The Rise Of Australasia

From August onwards, the war between Australasia and the Island Nation entered a rather delicate phase.

The Island Royal Navy remained holed up in the harbor, daring not to come out and battle the Australasian Navy decisively. This rendered the Island Nation's formidable army essentially useless: they couldn't leave the island, and naturally, they posed no threat to Australasia.

Australasia was pleased with this situation. Periodically, they would organize a large number of air raids on the Island Nation, targeting only its major urban cities such as the well-known Nagasaki, Hiroshima, Osaka, Nagoya, Tokyo, and so on.

On one hand, this was to disrupt the domestic order within the Island Nation, and at the same time, to destroy as much as possible the Island's important industry and other facilities.

On the other hand, the frequent bombings of the Island's urban cities also served the purpose of training more air force troops.

Considering the current rate of airplane production in Australasia, the number of excellent pilots was clearly insufficient.

To quickly gain enough outstanding pilots, it was necessary to assign them more combat missions.

And indeed, bombing the Island's large urban cities could be seen as relatively safe missions, suitable for pilots with less experience to carry out.

The Pacific Battlefield was evidently far less interesting compared to the European Battlefield.

If Australasia did not wish to end the war so soon, the Islanders might already be considering under what conditions to surrender.

At present, Australasia has mobilized a total of 1.1 million troops, of which about 300,000 have been deployed to the European Battlefield, 200,000 to the Pacific Battlefield, and the remaining 600,000 troops are stationed in the native land.

As the most populous country within the sphere of Australasia's influence, Kalimantan has provided the largest number of soldiers, with total military personnel now exceeding 1.5 million.

Of these, 300,000 troops are in the European Battlefield, 200,000 are in the Pacific Battlefield, and nearly a million troops are in training, ready to be deployed at any moment.

The military strength of the Philippines is somewhat lesser, but still has reached a formidable 800,000. In Europe, the Philippines have committed 200,000 troops, with another 200,000 deployed on the Pacific Battlefield, and 400,000 are in training within the Philippines.

This also means that if Australasia wishes, they can organize an assault with more than 2 million troops on the Island Nation at any time.

And this is only the current number of troops; whether it is Australasia, Kalimantan, or the Philippines, none have reached the limits of their mobilization capacity.

In an extreme scenario, Kalimantan and the Philippines alone could provide tens of millions of soldiers, and together with the millions from Australasia, overwhelming the Island Nation in terms of troop numbers would not be a problem.

Of course, without launching a large-scale general offensive, having an abundance of troops is of little use and could even increase the burden of military spending.

For Arthur and Australasia, engaging in aerial warfare with the Island Nation is the most cost-effective approach.

The Island Nation is not like Australasia; their myriad military forces combined have even surpassed the total of all the armies within the sphere of Australasia, which indicates a substantial military budget.

If this stalemate continues, even if the Island Nation's military doesn't collapse, their economy and logistics will not withstand such a massive drain.

Truth be told, currently, no country can sustain the military spending brought about by several million troops.

Despite the fact that Britain and France are still mobilizing a large number of troops, they rely on the depth of their nations, the consistent support from their colonies, and aid from consortia in North America.

Germany, while lacking colonial and foreign consortium support, has a strong industrial base. Coupled with their successive annexations of Poland, the Austrian Empire, along with second and third-rate countries like Belgium and the Netherlands, Germany is just barely able to hang on.

One of the reasons Arthur can afford to engage in a war of attrition with the Islanders is because the military technology of Australasia is advancing rapidly.

Following the outbreak of the war, Australasia's military technology research budget doubled, and certain critical military technologies even saw their budgets tripled to five times.

Although this represents an extremely high cost for military technology research, the pace of advancement in military technology is indeed changing day by day.

On December 27th, 1936, as the old year was drawing to a close, Arthur also received the most significant good news since the outbreak of the war—the progress of missile development.

As is well known, previously Australasia's missile series was the Dove Missile, which has been in development for nearly five years.

After five years, Australasia finally welcomed the new missile technology, the Herman Cruise Missile.

A cruise missile mainly flies in cruising mode within the dense atmosphere and is also known as an "aerodynamic missile."

The cruise missile enters a state of cruise when, after being accelerated by rocket boosters, the thrust of the main engine balances the drag, and the lift of the missile wings balances gravity, achieving a nearly constant speed and altitude flight.

In this state, the fuel consumption per unit distance is the least. Its flight trajectory typically consists of a takeoff climb, cruise (horizontal flight), and dive phase. It relies on the thrust of the jet engine and the aerodynamic lift of the missile wings to maintain flight.

Of course, these are no longer the most important things for Arthur. With Australasia's current technology in missile development, it can certainly be considered a world leader.

What attracted Arthur most about cruise missiles was their ability to freely change warheads, including small nuclear warheads, and the choice to launch from airplanes or submarines, which is a key part of what later generations call the nuclear triad.

What does this represent? Australasia only needs to complete the production of nuclear warheads to possess long-range nuclear strike capabilities, which is unparalleled in enhancing its military strength.

So the question arises, how did Australasia achieve this technology that only gradually became prominent after World War II?

Firstly, credit must be given to Diesel's development of the jet engine. The power engine used by cruise missiles is still the most advanced jet engine currently available.

Cruise missiles also make extensive use of aerodynamics, and in terms of the principles of missile flight, they actually borrow a lot from the principles of airplanes.

In other words, cruise missiles are more like oddly shaped airplanes, but unmanned, and their main goal is to perish together with the enemy.

Because they are similar to airplanes, cruise missiles also have a pair of wings. These wings can provide lift for the cruise missile, and with the powerful thrust of the jet engine, achieve the purpose of rapid ascent.

The new generation of cruise missiles, unlike the Dove-type missiles, adopts more advanced radar and gyros, completely abandoning the trick of using pigeons to improve hit rates.

Of course, with the current technology, it is inevitable that the hit rate of the new generation of cruise missiles is not too high; this is a problem that present technology can't solve.

Even in history, the improvement of cruise missile hit rates had to wait until the '60s, or more than 20 years later.

Obviously, the technological advancement in those 20 years goes without saying, and this also means that it is impossible to achieve highly precise strikes with cruise missiles at this time.

But this issue is not a problem for Australasia.

Because Arthur's greatest expectation for the current cruise missiles is not to achieve precise strikes with conventional warheads, but to carry nuclear warheads for wide-area destructive strikes.

The damage caused by a nuclear warhead is self-explanatory, as its explosive power and range of destruction can effectively make up for the lack of precision in cruise missiles.

Using nuclear warheads doesn't need very precise targeting anyway; as long as the deviation is within a few kilometers, they can still cause massive casualties.

Of course, the current cruise missiles don't have such exaggerated errors. The first-generation missiles indeed had errors of over one kilometer, and under the influence of weather, the error could reach several kilometers.

But by the time of the second-generation Dove missile, the maximum error of the missiles had already been reduced to within one kilometer, and at the most precise, they could hit the target dead on.

The third-generation cruise missiles, in comparison with the second-generation Dove missiles, have improved, with the maximum error being only a few hundred meters, even when the target is very far away.

Under such circumstances, if the cruise missile carries a nuclear warhead, it can completely replace bombers and carry out long-distance strikes against any targets Australasia wishes to hit.

For instance, the Island areas that Arthur always intends to annihilate with nuclear weapons can simply be targeted with missiles launched from submarines, posing no danger to the launching personnel.

Yes, Arthur's only concern about using nuclear weapons to strike the Island nation might be that the nuclear weapons could pose certain safety hazards to the crew aboard the planes.

As for the life and death of the Islanders, that is not at all included in Arthur's plan.

At least for now, the majority of the Island's government and people support the war. Dropping nuclear weapons on these war-supporting extremists is just a strike of justice.

If it were not too inhumane to annihilate a country with nuclear weapons, Arthur would even consider nuclear obliteration.

Of course, the use of nuclear weapons is inevitable. At least for certain large urban cities, it is best to obliterate them.

To see the first cruise missile of Australasia with his own eyes, Arthur decided to visit the missile laboratory personally and witness the first-ever test of a cruise missile in human history.

As before, the testing of the cruise missile could not be hidden from the upper echelons of the military. Not only Arthur but also the high-ranking officers of the military were curious about the famous cruise missiles, and they were very interested in the new missiles.

Finally, from Saint Arthur Castle, a massive convoy set out. Including Arthur and the military upper echelons, they had one goal: to visit the missile laboratory personally and witness the test of the cruise missile with their own eyes.