Chapter 492: New Type of Missile (Patreon)

Transformers Begin : Table of Content/Chapter List

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"This information about the Beifeng-class supercomputer is very valuable!"

After spending some time reviewing the data ai-001 had stolen about the Beifeng-class supercomputer, Sun Cheng closed the folder with satisfaction.

Items like supercomputers are considered national treasures in any world.

His subsequent series of actions would require a massive amount of computing power, so assembling a supercomputer was imperative.

The first gain from ai-001 was so precious that it increased Sun Cheng's interest in the other data it had stolen.

However, he soon discovered that he had overestimated things.

Among the data, the information about the Beifeng-class supercomputer, which Revenge had organized and placed at the forefront, was undoubtedly ai-001's biggest haul from infiltrating the Nandu Supercomputing Center.

The other documents were mostly test data on weapon power and performance conducted by the military utilizing the Beifeng-class supercomputer's computational power.

After reviewing the test data, Sun Cheng found that most of these weapons were not significantly more powerful than some of the American and Russian-made weapons he was familiar with from the "Transformers Universe." In fact, some of them even had significant performance gaps, rendering them useless to him.

Of course, some still held value as references.

For instance, the Beifeng-class supercomputer had been utilized extensively by the military for testing and data validation of a new type of missile that Sun Cheng found intriguing.

As is widely known, nuclear weapons are arguably the most powerful creations of human civilization. Utilizing the energy released from atomic fission or fusion reactions, they can instantaneously alter the surface environment, destroy local ecosystems, cause thermal shock, persistent nuclear radiation, and even lead to the complete extinction of life in a region.

With the advancement of technology, the limitations of nuclear weapons have become increasingly apparent.

Nuclear weapons are like the sword of Damocles—unless the heads of those politicians are filled with water, no one dares to unleash mushroom clouds in warfare.

During the Cold War, a new type of nuclear weapon known as a cobalt bomb was proposed by nuclear physicists. This bomb would be encased in a layer of cobalt-59, and the neutron radiation from the nuclear explosion would transmute the cobalt-59 into cobalt-60. The decay of cobalt-60 produces radiation that could thoroughly destroy DNA and lead to mass casualties within a short time.

Although this weapon, which existed only in theory, could be created, it was met with strong resistance from the entire scientific community soon after its conception. Many nuclear-armed nations, including the United States and the Soviet Union, were wary of this evil weapon, and it was ultimately never brought to fruition.

In the past few decades, the risk of a third world war has gradually diminished, giving way to intensifying regional conflicts among major powers.

As a result, various weapons, which are as powerful as nuclear weapons but pose no threat to Earth's ecosystem and can bypass nuclear arms control agreements, especially various conventional missiles, have become the focus of research for many countries.

The missile test data discovered by ai-001 on the Beifeng-class supercomputer pertained to the development of a new type of cluster bomb being pursued by the military.

A cluster bomb is generally an air-to-ground missile that carries several to hundreds of smaller bombs called submunitions within a larger casing. This kind of missile is often released from attack aircraft, multirole fighters, or bombers over a target area. It disperses submunitions over a wide area on the ground to cause localized damage. This type of weapon is widely used to strike cluster targets on the ground, such as groups of tanks, armored vehicles, military bases, and even large targets like airport runways, providing significant destructive capability.

In the "Transformers Universe," since Base Two's primary research team was also conducting in-depth research on missiles, this unexpected gain became even more appealing to Sun Cheng compared to other data.

The new type of cluster bomb designed and tested by the military laboratory was specifically targeted at the Soviet Union.

Unlike the "Transformers Universe," the Soviet Union in the Real World didn't dissolve in the year 1991 due to differences in the timeline. It still stood as a formidable force on the Eurasian continent, exerting global influence.

Due to the deep-seated animosity between China and the Soviet Union dating back to the days of the Russian Empire, as well as conflicts between China and the Soviet Union since the Xinhai Revolution, the relationship between China and the USSR in the Real World has always been hostile.

From Northeast Asia to Central Asia, both countries deployed millions of troops along their extensive border spanning thousands of miles. Border conflicts persisted for over a century, and describing their enmity as "deep as the sea" is not an exaggeration.

Like China, the Soviet Union is a traditional land power, possessing tens of thousands of ground combat tanks, armored vehicles, and various artillery pieces.

To face such an opponent, the military's demand for cluster bombs has always been significant.

This time, ai-001's discovery on the Beifeng-class supercomputer was about a new type of cluster bomb being developed by a subordinate laboratory under the military. It was tentatively named "Ground Multi-Point Precision Attack Bomb." Strictly speaking, it was a type of cluster bomb, but not entirely the same.

It incorporated the design philosophy of cluster bombs while combining concepts from precision-guided bombs. Even in Sun Cheng's eyes, it was quite impressive.

Traditional cluster bombs are generally large in size and can only be carried in small quantities by fighter aircraft, mainly deployed by bombers.

However, this "Ground Multi-Point Precision Attack Missile" was designed from the start to meet General Faction's requirement for being equipped by a significant number of fighter aircraft for ground bombardment. In addition to reducing its size and using new high-explosive materials to compensate for the lower explosive power of submunitions, it also drew on design principles from precision-guided bombs to enhance the accuracy of the submunitions.

This was undoubtedly a very sensible development direction, even though there were numerous challenges during the military's development and testing process.

For instance, the various types of high-explosive materials available domestically were unable to solve the problem of reduced explosive power due to the missile's reduced size.

The most difficult challenge was improving the accuracy of the submunitions. Enhancing missile accuracy is a challenging task on its own, let alone the military's requirement to improve the accuracy of submunitions the size of a fist.

The military laboratory responsible for developing this new missile had to come up with a series of solutions, from developing new explosive materials, to redesigning the shape of the submunitions using fluid dynamics, to collaborating with other laboratories to design a new precision positioning system for the new missile.

Due to the need for a significant amount of computing power, the test and development data for the new missile were left on the Beifeng-class supercomputer owned by the military, which was housed at the Nandu Supercomputing Center.

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