Chapter 286 - 286: Powerless

"The third key point: weapons."

Reid Van pointed at a photograph.

It listed all the weapons and equipment that the Homo Sapiens Company has either publicly revealed or that have been discovered.

Army Equipment: Cobra Assault Rifle (7mm caliber), Cobra Heavy Machine Gun (12mm caliber), Cobra Sniper Rifle (12mm caliber), Cobra Pistol (7mm caliber)...

Fierce Tiger Exoskeleton Armor (compatible with various universal modules), Mountain Cat All-Terrain Armored Vehicle (compatible with various universal modules), Malayan Crocodile Amphibious Armored Vehicle, Sumatran Tiger Light Tank...

Naval Equipment: 43 Manila-class Frigates, 8 Luzon-class Amphibious Assault Ships, 3 Great Luzon-class Amphibious Assault Ships.

One giant submarine with a displacement of 70,000 to 80,000 tons (suspected to be nuclear-powered), at least ten large submarines, and an unknown number of small submarines.

Additionally, 173 large coast guard ships, 22 supply ships, 12 large hovercraft, and 27 special-purpose vessels.

Its navy is equipped with special giant cannons, nearly invisible large and small drones, Sea Eagle Fighters (one of the MiG-25 variants), and special silent sea mines and torpedoes.

Air Force Equipment: Eagle Fighter (one of the MiG-25 variants), Owl helicopters, large and small drones, Golden Roc Transporter (convertible into a bomber and an early warning aircraft).

Special Weaponry: Longge Lang Giant Cannon, armed satellites (suspected).

After reviewing this list of equipment, the United States Army generals present were forced to acknowledge the true strength of the Homo Sapiens Company.

Reid Van pointed to a blurry satellite image. "Among these weapons, the biggest threats to us are undoubtedly that super-submarine and the Longge Lang Giant Cannon."

"According to the report from Guam Base, the enemy's submarines are clearly superior to ours in terms of diving depth and silencing. This is also the reason why three Los Angeles-class submarines were driven out of the Luzon Sea."

A flicker of embarrassment crossed Benjamin's face. The navy had truly been humiliated in this latest engagement.

Reid Van pointed to another picture, this one of the *Sea Plow*, taken at Changi Base. "Furthermore, according to Major General Sullivan's observations, the Homo Sapiens Company's shipbuilding technology is also extraordinary. At the very least, their material strength is extremely high—they can collide head-on with underwater reefs."

Looking at the *Sea Plow's* rugged exterior, Benjamin's brow furrowed even more.

"If the Homo Sapiens Company's submarines and warships are all built to this standard, we'll need to make targeted improvements to our missiles. Otherwise, we'll have a hard time breaching their armor."

Mark William made the call. "Regardless of whether they're using materials of this grade on their submarines and warships, we have to assume they are. We'll develop appropriate armor-piercing warheads."

John, head of the Equipment Bidding Office, replied while taking notes, "I'll have my office draw up a corresponding bid proposal."

Benjamin, looking troubled, asked, "Equipment Research Office, how do you plan to counter the Homo Sapiens Company's stealth and silencing technologies?"

Anthony, the head of the Equipment Research Office, looked just as troubled. Since the conflict broke out, his office had been continuously researching how to counter the Homo Sapiens Company's stealth and silencing technologies.

But even after bringing together hundreds of analysts and experts specializing in weapons R&D, his office still hadn't come up with a viable technical solution.

He had no choice but to say, "Gentlemen, the problem we're facing is that their aircraft can generally fly flexibly at ultra-low altitudes, and their radar-absorbent material is excellent. Unless we can obtain this material…"

"We must have recovered some drone wreckage, right?" Mark William looked at Benjamin.

But Benjamin shook his head with an embarrassed look. "No. The enemy's drones were all destroyed in their explosions."

For their suicide drones (i.e., loitering munitions), the Homo Sapiens Company only applied a special, single-use layer of radar-absorbent material. This material has a particular characteristic: it is only effective for 10 hours.

This material itself doesn't have radar-absorbent properties after being sprayed on. However, once a current of 172-175 volts is passed through it for about 30 seconds, the coating's absorbent properties are activated.

But after activation, this property can only be maintained for a period of time. This duration is adjustable, and once the time is up, the coating automatically decomposes into other components.

Burned by napalm and thermite or blown into fragments, even if the United States Army obtained some wreckage, it would be very difficult to reverse-engineer the material or discover its weaknesses.

Many of the Homo Sapiens Company's weapons and equipment have special security measures. Unless America has someone inside the Homo Sapiens Company, it is very difficult to obtain these secrets.

Reid Van sighed helplessly. "This is also our biggest problem right now. The phased-array radars we currently have equipped cannot lock onto the enemy's aircraft."

The inability of radar to lock onto a target is an absolute nightmare for a modern military. Many weapons systems now require radar lock to destroy or intercept targets.

As for relying on manual observation, that's not feasible anymore.

This isn't a Hollywood blockbuster.

If you want to shoot down planes by manually operating anti-aircraft guns, you'd have to cover the entire warship with Phalanx CIWS and AA guns just to have a chance at stopping highly stealthy, ultra-low-altitude drones.

On ships like aircraft carriers and amphibious assault ships, the deck space is needed for aircraft, making it impossible to equip them with too many Phalanx CIWS.

Mark William had an even bigger headache than Benjamin. He asked, "Why can't our radio jamming systems make the Homo Sapiens Company's drones go out of control?"

"According to feedback from the Fifth Fleet, they did activate their drone jamming systems, but it had no effect on the Homo Sapiens Company's drones." Reid Van was also completely baffled by this.

Clearly, they were once again trapped by their own conventional thinking.

Conventional drones are susceptible to jamming because they rely on external navigation and monitoring, which means they're packed with electronic equipment. The processing power of their chips is generally quite low, nowhere near enough to support an intelligent program, so they can only follow a pre-set flight path.

But a drone equipped with a bio-chip and magnetic field radar has the processing power equivalent to a supercomputer. Since it doesn't need satellite navigation or support from external radar, it naturally won't be affected by jamming.

It's just like a cell phone.

A cell phone with a traditional electronic chip cannot browse websites without a network connection.

But a cell phone equipped with a bio-chip has such a massive internal database and processing power that it can achieve the effect of "simulated browsing" of a website.

For example, if you want to watch a TV series on your phone, the bio-chip can compress and store the data for all commercially available TV series in its database ahead of time.

In this situation, having a network connection or not doesn't affect your ability to watch the series.

And this is exactly the case with the drones produced by the Homo Sapiens Company.

The Pentagon's attempts to understand the Homo Sapiens Company's drones, based on the assumption of conventional electronic systems, were clearly a case of barking up the wrong tree.

After a long discussion, the Pentagon could only come to one conclusion: the Homo Sapiens Company held a significant advantage over the United States Army in conventional weaponry.

This conclusion left the assembled United States Army generals deeply dejected.

It also dispelled the idea some had of retaliating against the Homo Sapiens Company in the short term. Since a nuclear war was off the table, and they couldn't win a conventional hot war, no one dared to clamor for a fight.

「The day after the Pentagon meeting.」

An assessment report on the military strength of the Homo Sapiens Company was delivered to the City of the Council and the heads of the public-facing organizations.