Starting from the Planetary Governor-Chapter 1638 - 927: Airstrike

The actions of the human air force were quite effective.

This time, they had three tasks, all completed excellently.

The first was to seize air superiority, though not completely, as achieving complete dominance in the face of enemy ground anti-aircraft fire and the interception of those Abyssal Demon Dragons and flying vehicles augmented by the Demon Engine is rather demanding.

However, having enough air superiority suffices.

The core objective is, after securing the skies to some degree, to accomplish the next two tasks.

The second task is bombing, a ground assault aimed at relieving pressure on the human ground forces.

This task was also completed quite well.

However, the air force of the Alliance did not directly bomb the Chaos forces attacking the human front lines.

To be honest, those Chaos forces are not the greatest pressure on the Alliance forces’ front lines.

The greatest pressure actually comes from the continuous assaults and the bombardment from Chaos artillery in the rear.

And it is precisely these two that the air force focuses on attacking.

The former represents the rear positions of the Chaos forces’ advancing formations.

War never throws all the troops at the frontline; an attack width that’s too narrow with densely packed troops not only does little for improving offensive efficiency but also becomes extremely vulnerable—one artillery shell would take out several troops at once, and being packed tightly offers no advantage.

Yet, there is a need to constantly maintain attack intensity, exerting enough pressure on human troops by having reserve forces ready to replace the frontline troops once they are done and withdrawn. This way, units with high ammunition expenditure and personnel loss can rotate for rest and reorganization, while the pressure at the frontline does not diminish as fresh and fully-armed troops replace them. The human side, with fewer forces, cannot enjoy the same rotation opportunity, leading them to face increasing pressure until the balance is completely broken, unable to withstand, the defenses collapse, and positions are lost.

When such positions are taken out one by one, it leads to an overall collapse of the entire defensive line.

Currently, the air force is targeting these reserve forces.

When a contingent of Chaos reserve troops is ready to support and replace, the bombing arrives.

Machine gun strafing is part of it too, posing significant threats; a large-caliber machine gun could penetrate even the power armor of an Interstellar Warrior; if an ordinary mortal is hit, they wouldn’t even have their bones left; even a tank, after being strafed a couple of times, would have so many dense holes that it wouldn’t be able to operate...

The greater threat, however, comes from the ground missiles launched from large aircraft like the Qilin, or even Dragon Elephant warplanes.

One Scalpel Missile striking would destroy a Titan if hit directly; one Sky Cleave Axe Missile coming down could wipe out an entire Armored Company if they’re too close and haven’t dispersed their formations; and if it’s a Scorching East Wind...

Only a very few Dragon Elephant warplanes carry this. The Scorching East Wind missile is too large, meaning that once equipped with it, even the largest scale Dragon Elephant warplanes capable of operating within the atmosphere would not be able to carry anything else, rendering them practically unarmed.

But it’s worth it.

With one Scorching East Wind, a whole Chaos staging area would be wiped out.

Currently, only one Scorching East Wind has been dropped on Chaos Army’s staging area, preserving five originally endangered positions, wrecking three Titans, killing over seventy Chaos Starfield Warriors, with countless other Chaos troops taken out.

The other two Scorching East Wind missiles were directed at another major threat to the Alliance Army’s defense line: the Chaos artillery positions.

Artillery is the king of war. Even today, this saying holds.

Frankly, war is about efficacious killing tactics to crush the enemy. If one could use ship cannons for orbital bombardment, that would certainly be optimal. In the absence of such a condition, when looking purely at ground forces, artillery remains indispensable.

Artillery is the most pervasive, most cost-effective, most scalable, and most sustainable method.

The hardest point for human defenders is the constant bombardment they face above their heads.

Although the human side also has artillery, its quantity compared to the enemy is far too little, making countermeasures difficult and unable to provide enough support for the frontline — even so, being able to call in an artillery round for a covering attack on advancing enemies is enough to offer a breath of relief.

And now, two Scorching East Winds have almost destroyed the two most significant Chaos artillery positions.

The Chaos side’s firepower suddenly reduced sharply!

Virtually all artillery positions ceased fire.

Not all the artillery was destroyed. The damaged artillery accounts for less than half of the Chaos artillery. After all, the Chaos side isn’t foolish enough to conveniently gather all their artillery in one place. However, they too are fearful and anxious about whether the Alliance fleet still has any Scorching East Winds left to fire at them?

Even if it’s not Scorching East Winds, a few more Sky-splitting Axes down would be pretty terrifying.

The various artillery positions began to urgently disperse, aiming to construct more, smaller, and more dispersed positions to reduce losses from airstrikes.

Zachariah was very angry.

"You forced me to!"

In his fury, the King of White Wolves sent orders to his fleet.

Initially, he was concerned that a ship cannon orbital bombardment on the ground might affect the ’thing’ beneath the cathedral, but now, since the human side was doing it, he too was not holding back.

Bombing directly toward the cathedral or the core area close to it is still too risky, a mistake would spell disaster. But precise calculations reveal that a relatively smaller yield orbital bombardment of the peripheral positions is feasible. 𝐟𝕣𝗲𝕖𝕨𝗲𝐛𝗻𝗼𝐯𝗲𝚕.𝗰𝚘𝐦

It’s just that, for these peripheral positions, the human side hasn’t dedicated particularly heavy defense forces, often just a small position or a slight elevation defended by a company of ordinary soldiers. Firing a round or a few rounds of ship cannon bombardment would indeed help the Chaos Warriors quickly conquer the position, but the assistance it brings in utterly destroying the human defenses is relatively limited.

Zachariah had to grudgingly admit that to end the battle, it still required the ground troops to forcibly take them down.

He took a deep breath, reminding himself to be patient.

The current situation is still under control, they are gradually eroding the human defense lines. Those pseudo-imperial claw minions won’t be able to hold out for much longer.

As he pondered this, he suddenly heard gunfire and cannon shots not too far away.

Stepping out of the command room, he saw several human warplanes spiraling down from the sky—they had been shot down.

And other human warplanes in similar numbers were circling, continually firing downward.

They seemed to be covering certain targets.

Narrowing his eyes, Zachariah realized that someone was coming for him.