The entire anti-Iraq war alliance was slowly formed under the leadership and coordination of the United States. It was obviously divided into several levels. The highest level was the United States and China. The United States sent 500,000 troops and China sent more than 100,000 troops. They were two It is the largest military force with a prosperous military capacity and high equipment level, and will become the mainstay of the coalition forces. The second level is the US military's NATO allies, mainly European countries such as Britain, France, Italy, and Germany. Although the scale of troop dispatch is not as large as that of China, they are closer allies to the United States and can cooperate more easily. The third level is the Middle East countries, headed by Saudi Arabia, and also includes Egypt, Syria, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar and other countries. These countries are actually the most critical in the situation, but most of them have small countries and few people, so they are not very powerful. enough. Finally, there are some third world countries that have been promised material support, foreign debt forgiveness and other preferential conditions by the United States and other allies purely for soy sauce, including Pakistan, Bangladesh, Afghanistan, Senegal, Niger, Argentina, Honduras and other countries.
Of course, there are some countries that will not send combat troops, but will also provide medical and other logistical assistance, such as Poland, Hungary, South Korea, India, etc. The one that is a little hard to define here is Japan. Japan will not send combat troops to the Gulf area, but Japan has contributed US$9.96 billion in cash and US$2 billion worth of construction and engineering support, vehicles, and electronic equipment for the war. , medical equipment, transportation and other in-kind assistance. Moreover, the Japanese cabinet also announced that it will continue to increase the amount of aid if necessary.
Japan is willing to take advantage of it and provide such a large amount of military support. A large part of the reason is that it was stimulated by China. China dispatched the second largest army after the United States in this operation, which caused huge repercussions and limelight in the international community. Very big. Of course, Japan is not willing to allow China to become more and more of a world power and become the second largest power in East Asia. However, Japan cannot express itself by sending troops. It can only spend money to pretend to be powerful.
However, in order to show that it is stronger than China, Japan actually gave China an advantage. According to the agreement signed between China and the United States and some other major participants in the war, China and the United States will share 85% of the military aid expenditures of allied countries. , of which the United States received about 54 billion U.S. dollars in military expenditures, and China received 10 billion U.S. dollars as the cost of sending troops.
It seems that China has received much less than the United States, but with this 10 billion US dollars, the Military Commission basically does not need to approve additional budget for this troop dispatch. In such a war that occurs far away from the homeland, the main consumption is delivery and transportation expenses, equipment loss and ammunition loss, and personnel expenses. Among them, equipment loss and logistics supply loss account for a large part of the expenditure. For example, launching a cruise missile costs nearly one million U.S. dollars. This is money thrown away, and it will be gone if you throw it away. If a fighter jet is shot down, it's a loss of tens of millions of dollars.
But in fact, most of the PLA equipment and part of the supplies are provided by Qi Yiming's Red Alert Base, and the cost is close to nothing, so the expenditure in this area cannot be measured in normal ways at all. At the very least, PLE can produce the same firepower effect as the US military, and the cost may be one percent or even lower than that of the US military.
Qi Yiming was even thinking of taking advantage of this war opportunity to consume a large amount of accumulated ammunition, so as not to waste it until it is scrapped. Even some insignificant ammunition can be distributed or sold cheaply to partner countries that also use the same system.
¡°But transporting these things to the Middle East is really a big headache and bleeding project. With such a huge transportation capacity, the United States has to turn to its allies and civilian departments for help. Japan, Greece, Norway, Denmark and other countries have provided large transport ships and transport aircraft to the United States. 460% of the materials shipped by the United States to the Gulf region are transported by chartered transport ships from allied countries. The transfer of the US 7th Army from Germany to the Gulf was basically organized and implemented by four NATO countries using military and civilian agencies. A total of 466 trains, 2 barges and 119 fleets were mobilized. In the war zone, Saudi Arabia spared no effort in its assistance. It alone provided 80 general transport trucks, 66 oil trucks and trucks to the US military, and also provided 2.4 million tons of fuel and drinking water, as well as parts and communication equipment. and other important logistical supplies.
Theoretically, China can also use the civilian or military transportation of its "allies" to transport more than 100,000 of its own troops to the Gulf area, but Qi Yiming gave up borrowing transportation capacity from other countries after repeated considerations. The main factor is the consideration that China and the United States, Japan and European countries are not really allies with one heart and one mind and a destiny entrusted to them. At best, they are taking advantage of each other. If China's equipment and logistics supplies are sent to the Gulf region via transport ships and aircraft from these countries, it is absolutely no surprise that a large number of spies will disguise themselves as relevant ports or crew members and take the opportunity to spy on the secrets of China's military equipment. This is not just a few Something that can be prevented by military personnel guarding it.
Fortunately, Qi Yiming has stopped manufacturing warships for the military in the past two years. In addition to building his own Red Alert fleet installed in the freezer space, he also used the production capacity of the naval shipyard to manufacture more than three million tons of transport ships. This??Transport ships are specially designed by the base. One type of ship can be used as a civilian roll-off wheel in peacetime. It has a helicopter platform reserved and can be used as a medical rescue station in wartime. The carrying structure has been strengthened and can directly carry the host. Heavy equipment such as battle tanks can deploy heavily armed troops into the battlefield in an organized manner, and basically do not require any modifications. With a displacement of 60,000 tons, four such transport ships can deliver an entire heavily armored mechanized division.
The other type is container ships, which mainly containerize military supplies and then deliver them to war zones. In addition to general-purpose containers, it can also specifically carry military insulated containers, refrigerated containers, ammunition containers, complete sets of maintenance spare parts containers, etc. This kind of container ship has a full load displacement of up to 60,000 tons, which is larger than an aircraft carrier.
Under normal circumstances, Qi Yiming still needs to prepare large oil tankers for pL, because the existing ocean-going comprehensive supply ships are almost only used to supply naval ships. Ordinary army units and air force units still need logistical supplements. However, this time the situation is a little special. If you go to fight in the Middle East, there is no reason to bring fuel with you. The fuel will mainly be provided to pL by Saudi Arabia and other countries, and it will be free of charge.
The above transport ships are all under the name of a shipping company owned by Qi Yiming in non-war times. In recent years, they have begun to emerge in the international shipping industry; once there is a need for national defense, all the transport ships owned by this shipping company will be Recruited to transport large amounts of supplies and troops for pLAO.
Coupled with some of pLA's own transportation capabilities and the requisitioned transport ships of some other units, although the number of pL participating in the operation is large, the transportation capacity of several million tons can still be basically guaranteed.
Through this time, the Military Commission saw that there were still relatively shortcomings in building long-range delivery capabilities. Although the PLA now has a powerful aircraft carrier fleet and amphibious assault group that can quickly deliver troops to hot spots and participate in battles, The scale and intensity of this kind of battle are limited. Once it reaches the level of a major battle, with hundreds of thousands of troops and a battle of army or larger scale, if the battlefield is thousands of kilometers away from the mainland, the pLAR spoon transport capacity will still appear weak.
The more things are fought in modern wars, the more things are fought. In the end, a battalion may only have a few hundred men, but the things to be brought are the same amount of equipment as a division carried in wars decades ago. Just sending people is the same without equipment. Can't fight. The national economy is in the ascendant. Some shipyards that have received technical support from the Red Alert Base have been able to start building some relatively large ships, but the demand is like a gluttonous mouth. No matter how much supply there is, it will always be eaten in one bite. Even though several major shipyards such as Jiangnan are working hard to build various types of ships, China still needs to order a large number of ships for various purposes from abroad every year.
After Qi Yiming learned about the military¡¯s ideas, he proposed a new concept to the military, which was the maritime prepositioned ship. This concept was also proposed by Lao America in another dimension, mainly to supplement air and sea transportation and shorten the time to deliver urgently needed equipment and supplies to the war zone. The specific method is to deploy such huge ships in some areas that contain a lot of equipment, ammunition, and supplies. Once a war breaks out, these ships can quickly go to the nearest incident site and provide supplies to the troops who rush there immediately. supplies.
Therefore, with the presence of the maritime prepositioned ship, soldiers can board the transport aircraft empty-handed, then fly to the combat zone, obtain the required equipment directly from the maritime prepositioned ship, and then go into battle.
The United States operates up to three maritime prepositioned ships, serving different services such as the Navy, Marine Corps, Army and Air Force. The United States used the Watson-class maritime prepositioned ship in the 1990s. The full load displacement of this type of prepositioned ship used by the Army can reach 6,930 tons. Four prepositioned ships can transport a U.S. Marine Corps expeditionary brigade. It has opened the door for the U.S. Army to engage in operations around the world.
Through the Gulf crisis, pL has carefully built a large-scale pre-positioned fleet, but it is impossible to reach the scale of the United States. First of all, China does not have that many military bases around the world that can operate these prepositioned ships. Secondly, it may be a waste of resources to build a large number of prepositioned ships at a point where there is basically no possibility of a large-scale war.
However, it is obvious that the development of pre-positioned ships is a very important topic in the field of future military delivery. The military has set up a research team to study whether it is necessary to develop some pre-positioned ships and put them into use.