Chapter 374 - 366 The Great Wall_1

"Our spacecraft don’t even have nuclear-powered engines, yet they already have two nuclear-powered vehicles," complained Kerry as soon as he arrived at JFT, leaving Freeman utterly baffled.

"Two? Isn’t it just the one Storm?"

The assistant from the Air Force Intelligence Room following him opened his smartphone, displaying a photo taken outside B-level Base: an An-1250 taking off with an H2 that had not yet had its engines installed.

"With Glory and March under maintenance in Qiongzhou, and Storm in space, what was the aircraft that flew out of their base three hours ago doing?

Although there are only a few incomplete photos, it’s possible to distinguish between the H2N and H2M models, and moreover, this plane wasn’t heading to Qiongzhou, but to Shengjing."

"Shengjing?"

Freeman was fairly knowledgeable about China’s main scientific research and production institutions; he knew that it was the domain of the Republic’s eldest son, Shenyang Aviation, and an H2N headed there was evidently for military modification.

The Storm was certainly for civilian use, as could be seen from its very first flight when it carried out the installation mission for the March. But this mysterious H2N was another story.

Kerry: "Can you tell me why the H2N hasn’t had its engines installed?"

Freeman: "That’s easy to understand. If you need to install a lot of weapons, you’ll necessarily have to perform large-scale reconfiguration of the internal pipelines and cooling system. Let me see the photo... Yes, it was transported there before it was finished, so the matching three A100 engines will likely also be altered.

So this spacecraft will definitely not be for civilian purposes."

Kerry: "That’s why I am now making new demands on behalf of the Air Force for the NERVA A105, asking that it have at least a 10MW power output capability."

"..."

Freeman glanced at the Air Force Intelligence Room assistant behind Kerry, who shook his head slightly.

Clearly, Major General Kerry had no understanding of the technology.

Even if he managed to make the engine output 10MW of power, the spacecraft couldn’t possibly carry a laser of such high power. A laser of this size couldn’t achieve such power, and the problem of heat dissipation would also be extremely vexing.

If he wasn’t mistaken, didn’t the Raytheon Company’s latest laser project have a power level of 300 kilowatts? They were far from close!

Moreover, using lasers in space to intercept objects hundreds of kilometers away was entirely different from intercepting unmanned drones a few kilometers away on the ground. The requirements for the laser differ substantially, as well.

Fortunately, he was also well-acquainted with America’s old military-industrial tricks. He nodded and agreed right away, figuring that he could back out later.

Besides, had Boeing finished refurbishing the Endeavour? Certainly not, right? There was no way it could return to flight by July.

After sending Kerry on his way, Freeman continued to wait for the Air Force and NACA’s detection results for Storm, which would greatly aid in the development of NERVA A105.

...

After launch, Storm, like a ghost, vanished from media attention, which was largely the result of domestic repression.

Even less is available in terms of internal imagery of Storm. After the seven astronauts entered March for docking, only footage within the space station was broadcasted, with the outside world not even getting a glimpse of Storm’s pink trail.

Now, the top topic in domestic public opinion is the C832.

After its maiden flight, the C832 soon welcomed a flood of orders: 4 from Eastern Airlines, 4 from Southern Air, 6 from Hainan Airlines, 3 from Xiamen Airlines, and 2 more purchased by Air China, plus two orders for special-use aircraft, netting a total of 21 orders, a rather significant number.

In comparison, the C919 has only garnered 18 orders since its first flight. Although this is not bad, the momentum is clearly not as strong.

Moreover, the C832 has an advantage over the C919: as a completely indigenously produced passenger jet, it can be used as a military aircraft without restrictions.

The military plans to equip six Airborne Early Warning Aircraft 1000 and twelve Air Refueling-10 aircraft within the next five years, as well as a total of 20 Gaoxin 10 series electronic jammers and Airborne 10 series anti-submarine reconnaissance aircraft. This means 18 C832s and 20 C822 transformation projects will be jointly completed with Xifei.

The thirty-odd planes are just the appetizer. In fact, according to the Air Force’s own estimates, given China’s scale, roughly 150 to 200 logistics and special mission aircraft are needed, all to be adapted from the C822 and C832 platforms.

As for the H2N that was transported out of the base after the Storm’s first flight, it naturally became "Great Wall One," the first aircraft of Project 909.

Fengtian, 611 Institute.

More than a dozen researchers from the base directed the crane to lift the semi-finished Great Wall One onto a special trailer, then towed it into the large transformation workshop that Shenyang Aviation had prepared early on.

Engineers from the 611 Institute and New Yuan were present, along with many personnel from the Aerospace Third Academy, the Ninth Academy, Modu Optical Precision Machinery Research Institute, Beijing Laser Research Institute, and other institutions.

Together, they would carry out the subsequent transformation of Great Wall One here, turning it into a covert space assassin.

The mission of Modu Optical Precision Machinery and Beijing Laser is to develop a laser weapon that can wield maximum destructive power on the Great Wall One platform.

Great Wall One can allocate 50 tons for the laser weapon and cooling system, with a maximum take-off weight of 132 tons. The figures are quite generous, but for Modu Optical Precision Machinery, this is still a "small gadget."

In 1986, they developed "God’s Light One," which was the size of several football fields and could output trillions of watts of power in one-billionth of a second. Subsequently, they developed God’s Light Two and Three. The God’s Light Three, newly deployed in 2014, is capable of an output peak power of 60 billion kilowatts.

Of course, these behemoths are too large and heavy to be taken into space, and their longest working time is only a few billionths of a second, nowhere near the one-minute output capability of Thousand-Jun Stick No. 1.

The "God’s Light" series is aimed at nuclear fusion laser ignition. They only need to work for a very short time with at least a hundred light sources operating simultaneously, making them unsuitable as weapons.

However, since the advent of "God’s Light One," China’s laser technology had entered the world’s top rank, also spurring the rapid development of laser devices in other fields.

Exactly how powerful a laser weapon Great Wall One will be equipped with is something New Yuan isn’t clear about, as it greatly relates to combat strategies and targets, besides, the prototype hasn’t even been built yet...

The laser technology of Project 909 is even more important than that of the space shuttle, and it would be miraculous if it could be put into use within a year. A delay of two or three years wouldn’t be surprising.

Of course, unknown to all was the fact that one of the engineers from the base who had come to assist with the transformation was from the laser laboratory; he was only posing as an ordinary ion power engineer, indifferently listening to two researchers from the laser institute critically assessing the frame of Great Wall One.

"...The attack port can only be opened above the cargo bay, fortunately, it’s wide enough, but cooling still presents some issues."

"Then use a retractable lens, moving the cooling section outwards."

"That won’t do, the precision is too difficult to control. We also have to consider the violent shaking of the airframe during takeoff and landing within the atmosphere. The light source must be extremely stable... To be honest, installing a laser on a spaceplane greatly affects its precision; it can only be used for attacks outside the atmosphere, which is a pity.

It would be better to separate these modules out... cough."