Gundam Fire Still

"Apparently so, it's engine even allows the entire airframe to make jumps, with an estimated height of 10 meters, and of course the huge heat dissipation from its engine makes it easy to lock onto infrared guided weapons as well." Jan cut to the next picture, it was the wreckage of a Baku whose back had been pierced by a missile, "We can see that the armour on its back isn't thick enough to stop at least one heavy anti-tank missile, but unfortunately we can no longer see the engine structure."

"Why don't you guys just ship it back?"

"Unfortunately, the guerrillas sold them to the waste merchants who claimed it as their territory, and at the same time they had more deaths."

"The number of dead isn't equal to the size of the contribution anymore, obviously, but whatever." The Lieutenant shrugged

"We can see quite a bit of information on the regular Baku as well, can you speak directly to that particular configuration of the captain's plane?" A captain interrupted Jan before he could turn the page.

"No problem," Jan shrugged, skipping over two images before releasing a blurry image of the new orange machine, "Not much is known about it, it only appeared at the end of the battle and was evacuated with the aid of a sandstorm after a brief firefight. Compared to a normal Baku, it was equipped with a beam weapon that could fire in bursts, and was positioned on its back like any other Baku's armament. Unlike the old large diffuse range, slow firing particle cannon available to Ginn, this is a weapon more similar to the beam rifle used by our military, and I suspect that Project X leaks accelerated Zaft's research into beam weapons. Next up is its melee weapon, also located in the muzzle, the beam blade, which I believe Zaft's designers would call a beam fang to satisfy some aesthetic need of theirs."

The other young officers let out some low chuckles

"But the Zaft pilots' more common means of melee combat is direct impact, relying on their heavy front body armor and excellent shock-absorbing systems for this very life-consuming combat. That said, this method of attack is highly threatening to our various types of vehicles. In this respect, this new machine is virtually indistinguishable from any other airframe."

"So is there anything the infantry can do against them? Like using the terrain against tanks?"

"It was difficult, in fact, as difficult as the trouble infantry had against tanks, to confront with inferior firepower, armor and maneuver. In our records, the guerrillas fired dozens of rounds at Baku using an East Asian-produced 82mm recoilless gun, hitting a dozen times, and the only effective shot was at its leg joints at a dangerous distance of 50m when it was approached; even if the shot was effective, the target could still maneuver and fire normally." Jan cut back to the picture he'd skipped earlier, where the shells and RPGs fired by the guerrillas bounced off the side armor of the Baku, which had brought the guerrilla jeep into crushing range.

"Even if the infantry try to drag them into a street fight, due to Zaft's policy propaganda, they don't care about civilian buildings, so they can simply knock them down and destroy them to defend against an infantry ambush."

"In other words, virtually insoluble?"

"There is a solution in some special terrain," Jan thought a little, "Large traps and matching mines can be used in good land conditions, which would allow the infantry to ambush them, but it's difficult to achieve the conditions to carry out such tactics. Also, it's actually best to use technology, if our infantry teams can be equipped with miniaturized beam or electromagnetic weapons, they should be able to effectively penetrate the armor against Baku and other MS."

"But we don't have enough technology to get to that point, Lieutenant." A Lieutenant Colonel in the back row said, he seemed to be the most senior officer in the room, "You've done a good job with your contact reports on the new enemy MS, can you share with us your thoughts on the upcoming operation?"

"Well sir, we're all well aware that the next operation we face is definitely a defensive one, and Zaft's leader, Patrick . Sara has always been an aggressive attacker, and our recent offensive operations in North Africa have apparently spurred him on, so all indications are that they are planning an attack. A good attack needs to be a surprise attack that is hard for the opponent to detect, and now that every base we have is on standby, the enemy has lost a bit of their advantage. But again, another characteristic of Zaft is their extreme focus on the application of new technology in combat, and as the World Tree War proved, the new technology they employ always has the ability to give us huge passivity, so as intelligence officers and technical officers, we need to try to figure out-. -If you can't figure it out, then you need to at least make a guess as to what new technology the other side might be using."

Jan brought up a map of the world on the projection.

"It's hard for me as a technical officer to tell which base in our control area Zaft will strike, but based on our previous experience and the technical means they have at their disposal, we can tell that the only methods of force projection they can use are, airborne, sea, or land."

"That's bullshit mate, we all know damn well Zaft doesn't teleport at the moment." Some captain chimed in.

"Yes, and our forces don't have a major base close enough to their area of control to make a land attack highly unlikely, they are more likely to use an integrated air and sea strike. So the focus of our defenses is clearly on the two points of anti-landing, and anti-orbital airdrops as well. The failure of their first landing operation had proven that even if they had orbital control, airborne MS alone could not suppress ground anti-aircraft fires, so they either looked for weak spots in our defenses or used ground forces first to suppress anti-aircraft fires in subsequent operations. And this attack they may be up to their old tricks again."

"If they repeat their old trick, it will surely fail, and we now have the means to search the seas for their submarine carriers."

"Therefore, since their orbital airborne drop is almost inevitable, they are bound to employ some new technology, or new tactics to suppress our air defense firepower."

"One of those possible tactics is the use of airdrop decoys," Jan drew a few strokes on the terminal's screen, drawing symbols representing enemy ships and drop pods in low orbit around the planet, "i.e., the initial batch of drop pods will be inflatable, or other decoys made using cheap methods of to draw fire from our anti-aircraft fire, followed by orbital bombardment of the anti-aircraft positions on the ground using weapons from the ships."

"If they can employ orbital bombardment, they should have already done it in the first few air drops." Someone countered.

"Right, so I can only assume that they had previously encountered technical difficulties such as ablation and loss of projectiles and particle beams as they passed through the atmosphere, and in fact the simplest orbital bombardment would be a re-entry warhead or a bomb in a drop bay, easy means of interception. And but the concern is that they may have solved the technical problem of using electromagnetic and particle beam weapons for orbital strikes."

"There's also the possibility of environmental and political reasons, the possible effects of particle weapons through the atmosphere on the climate and the environment, and the moderates within Zaft don't want to see the planet itself destroyed in war," a staff officer added below, "but right now the Zaft moderates are losing ground, so The radicals may be desperate."

"But have you considered the loading capacity of their ships? In order to use decoys to fool us they would have to have their ships in a longer drop position in low orbit, which is fuel consuming, and even with inflatable decoys, to confuse us in terms of speed through the atmosphere they would have to add counterweights to simulate the speed of the MS coming down, which means consuming space on their ships. With the limited number of ships they can send out for airdrops, will they consume precious space to place the decoys, and the ammunition needed for the orbital strike? Also they don't have full orbital control right now, and staying in a low orbit that is difficult to maneuver for too long will be threatened by our fleet, as they should be aware." The tech lieutenant colonel in the back row countered.

"That's right, and in fact I don't think Zaft will be using decoy reconnaissance of air defensive positions a tactic that has been used many times in the history of warfare on Earth, in fact I think their more likely tactic," Jan seemed to reverse himself as he paused, "is to use decoy reconnaissance of air defensive positions in the first batch of Drop a certain number of nukes in the airdrop bay."

The discussion room was immediately quiet for a moment, just as he'd expected it to be.

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4. time pressures

"Attention all, mock battle over," Lieutenant Galen Marcel shouted over the hangar channel as he watched the last MS of the beta group on the computer being judged out of combat under a barrage of rocket fire.

"This time it's the alpha group that wins."

"Why don't you comment on a couple of things, then we'll take our time analyzing them in the briefing room." Carl opened the docked MS hatch, hopped over the bundle of cables that the combat simulator was attached to behind the airframe console, and headed for the briefing room. This system of using the MS cockpit and screen for direct training simulations could recreate the realities of the battlefield better than a simulator, though it was far from real combat for veterans, but it was sufficient for training newbies.

"On the whole, you all fought well."

"I'm sure you did, but there were enough problems that I stressed that you had to protect your support plane, which has no legs but runs no slower than you and can take you out just as easily. beta, a big part of your loss was letting your MSD's get stolen and then focusing on shooting at the opposing MS's and ignoring the fact that they still had one. MSD."

"But we needed to get the Squadron Leader's squad to show their flanks, and 04 was a good decoy," the beta team leader was indignant, "We were just unlucky that we couldn't take out any of them in one flush shot."

"It's not bad luck, it's normal," Carl drew directly on the whiteboard on the hangar wall, "Three MS beam rifles fired in unison, targeting three other MS in motion, and you distributed the firepower, one MS aimed at one target, as if this was a sneak attack, so Dry is correct; but you have to note that your targets aren't ignoring the flanks, and two of the MS shields are facing your direction, meaning that even if they don't notice you, they anticipate where you might be hiding, so it's unrealistic to expect a single flush shot to wipe out the enemy. Sure, an untrained team will panic when flanked by a flanking strike, but you better not expect Zaft to be that rabble-rouser. This flush shot of yours hitting our 02 hard and then destroying 03's shields is good enough for the battle."

Carl explained as he led his team into the briefing room and pulled up the training records from the simulator.

"On our side, alpha 03, you shouldn't waste ammo on a covered target and expect precision fire from one of my machines, our firing procedures dictate that I won't be able to shoot more accurately than you, and a smart opponent would notice your firing rhythm and come out and take you out as you change magazines. In fact, that's what your opponent did this time. Of course, you reacted correctly by switching to a beam saber in time after firing the clip, but you should have avoided that kind of hand-to-hand combat." Carl pointed to the two MS on the screen with beam sabers lit up.

"Beta 01, you're doing well in melee combat. With a good grasp of distance on the one hand, and smooth programming on the other, you shouldn't be at a disadvantage if you run into a Zaft's MS and you melee, the only problem is that you should warn your teammates not to take support fire at such a dangerous distance, and even if you don't get hit yourself, a martyred enemy plane could cause collateral damage to your hull."

"Ah, yes, sorry." The girl piloting the beta 03 quickly said.

"Of course, that can't be too much to ask for, what kind of cover fire at what distance would have required experience as well, at least your shot managed to take out our 03, but your captain could have taken him out after a few rounds if you hadn't fired."

"Then there's β02, one thing you did right was to reload, you refired after the first flush shot hit α02, in fact the first shot only ruled that 02 had a damaged leg and the ability to fight back, and your refired only completed the ruling that took 02 out of the fight. Also, I noticed you were firing at our feet, and at the ground at the edge of the bunker, I assume you used the Moonface simulator?"

The mentioned pilot nodded.

"The MS used by the Moonface team is captured Ginn, Ginn's 76mm can be used to hit the ground with high explosive rounds to create a shockwave to disrupt the movement of the target, or to hit targets behind cover. 76mm ammunition loads are limited, but this is the right way to think about it, but, Ensign, the beam rifle we are currently using fires a high energy particle beam, I I'm sure you've all learned the basics of the technology, it can't create a shockwave or cause a shock to the target behind the bunker. Of course, if you wish to take a hit with a high explosive, I suggest you use a grenade." Carl brought up the information on the grenade launcher attached to the beam rifle on the screen, "150mm, the charge is mostly more than the 76mm, the downside is that it can't fire in bursts, and while high explosives aren't used very often, there are some situations where a grenade hit will do wonders."

"And then there are the two MSDs, you mustn't have any fear of MS, in fact you destroy them just as easily as they destroy you, the alpha 04 in this simulation proved that, and while you managed to hold me down, the 04 flush rockets changed the battle.

As for the beta group, the attract and flank tactic has some value, if you manage to flank the target. But you shouldn't think an MSD is just a tank with hands so use it as bait."

"Urgent message from Command, sir," Carl's adjutant burst into the briefing room.

"All right, Galen, you say a few more words and then have the men dismissed."

Carl turned his face and took a quick glance at the terminal in his adjutant's hand, he had guessed what it was probably about, and at this point, the only thing that would allow Command to call a video conference with officers at all levels would probably be the discovery of Zaft's movements.

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"Herr Leutnant, Sie müssen mich auf dem Laufenden halten, wie läuft die Ausbildung Ihrer Staffel?" Der in Alaska stationierte Kommandeur des 3. Geschwaders der Luftwaffe, 3rd Joint Wing, stellte eine Frage auf dem Bildschirm.

"Gute Ausbildung, kaum genug, um in den Krieg zu ziehen, aber gerade noch genug."

"Seien Sie genauer."

"In der Lage zu sein, gegen eine ähnliche Anzahl des Feindes zu schießen, unter der Deckung von Artillerie und Infanterie zu verteidigen oder vorzurücken und selbst dann einige Verluste hinzunehmen; es wird schlimmer, sobald man in einen Nahkampf gerät.

"Hell, but they've got to see blood, the enemy doesn't wait."

"That's right, co-captain, looking at the situation, the squadron definitely has to be on it, it's just a matter of when and what position to play."

"If they land, will your squadron, with the Army, be able to drive them overboard?"

"It could be counter-impact, but I wouldn't recommend we be the first on it, once the MS units are on the move, the entire base can see and the entire Seward peninsula can hear the noise, so don't let us get out too early if you plan on using my MS to scare them. I suggest having my men fight counter-airborne to make the most of the maneuverability." It was hard for Carl to deny that his suggestion carried with it a bit of delaying selfishness, he was well aware that a few more minutes of training time would be good, and even then, someone would be unable to return after the battle.