbanded a few years ago, ah, and the guys who thought MS was just some big toy back then are now having to turn to the same people who were hit back then." Dan remembered the look on the faces of those lab coats, and while the lab coats despised themselves as gray rats in the Intelligence Unity, they had something they cared about, and as his fellow officers searched through the database archives for clues about those MS over the years, a certain PhD came in uninvited, and he roared at the former CIA or MI guys in his office for a few minutes, almost spitting fire out of his eyes. Then the latter found out that the Combined Forces had had a development team for MS a few years ago, and that it was in the Atlantic Federation; with the finalization and mass production of Moebius, the team was disbanded, the research data sealed, and then forgotten until the Combined Forces were slapped in the face with the fact that those Moebius had been massacred by neutron interference. Dan reported this up, and soon a certain number of lab coats were crossed off the list of Dan's men, chanting things like "I told you so" as they left, and the officers who had been tasked with picking them up just didn't say a word.

"Here's the damn thing, Lockheed's or those guys in Congress at the time obviously made a mistake, let's hope we don't make up for it too late," the on-screen staff officer clearly didn't want to continue this conversation, "What happened to the last mentioned experiment regarding anti-satellite warfare? If we can knock out their satellites, we should be able to drop the chances of our intelligence being compromised by a few percentage points."

"Experiments are underway, combat with MA to knock out recon satellites and probes is considered feasible, and the frog jump team has been testing it in the field, but I must stress that even if it can be done successfully, we won't be able to do a 100% kill."

"I know, just try to do it." The faces on the screen disappeared and reverted to a black background.

Dan smiled bitterly, he didn't really have a lot of hope on the frog jump squad, he knew exactly how the message would be spread. All he was saying himself was that such a battle was feasible, but the success rate wasn't 100%, so the top would think it could be more than 50% or better, when in fact it was likely the opposite, that it was merely feasible, not easy, with a success rate of maybe 20% or worse.

Zaft's neutron jamming itself is helping in this regard, and while the hardest hit areas of neutron jamming are on Earth, the neutron jammers aboard their sailing ships are also strongly affecting the signals, and the Intelligence Convergence itself suspects that they've also placed neutron jammers near the moon to suppress communications to the JCS, plus the original lunar orbit to Plant has a Not close enough for those ZAFT reconnaissance satellites that are bound to exist in orbit around the moon to send data back to their lair. Either use an EMP with enough power to burn through neutron interference, but that would equally mean that the satellite would be as bright as a star in the night sky on that frequency band - or use the more ancient method of launching the data capsule in a specific direction. And then have people go and collect the data on a regular basis. Whichever method they use means those satellites aren't hard to find - but finding and destroying them is different again. With the moon's gravity field, the MAs and their pilots, originally designed for the low/no gravity environment of the universe, both need to adjust the way the flight control computers operate, plus to capture and hit a small target in such a high speed relative motion is as difficult as a jet fighter trying to hit a flying hawk in the atmosphere of old, and they face the same difficulties hitting a hawk can be Serious damage to one aircraft, and a Moebius hitting this tiny reconnaissance satellite would suffer a similar fate.

The two small caliber cannons fixed to the Möbius had a proud rate of fire, and while they couldn't penetrate the MS's main armor, it was easy enough to destroy the vulnerable reconnaissance satellite, though with that said, it was another matter to hit that small target within a firing window of a few seconds. Once you miss, you have to go back into low orbit, accelerate, and catch that firing window again, and statistically it takes a few jumps in a row to successfully destroy the target, so the test team's codename is Frog Jump.

------ Here's the nonsense ------.

P.S. 1: TJ is long, no excuses, repeat, no excuses

P.S. 2: On frog hopping, thanks to Big Frog and his backlash

P.S. 3: The Combined MS Development Team, whether this existed before the war started is questionable, one piece of evidence comes from the resume of someone named Messy Sakura Lena, and the speed at which the G came out might be a side effect of the fact that the Combined Army wasn't zero based.

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4. Frog jump (below)

The dome above Ptolemy's Crater slowly opened, then closed, and several massive ship silhouettes descended into the harbor area along with the tiny points of light that surrounded them.

Presumably because everyone was paying enough attention to the approaching enemy, or worse, enough fear, that the force shrank, or retreated, or turned in, more efficiently than the Intelligence Convergence had anticipated. Dan wasn't sure what was going on on the ground, and the CIA or MI didn't like the idea of a department that stayed in the universe and tried to pull information out of its own pockets, but one could imagine that the pre-war sentiment was there as well, especially after the tragic defeat of the Pacific Fleet.

"There's bad news and good news, guv'nor." The office door was flung open "You want to hear it first"

"Don't play that game, I'm bored out of my mind right now, in the order of events." Dan turned from the window, interrupting his men who tried to make a joke.

"The first live frog jump battle was completed, successfully knocking out two small reconnaissance satellites, but only one of the four MAs came back, still picked up with injuries by the other test team."

"Give the report of the specific battle to the Counter Reconnaissance Office, it seems the tactic is still viable, what happened to the lost MA's? Did you hit a satellite or some kind of drifting object?"

"One of them was rendered flightless by a satellite impact, the other two were lost due to... Running into a Zaft patrol." The lieutenant swallowed hard.

"What?" Dan knew full well he would have jumped if he had been a few years ago, even with his current emotional control as an old bird, he couldn't hide the look of surprise "That's a near moon orbit, Zaft has made it this close?"

"Yes, it's been confirmed from the MA's flight records, and it's estimated that their long-range patrol, if you extrapolate from the timing, just happened to come through the gap between two of our patrol escorts."

"Just in time? Hopefully this just happens. There should also be a possibility of an infiltration force dedicated to getting data from the satellites, but there's no way to distinguish between them carefully. So it looks like they're right, and pulling back the guys who test airframes, who test tactics, who test ship modifications is necessary for that." Dan held his forehead and squinted in the direction of the cosmic port, he was well aware that even if it was just a coincidence, it would be enough to tell him something "Can those guys really move that fast?"

Lunar surface combat and cosmic warfare cannot be equated, and while the moon's gravity is quite a bit lower than Earth's, it exists, which means that MA cannot directly use cosmic warfare programming to fight in the moon's gravity range, but must use some of the engine's thrust to overcome gravity, which of course is a correction already in the flight control computer that doesn't cause much of a problem. The trouble, however, was not with the airframe itself, but with the barrels that lacked programming, had limited fuel, and were all operated by the human brain.

The test teams that were able to join were pilots who were able to maneuver the line barrel cannon during the initial selection. The strength of the so-called spatial sensing ability may lack a hard numerical rule, but these pilots have at least in a week basically familiar with the control of those barrels, hitting fixed targets in the universe has been no problem, such efficiency in peacetime seems to be definitely a duck to catch the suspicion, now in wartime, no one will be too fast, in fact, just to hit a fixed target for the expectation of It wasn't enough for those who had seen the team's results: a portion of the Zaft's forces had begun to move towards the moon, and the original test space had become unsafe, with the testing and training being immediately moved to the moon's surface, which was still within the Combined Forces' area of influence and safer. The new task before the team was not only capturing and attacking moving targets, but also brought with it the small proviso of fighting in a gravity field. Since the last encounter with the battered friendly, every member of the team had felt Zaft's approaching footsteps from the universe.

The target slowly descended under the moon's gravity and periodically sprayed random fuel to change its trajectory, one line of fire passed above it, a second veered to the right, and the next was penetrated and exploded by a line of fire from below.

"Shooting from below? Sneaky little tricks."

"An effective way is a good way, gravity is facing down anyway, and shooting on the Z axis is the least disturbed by gravitational acceleration, just consider its own spray."

"It's a solution, but what about dealing with a moving target in maneuver?"

"Did you expect to destroy the enemy plane with this? It's enough to interfere with the target's movement with less precise shots, then go for a one-shot kill with the magnetic rail gun on the main body. Besides, Ginn's a lot bigger than that balloon."

"Okay, you two, that's enough of the tactical discussion, and now that all the targets have been shot down, the next challenge has officially begun." Carl watched as several of the released targets were shot down one by one, the squad was becoming more proficient with the line barrel gun operation, but it wasn't enough, the brass was already starting to throw some operational tasks at the squad that had just started testing less than two weeks ago, and it was clear that the Combine had to make the most of every bit of combat power. "Do you know why you need such a small target? Because our next target is something about the size of these targets.Zaft's reconnaissance satellites, hanging out in lunar orbit watching what we're doing for trouble. Keep up if you don't want Zaft to see how you're off target." Three jets of light flashed over the white moon dust.

It was unclear why this operation, code-named Frog Jump, had been given to his squad, but Lieutenant Vlada, the captain, had accepted it without question, and he could see at once that the purpose of the mission was definitely not a good idea to conduct an airframe test under the watchful eye of those gadgets. The Type 0 was also much more suitable for dealing with those gadgets in motion than the average MA, and those line cannons could do the attacking action themselves without the MA itself having to play frog jump in orbit.

He split his men up into teams, each team assigned orbital data from a confirmed signal emission source. Mu. There was no doubting the abilities of the squad members, none of those who could be picked for the test squad were mediocre, and although he was the commander of the squad in the command sequence, those colleagues weren't bad, and he was confident that this team could teach the enemy a lesson if they got into a fight.

The flashes from the live cannons lit up in space two, three times, and then the corner of the planar display was illuminated by a small explosion in the rear. He knew the small blast of light would light up in many places, and this was just the first step for the squad.

Carl watched a small bright burst of light at the end of the line of fire ahead and slapped the return signal on his comms.

"You're all well aware that the enemy is closing in, and this side mission is a satellite, so maybe it's not enough to engage the enemy, but next time, maybe we'll have MS set up in our quasar." Remember that's what Mu said during the mission briefing, and Carl was actually kind of looking forward to using Zero's omnidirectional attack capability against MS.

Beams of light coming from an empty direction, unavoidable lines of fire from all sides, MS torn limb from limb by tiny rays of light and writhing in agony in the void, funnel-shaped killers illuminated by lost light guns, friendly forces with nothing on their radar screens but turned into fireballs in a single instant, and perhaps a chill that was shrouded in murder, things that had once been his worst nightmare without being attacked by a floating cannon! The man would not understand. And now, already, there could be small things flying around him, and though now they were just a couple of crude canons, they were enough to cause enough trouble for the enemy.

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6. Lunar surface (II)

"We have to admit that the opposing MS's anti-satellite capability is no worse than ours." As the sole head of intelligence in the command room, Dan. Fritz pointed to several videos playing on repeat on the large screen, "The satellite that took this data hasn't sent back any data since, and for now it's impossible to tell if it was shot down or due to neutron interference. From these photos that are available, it looks like they're building the base incredibly efficiently."

"There's no doubt that the building modules were prepared long ago, and assembling them in place is a job that MS is up to the task."

"There's no point in marveling at the enemy's efficiency, what are the odds of us launching a combat operation to destroy it before they finish building it?" The Marine Commander-in-Chief on the moon's face showed an anger befitting his status at the intrusion of the enemy.

"Almost zero," frowned Lieutenant General Dewey, Ptolemy's base commander, "Conservative estimates are that this base will be operational in twenty-four hours, and with our forces spread thin on the moon face and in dire need of resupply after the firefight, it will take more time than that to regroup and reorganize ; and it will take time for the troops stationed at the base to get to a position where they can launch an attack on the enemy's defensive perimeter around Lorenz Crater, and even if they do, we run the risk that this base we're at will become a vacuum. The enemy ships are also hovering over the base they're building, which means the Marines won't be able to get fire support from our ships either."

A few of the fleet commanders here nodded slightly, the base commander clearly had no authority to move their fleets, and having fleets that were still recovering from their wounds hit the zaft's defensive lines? Don't even think about it, sending out fleet-matched MAs is almost their bottom line already.