Volume 16 Tower of Babel Chapter 810: Self-Destructing Drone
"Everyone, pay attention, don't let these drones get close to the shields of our warships!" After Yeager shouted this sentence reflexively, he was stunned for a moment - he suddenly realized that there were no survivors in the air combat force of "Betelgeuse" except himself and Hans.
"The number of drones is 6,000... no, 8,000, or even more." Hans said, "Although there are still some remaining air combat units on other warships, it is impossible for us to eliminate these drones with our limited combat power."
"We'll take down as many as we can." Yeger said, gritting his teeth.
Drones carrying crystal energy bombs are actually a kind of bargaining chip - if the attack and defense capabilities of the two fleets are quantified, it is equivalent to a constantly floating scale, and the existence of these drones is equivalent to adding a lot of weights on one side of the scale.
Yeager made a rough estimate. Judging from the appearance, these drones should be a modified version of the "Fang II". The other party seemed to have cancelled the 25mm caliber machine gun and two laser-guided missiles originally carried by the "Fang II", and allocated all the load to the crystal energy bombs used to launch self-destruct attacks. In this way, the equivalent of the crystal energy bombs carried by this improved model is about five times that of the "Fang II".
However, the explosive power and mass of crystal energy bombs cannot be calculated in a linear manner, but in a geometric growth data model. The greater the total mass of the bomb, the more destructive power the resonance will produce - according to the worst-case estimate. As long as about 500 of these 8,000 drones can break through the interception of the air combat forces and successfully reach the self-destruction position, it will be enough to blow up the energy shields of the ships of the Zero Fleet.
At that time, as long as the Black Fleet's main guns fired a salvo, it would be able to directly defeat the formation of Fleet Zero.
"If a few or a dozen drones are lost, the shield can barely withstand it, but if a large number are lost, the destructive power of the crystal energy bombs will be multiplied due to the resonance... I just calculated that seventy is about the limit that Betelgeuse's shield can withstand. If the number exceeds this, the shield's self-recovery speed will not be able to keep up with the speed of consumption." Yeager said.
He did not mention other friendly warships - the number of remaining air combat forces on each ship was not large, and in the current situation, they could only choose to mind their own business and ensure the safety of their respective mother ships as much as possible.
The computer's combat program quickly analyzed the battlefield situation - the "Betelgeuse" heavy cruiser was lucky, with only about two hundred drones locking it as a target. As for the one under the greatest pressure, the "second flagship" of the Zero Fleet, the Gangfeng-class aircraft carrier battleship "New Dawn".
Nearly half of the suicide drones rushed towards the "New Dawn".
"Hans, what's your highest record for shooting at moving targets? I remember your shooting skills are much better than mine." Yeager asked in the laser communication.
"Three minutes and one hundred and ninety-seven," Hans replied.
"That's the result of shooting with all weapons, right? What about the hit rate?" Yeger asked again.
"Sixty-seven percent."
For a high-speed fighter pilot, having a hit rate of more than 30% when shooting at moving targets is already very high. A hit rate of 67%... this is definitely the ACE level.
"So high? Then why didn't I see you participating in the military competition organized by the military in the past few years?"
"I participated, but the competition was full of freaks, and I didn't even make it past the preliminaries, so of course you couldn't see me." Hans said, "I later felt ashamed of it, so I didn't tell you and lied to you that I was going on a year-end vacation."
"Then I hope you can break your record this time..." Yeger said, and suddenly changed the subject, "The bombardment frequency has been reduced, get ready!"
Taking advantage of the brief recharging interval after the artillery bombardment of both sides, Yeager and Hans directly pulled the fighter jets to an airspace nearly a thousand meters higher than the fleet's hovering altitude, and used cluster lasers and machine guns to fire at the swarm of drones rushing in from below.
These drones carrying a large number of crystal energy bombs were not very fast and had no armor protection. They were not much different from moving targets in live-fire training. Moreover, every time a drone was blown up, the crystal energy bombs would always implicate the surrounding drones... In a blink of an eye, half of the seventy drones that had locked onto "Betelgeuse" had been shot down.
"It seems that you are not bragging!" Yeger sighed - most of these kills were attributed to Hans, while his record was only a fraction of Hans'.
Yeager's strengths lie in driving skills rather than shooting, which is one of the reasons why when the two of them are working together, he is often the main driver and Hans is the co-pilot and part-time gunner. In this way, the strengths and weaknesses of the two are complemented. Now that the two have switched to a single-seat high-speed fighter, their shortcomings have been exposed.
As they were talking, the two of them dealt with the remaining thirty or so drones.
The reason why Yeger and his men faced so few drones was that most of the pressure was transferred to the actual flagship of Fleet Zero, the "New Dawn". The New Dawn had the most remaining fighter jets, and the ship was also equipped with dozens of cutting-edge transformable flying mechas. However, even so, the pilots of the New Dawn's air combat force were forced to use their own aircraft to ram the drones and die together with these cheap weapons.
"Can't we use EMP bombs?" Yeager looked at the dense array of drones below. "Facing such a dense array of drones, shouldn't EMP bombs be the first choice?"
"I have used it, but it has no effect." Hans sighed, "A drone that can operate normally in such a strong electromagnetic interference field must be equipped with some alien civilization technology that we don't know about."
At this moment , a communication laser shot out from the two's mothership "Betelgeuse" and shone on Yeager's plane: "Colonel Yeager, the captain requires you to lead the remaining troops to immediately support the second flagship "New Dawn" and intercept the enemy drone group!"
The air combat units belonging to other warships seemed to have received the same order and turned their firepower to the swarm of drones that were about to surround the "New Dawn".
But the fire suppression lasted less than twenty seconds, and several fighter jets were hit by long-range sniper fire - they were too far away from their mother ship, and there was nothing in the airspace that could serve as cover. When the pilots of these fighter jets treated the drones as moving targets, the warships of the Black Fleet also treated their aircraft as moving targets.
"No, the enemy has noticed us!" Yeger said to Hans, "If we continue to stay at this altitude, we will be shot down sooner or later!"
"Then what are you going to do?" Hans asked. "If we continue to increase our altitude, the drone swarm will be out of our attack range. If we retreat behind the battleship, our own battleship will block the firing range of our weapons..."
"Let's rush to the front of the drone group! Use those drones as cover!" Yeager said immediately, "The enemy will not use naval guns to bombard their own drones just for a few small shrimps like us!"
Even if the other party really did this, the Zero Fleet would still make a huge profit - at the cost of a few fighter jets and pilots, the other party would have to deal with the troublesome drone swarm themselves. This deal is a sure win.
Of course, this profit refers to the overall situation, but for the pilots themselves, they become the sacrificed pawns.
But Yeger knew very well that the other party would never do this unless the commander of the Black Fleet was an idiot.
If the other party really did that... then at least my sacrifice was valuable... maybe I would be posthumously awarded a Silver Wing Medal after the war?
"You want to engage in a dogfight with a swarm of drones?" Hans was stunned for a moment. "Are you crazy?"
"As long as we control the distance well, there will be no danger." As he said this, Yeager pressed down the joystick, and his "Raven-class" suddenly dived down and got into the gap between the drone swarm and the "New Dawn".
The core module of the "Bolvar" laser cannon had overheated in the previous battle. Without returning to the mothership for replacement, it would take at least thirty minutes for it to cool down on its own. Fortunately, the machine gun shells could also cause fatal damage to these drones. The loss of a laser cannon would only slightly reduce the cleaning efficiency.
"Leave it to me!" Yeager said to two friendly fighters that were emitting black smoke nearby through laser communication. These were two "Wyvern-class" fighters, top-level fighters that only aircraft carriers and battleships were qualified to equip. However, the two Wyverns were severely damaged by the aftermath of enemy naval guns and the explosion of drones, and were on the verge of disintegration and crashing at any time.
Fortunately, these are two Dragon-class aircraft. If they were the Raven-class aircraft piloted by Yeager, with this level of damage, they would have lost their combat capability long ago.
"Thank you for your support!" After responding to Yeager's communication, the two Dragon-class aircraft turned around and flew directly towards the "New Dawn" - not only were their bodies seriously damaged, but their thruster fuel and ammunition were also about to run out. If it weren't for Yeager's timely support, the two Dragon-class pilots would probably have chosen to die together with the drone swarm.
"Tsk..." Yeger glanced at the two damaged Dragon-class aircraft in the rearview camera with some envy, "I should have found a way to ask that big shot to open a back door for me and send two Dragon-class aircraft to Rigel... I will use the promotion to get the opportunity to drive a Dragon-class aircraft."
"Yeger! Attention! Your horizontal altitude! Two enemy drones at ten o'clock!" Hans' voice came from the headset, followed by a deafening explosion and a strong air wave sweeping in from the front left.
Yeager quickly grabbed the joystick, and several external thrusters on the other side sprayed in the opposite direction at the same time, barely restoring the balance of the aircraft.
(Additional setting: All the fighters of the Ark Air Force are powered by energy crystal engines, so they have extremely strong endurance, but the external rocket thrusters used to accelerate and improve flexibility still use chemical fuel. Although the fighters can still fly when the fuel is exhausted, their maneuverability and controllability will be greatly affected.)
"Be careful! I noticed that some special models of drones are equipped with optical camouflage devices. However, the performance of these optical camouflage devices is much worse than those used by the Black Fleet warships. As long as you look carefully, you can still see the movement traces!" Hans reminded in the communication.
"Damn, these guys are so sinister?!" Yeger broke out in a cold sweat. If Hans hadn't come to his rescue in time, he would have been blown to pieces.
Although the optical camouflage of the drone can be detected by the naked eye as long as it is carefully observed, you have to know that this is a complex battlefield with fighter planes changing rapidly. Who can always detect those abnormal and distorted light and shadows?
"Hans, you move back one kilometer and provide me with fire support, focusing on attacking those that have escaped the net... As for the swarm of drones in front, let me deal with it!" After Yeager finished speaking, he piloted the fighter jet and rushed forward. The four machine guns fired fiercely, smashing an approaching drone into pieces.
"boom!!!"
The blast from the crystal energy bomb's explosion hit the fighter's porthole, and a red-hot fragment rubbed a long scratch on the reinforced resin porthole covered with a metal film - if Yeager had been ten meters closer, his plane would probably have been swept up in the explosion.
"The safe distance for a single drone to self-destruct is one hundred and twenty meters... If there are two drones, due to the effect of resonance, the safe distance needs to be increased to two hundred meters, and for three drones, it is four hundred meters... As for drones of more than three drones gathered together, a distance of more than one kilometer must be maintained..." Yeger silently calculated the explosion range of the crystal energy bomb in his mind, while driving his plane in the air, and the barrage of bullets from the machine gun continued to intercept the drones that were approaching.
…
At the same time, in the core area of the Gray Mist Forest, inside the Tower of Babel.
Ke Lan, who was immersed in those memory fragments, suddenly felt a sense of crisis for no apparent reason.
Ke Lan, whose inner shock had not yet completely subsided, immediately withdrew his consciousness from these memory fragments and looked around vigilantly.
Most of the thousands of "zombies" on this floor have been "digested" by the living armor, and the rest are blocked outside by the space barrier and cannot get in at all. On the other side, Ze Luo and Sanshisan are also on high alert. Logically speaking, he should not feel this inexplicable sense of crisis.
Unless some other mechanism in the tower was triggered.
Could it be that the content of this level of trial is not just about these “unkillable” zombies?
Just when Ke Lan was about to talk to Ze Luo and Sanshi San, a voice suddenly sounded in his mind without warning: "Aguna Kotor is under attack, do you want to fight back?"
