Chapter 9 The Snake Catcher Said (1)

  Article One

  Indonesia's East Java port city of Surabaya, another dawn arrived amidst the flames of war. As it was mainly inhabited by Chinese before the war, this once prosperous metropolis had already been deserted before the Indonesian rebels entered Surabaya.

  After experiencing the baptism of fire for a day and night, the entire city has become a dead silence. Except for the occasional armed helicopters flying over by the Chinese army, the streets of Surabaya are left with only the innocent Muslim children's naive laughter and smiles.

  Among the ruins of buildings, the traces of last night's fierce battle were still clearly visible, and the Indonesian rebel army's French-made AMX-130 was destroyed.

  Type 90 light tank, AMX-13

  The wreckage of VCI infantry fighting vehicles littered the streets of this city. Muslim women rummaged through the bodies of Indonesian rebels for anything they thought useful, while ignorant children climbed over the still-smoking armored beasts or chased each other around them.

  The Indonesian military government was not unaware of the strategic value of Surabaya as Indonesia's second-largest city and a good port. Therefore, while the Japanese Self-Defense Forces were busy besieging the Chinese armed forces, the Indonesian rebels assembled an elite infantry division and the so-called "Rapid Deployment Airborne Brigade" established in 1986 to deploy defenses in the Surabaya area. Before the Chinese army launched its offensive, the total strength of the Indonesian rebels in the Surabaya area exceeded 35,000 people, with hundreds of tanks and armored vehicles concentrated.

  The Japanese army was waiting in ambush, but the so-called elite troops collapsed and fled in less than 24 hours when faced with the Chinese People's Liberation Army (PLA) that had crossed the sea. They were up against the strongest force in Asia - the PLA's Airborne Corps' 171st Aviation Brigade, also known as "Snake Eaters".

  The idea of establishing an army aviation assault division with armed helicopters as the main combat weapon can be traced back to the mid-1980s, the early days of China's reform and opening-up. However, it was the 1991 Gulf War that truly made the Chinese army feel the power of aviation assault divisions. In the 100-hour ground war codenamed "Desert Storm", the world's first airborne assault division, the US "Screaming Eagles" - 101st Division, carried out the first large-scale, long-distance airborne assault operation in human warfare history, tearing apart the seemingly impenetrable "Saddam Line" like a piece of rotten cloth and sending tens of thousands of elite Iraqi troops into prisoner-of-war camps.

  For a fairly long period of time after the Gulf War, the Chinese military could not shake off the shadow of high-tech and modern warfare demonstrated by the US military. Learning from the US and defeating the US became the goal and slogan for many ambitious military men in China, and various model troops and experimental troops emerged within the serial numbers of major military regions in China.

  Some new military theorists have even put forward bold ideas for building a large-scale airborne assault force beyond the US. However, theory is just theory, and in reality, China's military needed to change too many things in the 1990s, had too many problems to solve, and did not possess the basic material conditions for building a large-scale airborne assault corps, because limited military funds were used for more urgent maintenance and promotion of the great cause of national reunification.

  As a result, an entire generation of Chinese soldiers could only lock up the ideal of airborne assault divisions in their safes and continue to take solid steps forward. However, with the comprehensive easing of military tensions across the Taiwan Strait in 2005, military exchanges between the two sides began to increase in frequency, and the Airborne Cavalry Brigade of the Taiwan Special Administrative Region once again sparked the dreams of mainland soldiers from years past.

  And the first to turn this dream into reality was still China's large-scale military intervention in Vietnam's internal war at the end of 2005 and early 2006. In order to consolidate its rule in northern Vietnam, the powerful Chinese army may have launched a ground offensive from the northern border, and the Vietnamese mobilized all their possible forces, starting from the Sino-Vietnamese border, building a huge and complex system of fortifications that stretched for hundreds of kilometers to the suburbs of Hanoi, with the spirit of "all-around defense" mobilizing more than 400,000 militia and reserve soldiers formed a collective defense known as the "Valley of Hell", an American military expert who was imprisoned in Hanoi at the time had determined that "the Chinese army will advance through a sea of blood waist-deep".

  Facing such a situation, Major General Ren Lingyu, then deputy commander of the Vietnam and South China Sea war zone, had to overthrow his old superior, his mentor with the reputation of "China's first mountain warfare" - Chengdu Military Region Commander Zhang Lingzhong's armored cluster short-strike "peeling cocoon tactics".

  With the support of the Central Military Commission, a temporary air assault force, known as the "Hanoi Battle Group", was formed within 25 days. From January 12 to 18, 2006, over 1,100 military helicopters were mobilized for long-distance assaults, occupying Hanoi, the political and military center of North Vietnam, in just six days. Almost all high-ranking leaders of the Viet Cong failed to escape during this military operation, thus ending the Vietnam War with minimal cost, a conflict that was expected by the Americans to last at least two years and claim millions of lives.

  But the so-called "Flying Fist of the Chinese Army" and "Shadow Troop of the 13th Group Army of China", the "Hanoi Battle Group" that was hyped by Western media after the war, was actually still a temporary and hastily assembled motley crew. If it weren't for the fact that the Chinese Marine Corps had laid down a false trail in southern Vietnam and Haiphong before the operation, forcing the Vietnamese to redeploy their air defense troops from Hanoi, this airborne raid would not have been easy to succeed.

  Through this military operation, the Chinese army also accumulated valuable combat experience. In May 2006, the first airborne assault brigade of the Chinese army - the 171st Airborne Assault Brigade was formally established in the Jinan Military Region, which is the "Snake Catcher" Brigade that will be famous in future wars.

  The composition of the Chinese People's Liberation Army Aviation Corps is largely modeled after that of the German Army Aviation Corps, which also has a long tradition of army aviation. The corps consists of: 1 attack helicopter regiment, 2 army aviation regiments, and other auxiliary units, with a total strength of 12,500 personnel. The corps is equipped with 425 military helicopters, including 171 WZ-9D attack helicopters, 51 WZ-9E electronic reconnaissance helicopters, 99 WZ-11 multi-purpose helicopters, and 92 Mi-17 transport helicopters. In addition, there are also 12 Russian-made Ka-52 "Alligator" heavy armed attack helicopters. The corps' ground forces are also equipped with 115 armored combat vehicles.

  In this transoceanic assault operation, the first wave of the main attack force was the 7th and 17th Anti-Tank Helicopter Battalions belonging to the 5th Attack Helicopter Regiment, with a total of 112 Mi-9Ds.

  The E type helicopter, although limited in numbers but sufficient to overwhelm the poorly equipped Indonesian rebels.

  The 310th "Chinese Crocodile" Independent Flying Regiment, equipped with 12 Russian-made Ka-52 heavy armed attack helicopters, was one step ahead of the rest of the division in entering combat. They took off from the forward airport at the southernmost tip of Kalimantan Island and flew for 90 minutes before the division's offensive began, eliminating four ground-based early warning radar stations set up by Japan for Indonesian rebels in East Java, thus opening two 15-kilometer-wide air corridors for the entire division.

  In the specific attack, the 7th and 17th Anti-Tank Helicopter Regiments launched a pincer movement. The 7th Anti-Tank Helicopter Regiment took the lead, while the 17th Anti-Tank Helicopter Regiment circled around to the west of Sragen and set up an ambush. After the advance party destroyed the power supply system in Sragen, the Indonesian rebel forces were paralyzed by electromagnetic suppression, and their communications were disrupted. The rebels became disorganized and fired wildly with various light and heavy weapons, making them the best target for the Chinese helicopter group's attack. Within 15 minutes, most of the Indonesian rebel forces' air defense firepower was destroyed, and more ground armor targets became helpless prey. The Indonesian army, which had attempted to escape westward, fell into the firing range of the 17th Anti-Tank Helicopter Regiment and was forced to abandon their heavy weapons and retreat back into the city. Meanwhile, as friendly forces killed Indonesian rebels with dense firepower, the 11th Light Transport Helicopter Regiment of the 5th Attack Helicopter Brigade quickly opened up a landing site and established a transit base, allowing troops to continuously resupply on the front line and maintain pressure on the Indonesian rebels in the city.

  The actual battle lasted only 48 hours, and the Indonesian rebels were powerless to fight again and dispersed. An army of over 30,000 people was so simple that it was less than its troops.

  The enemy troops were driven out of the defensive area, which is also a ruthless mockery of the combat effectiveness of the Indonesian army.