Munitions Empire

Even if one is not afraid of becoming the next Liu Zhian, or being settled by the Great Tang Empire, they should weigh the possibility of the Great Tang Empire deploying new weapons and rendering the battlefield uncontrollable, shouldn't they?

Moreover, it's only been a few years since the Prime Minister of the Mirage Country was hanged in the Tang Country, and the grass on Liu Zhian's family's grave hasn't grown too high yet. Who would dare to casually test the immense wrath of the Great Tang Empire?

Haven't you seen, losing a battle only means going home to become a rich man, surrendering still gives you half a chance, but if you're truly blacklisted by the Great Tang Empire, you might end up either dead or living a miserable life in the remote mountains and forests for the rest of your life.

The Dwarf Emperor, Binghan the First, doesn't have a young and beautiful Princess, nor could he expect to receive the son-in-law treatment from the Emperor of the Great Tang Empire—if the Great Tang Empire really decided to kill without mercy and used large-scale landmines, it could indeed implicate the Dwarf Royal Family.

So, no matter how desperately they wished to stop the Tang Army from landing, the Dwarves ultimately decided not to use naval mines and landmines in the Steel Rampart area.

However, the Dwarves weren't without other ideas. To counter the possible offensive of the Tang Army, they still developed a large amount of weaponry they deemed "feasible."

Firstly, they believed that the firepower advantage of the Tang Army couldn't be compensated with heavy equipment, so they equipped a large number of mortars and sniper rifles, aiming to inflict maximum casualties on the Tang Army and force them to cancel their assault.

Additionally, the Dwarves took advantage of their non-war status with the Great Tang Empire to import Jian-6 fighter jets and related technologies from the Great Tang Empire.

With the new aircraft, they also developed several derivative models, installing various strange devices on the original aircraft, trying to find a shortcut to catch up with the development speed of the Imperial Air Force.

But in the end, the bizarre designs only had bizarre functions, and those Jian-6 fighter jets, which looked almost like monsters, ended up being just some peculiar junk.

Nevertheless, the Great Tang Empire was quite willing to sell advanced technology to the Dwarves because they showed more sincerity than the empires like Dorne and Laines—well, they had more money, or rather, they had more resources for trade.

The Dwarves have more ore, more steel, and other industrial raw materials. Their icy lands are full of treasures, so they have more money to purchase advanced technology.

The Great Tang Empire is not lacking in advanced technology, so even though they are about to take action against the Ice Cold Empire, the Great Tang Group still sold some technologies to the Dwarves.

For example... the technology to enable the Jian-6 to take off at night. Installing a small radar in the nose of the aircraft, allowing this type of plane to take off and land in very low visibility, is actually not a difficult task.

In fact, the Great Tang Group even "developed a new design" for the Ice Cold Empire, a Jian-6 model with side air intakes, providing the conditions to install higher performance radar.

Indeed, this thing is the Qiang-5, more like an attack aircraft than a fighter jet. It can use ground-attack rockets and even drop large bombs.

Of course, in extreme situations, in another dimension, the Qiang-5 could even drop nuclear bombs. Under such circumstances, its shortcomings like low accuracy and high speed were not considered flaws.

Of course, the Dwarves' Qiang-5 didn't have such weapons as nuclear bombs, and their Qiang-5 wasn't even called Qiang-5. Among the engineers of the Great Tang Group, this type of attack aircraft was termed as "Jian Liu Gai," bought by the Dwarves using real gold and silver for advanced weaponry.

Even though they knew that the Tang Army had more advanced weapons and that such planes couldn't compete with the Tang Army's planes, the Dwarves still obediently handed over the money and took away the technology blueprints and production lines.

Because their MiG-9s were even worse, and they had no way to counter the Poplar Empire Air Force's Type 262 fighter jets.

Now, even though it was a bit late, the Dwarves still used the old method of spending money to enter the era of jet fighters.

However, at this stage, they realized that having only the planes wasn't enough. They needed to catch up on far too many things, so they had to spend even more money.

They didn't have pilots for jet fighters. Their pilots had always flown propeller-driven aircraft, and now suddenly switching to jet aircraft required time to adapt.

Additionally, they didn't have the airports and facilities for jet planes. The specifications of airports that could accommodate jet planes were obviously different from their previous airports. Therefore, rebuilding airports to enable these advanced planes to fly became a massive task.

Dozens of airports needed simultaneous improvements, and new airports had to be constructed to higher standards. All of this required money and more time.

Thirdly, the Dwarves didn't have corresponding tactics and understanding. This was actually a problem, as the use of jet fighters requires exploration, experience accumulation, which the Dwarves did not possess without the Great Tang Empire's air combat experience.

They were even worse than the neighboring Poplar Empire, which had long been using Type 262 jet fighters and had harassed the Dwarven Air Force for an entire year; even bullying the weak is an experience, isn't it?

Of course, the Dwarves also lacked ground service maintenance crews and a large stock of ammunition prepared for jet planes. These personnel needed to be trained, and the ammunition needed time to be produced.

In short, they had to start all over again, and in the coming months or even years, they had no choice but to put their limited resources into the bottomless pit of jet planes.

Unfortunately, what these Dwarves didn't know was that the reason the Great Tang Empire was willing to sell them these advanced technologies was actually just to ensure that the air forces of these nations all had a flaming tail.

There's no choice; only when these planes heat up can the relatively inexpensive infrared combat missiles be better deployed in battle. Relying on those radar-guided air-to-air missiles is just too costly.

Semi-active radar-guided missiles are too troublesome to use, and require the pilots to continuously guide the missiles, which naturally doesn't meet the air force's operational requirements.

Sometimes, if the opponent is too weak, it's also a problem. You can't use Dongfeng Missiles to target their archers, right? That would be ruinous...

Therefore, to encourage as many nations on the Eastern Continent to use jet aircraft, the Great Tang Group's engineering and technical personnel really worked hard.

As for the effectiveness of this strategy... once both sides go to war, it will become clear.