What is even more absurd is that the Union of Soviet Republics' communication satellite network program, manned spaceflight program, and even the crewed lunar landing program were already on the agenda!
The main reason they hadn't crushed Germania into the dirt all along was the fear of excessive casualties, so they were simply waiting for their nuclear weapons to reach combat readiness.
The so-called "general offensive" mentioned earlier, as well as the inability to detach forces to reinforce the Southern United Front, were merely strategic deployments.
At the same time, they could use a batch of retired equipment to trade for certain resources—things like mineral rights and tariffs, steady-value returns of that nature.
Based on these foundations, the Union of Soviet Republics' unusually solid defense lines finally made sense.
It was essentially like...
Dropping one of the permanent members of the Security Council directly into the African region, only for them to be stabbed by the surrounding small countries and barely even scratched.
The Security Council member found it annoying and didn't bother to pay attention to that small country.
Yet that small country became increasingly emboldened, pulling out all sorts of things to stab it with.
Finally getting sick of the nuisance, the Security Council member decided to pull a stunt and casually swatted the small country out of existence with a backhand slap.
That was precisely the state the Union of Soviet Republics was in right now.
The other nations to the south were mere bugs, while the Germanic fellows to the east were forever dreaming of ruling the world.
The Union of Soviet Republics had decided to quietly grind their technology in a corner and stun everyone in one fell swoop!
This led the Union of Soviet Republics to assign massive numbers of troops to various regional Production and Construction Corps, and even establish multiple research teams composed of military personnel.
The salaries of these Production and Construction Corps remained identical to their original military pay; they had simply been reassigned to serve in a different location.
The total strength of the Soviet Red Army, which originally stood at 2.1 million, rapidly shrank to 900,000.
This also disguisedly contributed to the Union of Soviet Republics acquiescing to Germania's expansion when the war first broke out.
Out of vigilance toward Germania, the troops gradually began to restore military construction and active-duty troop numbers.
As for keeping things in check...
Keeping check my foot!
After all, it was just bugs biting dogs, and the Soviet side was more than happy to watch the spectacle.
However...
After Germania annexed three countries, one of those nations bordering Germania launched a red revolution, successfully overthrowing the monarchical parliament and immediately announcing its accession to the Union of Soviet Republics.
Ordinarily, this wasn't any big deal; the Union of Soviet Republics and Germania already shared a border, and this merely expanded the shared border's length.
Germania, however, saw things quite differently.
Perhaps the transmigrator had a screw loose in their head and fancied themselves invincible.
Under the pretext of helping the Kalansia royal family reclaim their territory, they directly launched an attack on the newly joined member of the Union of Soviet Republics, completely capturing all of Kalansia's original territory within half a month.
Because Kalansia had just joined the Union, both its military strength and technical equipment were still stuck half a century in the past.
Facing Germania's blitzkrieg, they had zero capacity to fight back.
Furthermore, Germania also launched a full-scale offensive in the areas where it already bordered the Soviets.
This plunged the already troop-strapped Union of Soviet Republics into a passive predicament.
A total of 2.2 million Germanic troops, divided into four field armies, simultaneously launched a massive offensive all along the border against the Soviets.
For a Union of Soviet Republics whose active-duty force numbered only 1.3 million at the time, this was undoubtedly exceptionally difficult.
Even though Soviet weaponry, equipment, and troop quality were slightly superior to Germania's, fighting three opponents at once was hardly feasible.
What's more, out of those 1.3 million men, 300,000 were naval personnel and 400,000 were southern border defense troops, meaning the actual forces that could be mobilized to engage Germania head-on amounted to only around 600,000 army and air force personnel.
Thanks to the prompt response of the Soviet government—which immediately mobilized all available frontline troops to defend against Germania's advance, formed 300,000 men from the southern border defense forces into the Southeastern Front, and combined the rest of the border troops to form three mixed field armies of 300,000 men each—they successfully halted Germania's further advance.
After fighting several brilliant defensive battles, the Union of Soviet Republics immediately initiated the recall of the Production and Construction Corps, bringing back over 700,000 personnel—including 600,000 infantry, 50,000 air force personnel, and 50,000 naval personnel—in the span of just a few weeks.
While in the Production and Construction Corps, they had served as tractor drivers, pesticide sprayer pilots, inland waterway transport crewmen, and demolition squad members...
Of the 700,000 recalled personnel, 100,000 infantrymen were integrated into the southern border defense forces. Of the remaining 500,000 infantrymen, 100,000 were assigned to the Northeastern Front, 200,000 to the Eastern Front, and 200,000 to the Southeast Front.
The 50,000 recalled air force personnel were all assigned to the fiercely contested Eastern Front, while the 50,000 naval personnel were assigned to the Northern Fleet and Western Fleet.
Simultaneously, the Union of Soviet Republics declared a nationwide state of emergency.
Factories shifted from 8-hour days to 24-hour three-shift operations, and large-scale recruitment drives were launched for both workers and troops.
The military recruitment drive came with a restriction that seemed rather bizarre to other nations:
They refused to accept anyone currently employed in agricultural work, nor any industrial workers engaged in manufacturing.
This decision was made with consideration for the massive manpower required for wartime production.
Even with these restrictions barring workers and peasants from enlisting, a massive number of workers and farmers still falsified their identities to join the Soviet Red Army.
Their reasons for joining the Red Army were simple and unpretentious.
If the Red Army were defeated and the Union of Soviet Republics ceased to exist, kings and lords would once again trample over their heads, snatching away the homes they had worked so hard to build and endlessly exploiting them.
Therefore, the Red Army could not lose, and the Union of Soviet Republics could not perish.
All these factors caused Germania to be completely dumbfounded when they launched their blitzkrieg against the Soviets.
The equipment levels of both sides looked roughly similar, their troop numbers were comparable, and Germania actually had slightly more troops than the Soviets.
Yet how on earth did this absurd battle situation come about? Why on earth couldn't the Empire's elite pierce through this group of Red Army defense lines? Why were their own positions being toyed with daily by Soviet infiltration units?!
And what on earth was up with this outrageous level of organization and troop quality?!
An infantry squad completely wiping out a light armored company—what was that about?! Even more absurdly, this had become the norm across the entire front line!
For a time, frontline commanders throughout Germania were completely at a loss, rank-and-file soldiers were battered numb, and the decision-making echelons were left in total confusion.
Wait a minute, wasn't the Union of Soviet Republics supposed to be a rotten house that would collapse at a single kick?!
So many intelligence reports had claimed the Soviets weren't that strong—that their technological development was lagging, rocket engine technology had failed to break through, neither military nor civilian aircraft production had met expectations, armor technology R&D was sluggish, and rail transport had fallen short of target goals...
Why did the situation look completely wrong?!
That kick had certainly been delivered, but it hadn't hit a rotten house.
Dammit, they'd kicked a fortress of war!
Not only did it refuse to collapse, but a horde of burly men had swarmed out from inside and beaten them to a pulp!
Fortunately, Germania's troop quality and equipment levels were also quite good. Their domestic economy was fairly stable, and the defense forces in the industrial zones were also quite resilient.
Otherwise...
With this scale of counterattack, had it been any other country, flags of the opposing side would likely have been planted in their capital within six months.
Let's ping the Third Reich here: Red Flag Over Berlin.JPG
All that aside, the intelligence Germania initially received was indeed genuine and not intentionally leaked fake news by the Soviets.
It was just that... the actual details of this intelligence might have differed by a "tiny" margin from what Germania's intelligence department had deduced.
Technological development was indeed lagging, because the original plan was to complete full industrial automation and build an information-based, intelligent society within 40 years. Unfortunately, progress had been slow, and from the current perspective, it would take 50 years.
That rocket engine technology had failed to break through was also true. The current maximum payload capacity of the Union-1 rocket into low Earth orbit was only 0.9 tons, and crewed spaceflight remained a distant prospect.
What? You ask why the range of the R-1 was only 580 kilometers?
That was because they used solid-fuel engines, and the missile body was relatively small. Constrained by current solid-fuel engine technology, managing to fly over five hundred kilometers was already quite an achievement.
As for equipping ballistic missiles with liquid-fuel engines... it wasn't that the Soviet Aerospace Academy hadn't considered it, but doing so lacked significant meaning.
After all... all threatening nations were clustered close together. Air-launched missiles could achieve a range of nearly 800 kilometers, which, paired with long-range bombers boasting flight ranges of several thousand kilometers, was more than enough to strike any country's capital. It was completely sufficient.
By the way, the R-1 was capable of air-launching and adjusting its trajectory mid-flight, though the accuracy would suffer significantly, with a deviation radius of about 500 meters. With a megaton-class nuclear warhead mounted, this deviation posed zero problem for flattening a city, since the blast coverage area was large enough.
Aircraft failing to meet expectations was even easier to understand, because the jet aircraft performance metrics assigned to the Aerospace Academy were 1-1-1—specifically, ten thousand meters altitude, one Mach, and one thousand kilometers range, which were fighter jet metrics. For passenger planes, the targets were 800 kilometers per hour, [missing altitude] meters flight altitude, and a 4,000-kilometer range. The requirements for bombers were even higher: 1.2 Mach, [missing altitude] meters flight altitude, and a 6,000-kilometer range.
The fastest current military aircraft was the N-12 fighter, with a top speed reaching 0.9 Mach, a flight altitude of [missing altitude] meters, and a maximum range of 900 kilometers. This was the closest to the target metrics; the others weren't even worth mentioning.
The B-15 bomber had a top speed of 800 kilometers per hour, a flight altitude of [missing altitude] meters, and a maximum range of 3,000 kilometers—not even coming close to touching the planned metrics.
Passenger planes were even more hopeless. Because they had to factor in economic viability and safety and couldn't trade comfort and manufacturing cost for raw performance the way military aircraft could, the actual finished products ended up rather lackluster. The Blue Sky Type 1 passenger plane (prototype) had a top speed of 600 kilometers per hour, a flight altitude of [missing altitude] meters, and a maximum range of 2,000 kilometers, alongside poor handling, a passenger capacity of only 70 people, and great difficulty in landing deceleration...
Upon seeing the "stellar" performance of the prototype at the time, the Union Aerospace Academy's large aircraft design team collectively fell into a dead silence.
Thus, the intelligence reports were entirely accurate: aircraft development had indeed failed to meet expectations. It was just that those expectations had been set rather high.
As for armored vehicle technology developing slowly, one could only say that Germania simply didn't understand tank development—perhaps caused by a transmigrator's blind spot in knowledge?
The technical bottlenecks encountered by the Soviets were the material application and weight reduction issues of composite armor, as well as the output power and reliability problems of integrated power packs. The reliability of active night-vision systems and in-vehicle fire suppression and explosion suppression systems also presented issues, while friend-or-foe identification systems and two-way gun stabilization still harbored certain hidden flaws.
That was why they hadn't been able to field the next-generation tank yet and were still making do with the previous generation of tanks produced earlier.
Anyone well-versed in military affairs would immediately think of "third-generation main battle tanks" and "information-enabled armored forces" upon seeing this information.
Unfortunately, Germania sneered at this single piece of relatively useful intelligence, believing those Soviet fellows had lost their minds to pursue such a bizarre tank.
With those resources, wouldn't it be better to build a few more larger, heavier, and thicker tanks?
As for the intelligence regarding rail transport...
This was genuinely a case of the Soviet side doing such a stellar job of information containment that the piecemeal fragments gathered by Germania's intelligence department completely omitted core development goals and technical applications.
To the point where it inexplicably became portrayed as Soviet rail transport being underdeveloped.
The General Directorate of Soviet Railway Management Planning intended to complete the full replacement of steam locomotives with diesel locomotive heads within 30 years of the nation's founding, alongside initiating research and trial runs for electrified railways.
Currently, diesel engines had been retrofitted to 80%, but research into electrified railway transport had stalled and failed to make headway, let alone trial runs.
If one were to say it failed to meet expectations... that was both right and wrong.
Right, because while diesel engines were 80% retrofitted, electrified railways still had no clear direction.
Wrong, because the comprehensive retrofitting of diesel engines might have proceeded much earlier than planned, beating the targets ahead of schedule and even exceeding them.
Meanwhile, looking at Germania's technological development...
Left Zhurong utterly baffled.