First of all, Germania’s military development gave Zhurong a feeling of being "advanced, but not entirely advanced."
Although tactical application, troop quality, and technological development had all reached the level of the late World War II period in Zhurong's past life...
Yet for some reason, they had completely no concept of army development, navy development, or the trends of future warfare.
Tank design was still stuck in that classical mindset of thicker armor, larger hulls, and thicker gun barrels. Slow, difficult to maintain, and favorite targets for the air force...
Warship design was the same: larger warships, thicker armor, and better naval guns. Stacking the thickest armor to take the heaviest beatings. In front of a carrier fleet, they were nothing more than clowns.
The air force was alright; at least for now, there were no problems, truly heading in the direction of high-altitude development.
Rocket development was the most absurd part: after researching a liquid-fueled missile with a range of 200 kilometers, they actually halted the research!
This left Zhurong completely baffled.
Truly, Zhurong had every reason to suspect that there were no time-travelers over in Germania at all, but after making a personal trip there, he overturned that hypothesis.
In the end, he could only attribute these phenomena to the problem of time-travelers.
After all, this development path... was a faithful replica of the Third Reich, with every single correct and wrong path copied down to the letter.
In terms of technological development, this Germania was even inferior to the Third Reich; at least the Third Reich's navy had tried to develop aircraft carriers. Rocket technology was also the world leader at the time. They even produced a series of things that looked completely out of place in that era, such as ramjet engines, magnetic-guided torpedoes, airborne radar, flying-wing radar-stealth designs, radio-guided bombs, and variable-sweep wings.
However, Germania did a genuinely good job regarding people's livelihood, comparable to the living standards of neighboring Soviet, leaving those insect-like nations several streets behind, and much better by several moon diameters than the absolute bottom-of-the-barrel Third Reich.
It was just that the popularization of internal combustion engines and electrification was relatively poor; the current penetration rate of internal combustion locomotives was only 30%, and they had completely no clue about electrified industrial production.
Meanwhile, Soviet's electrified industrial production had already reached a 40% penetration rate, though it had encountered some problems with electrified railways.
It could be said that Soviet's livelihood science, technology, and production techniques were all far superior to Germania's, and also far superior to its own military-industrial production technology.
Germania, however, was the opposite: its military industry applied a large number of emerging technologies, and all kinds of advanced equipment could be mass-produced and equipped at the very first instance. Yet, livelihood applications progressed slowly.
Overall, Soviet's development policy took technological development and industrial innovation as its core, vigorously developing aerospace technology and then feeding those technologies back into other fields.
Germania's development policy took military technology and global hegemony as its core, trying its utmost to expand military-industrial production and launch a full-scale offensive against the world.
This gave Zhurong an illusion of "at that time and place, just like this time and place."
"Describing it still lacks a bit of a sense of impact; seeing it with my own eyes brings some new experiences..."
Just as Zhurong and Violet were chatting happily, Lieutenant Hoffmann suddenly spoke up.
"The combat zone is just ahead, watch your concealment."
Hoffmann drew his pistol, disengaged the safety, and chambered a round.
"Understood."
Violet also drew two pistols, gave them a vigorous flick, and very conveniently used gravity to chamber the rounds.
(Please do not imitate this in real life! Using inertia to chamber a pistol is a technical skill, and if you mess up, it's easy to lose your grip and cause an accidental discharge. @SigP320.)
The two lowered their postures, concealed themselves in the tall grass, and quietly entered the combat zone...
Meanwhile, at the Soviet Administrative Committee.
The incumbent Chairman, Grasinov Grigoryevich Ulyanov, was dealing with a desk piled high with documents awaiting approval.
"Sigh, the burden is heavy and the road is long..."
Although he had advanced ideology, was visionary, and governed the country well, in essence he just wanted to create an environment similar to his hometown, and then retire to slack off, play games, and watch television.
As a result, while founding things, he accidentally founded several nations' royal families and aristocrats out of existence, and then created the strongest country in the world.
Well, the more he wanted to slack off, the less he was able to slack off.
"Ahahaha! I don't want to work anymore!"
Now, let us re-acquaint ourselves with this incumbent Soviet leader.
She was Ms. Ouyang Zhiyuan, who went into hibernation at age 32, and upon being awakened, was directly entrusted with the command of a stellar-class warship—only to be head-on smashed to death by a strong-interaction multi-functional probe!
(That's right, she/he is a time-traveler from a parallel world under the Trisolarian worldview.)
Ouyang Zhiyuan, born in 2008, had been interested in military affairs since childhood, was admitted to the National University of Defense Technology in 2026, graduated from there in 2031 with the rank of Air Force Major, and was directly assigned to the Space Force.
Very unfortunately, in the second year after her service in the Space Force, human society entered the Great Ravine. A massive population was lost, and productivity plummeted.
Fortunately, however, her home country successfully survived the most difficult period of the Great Ravine relying on prior environmental governance and grain reserve mechanisms, and also fought for a glimmer of hope for the future of human civilization.
In 2040, many outstanding commanders who achieved leading results in simulation battles were ordered to enter hibernation pods to cope with the upcoming ultimate decisive battle. Ouyang Zhiyuan was one of them.
Carrying the conviction that even if they died, they would bite off a piece of flesh from the enemy, they embarked on their century-long journey.
However...
Waking up from hibernation, Ouyang Zhiyuan faced hull designs that had not changed for over a century, completely identical combat thinking, and that enigmatic, must-win conviction, and she fell into deep contemplation...
Did humans have some kind of serious mental illness?!
Setting everything else aside, the warship data Ouyang Zhiyuan was currently looking at was actually inferior to the warships they used in simulations back then to fight against the Trisolarians!
The warships in the simulation back then were products of halving and weakening based on the Trisolarians' warships inferred by the General Staff.
One of their tasks was to use these simulated warships to achieve 3v3 engagements and completely annihilate the enemy's fully functional warships without considering their own casualties.
The final assessment was even more absurd: under the premise that the performance of their own warships was severely inadequate—virtually an intergenerational gap—they had to annihilate the entire enemy fleet with only twice the number of ships.
Since she, Ouyang Zhiyuan, could stand here, it meant she had also completed that final assessment.
Although it was a simulation, it also showed a commander's capability.
And Ouyang Zhiyuan's fighting style was the most bizarre among this group of people.
The Trisolarian fleet in the final assessment possessed 2,000 warships. The human side had 4,200 warships, with performance levels all below 1/3 of the Trisolarians'.
The Trisolarian warships could reach 35% of the speed of light, their main weapons were two antimatter cannons, their secondary weapons were multiple positron cannons, and they were also equipped with a large number of laser weapons. The hull length was 500 meters, shaped like a Water Drop.
Human warships could reach 20% of the speed of light, their main weapons were three positron cannons, their secondary weapons were multiple ultra-high-power laser cannons, and they were also equipped with a large number of 15% light-speed electromagnetic cannons. The hull length was 300 meters, shaped like a cigar.
Under such an intergenerational gap, most people decided to use the complex environment in the Kuiper Belt as cover, giving full play to the subjective initiative of grassroots commanders to minimize the information the Sophons could grasp.
In this simulation spanning 20 years, some people won and some lost. Even victory came at a huge cost, successfully annihilating the Trisolarian fleet with a fleet loss of nearly 90%.
As for Ouyang Zhiyuan, she was extremely bizarre: right at the start, she ordered all electromagnetic cannons of the fleet to fire decoy signals toward the exterior of the Solar System, and all 400 decoy signal transmitters on each ship were fired into deep space.
Immediately afterward, she organized all human ships currently available for deep-space voyages—whether engineering ships, transport ships, or supply ships—and had all of them concentrated in the Kuiper Belt by Ouyang Zhiyuan within half a month.
Then, something happened that caused the jaws of the examiners and the lieutenant generals acting as Trisolarian simulation commanders to drop.
"Human fleet, advance five!"
On the massive screen of the simulation chamber, tens of thousands of starships set off almost simultaneously, dragging long trails of exhaust straight toward Cygnus!
The examiner was dumbfounded, the instructor was dumbfounded, and the opposing commander was dumbfounded.
Yet no one uttered a sound, because any direct communication by conventional means was strictly prohibited inside this facility.
The entire simulation was stubbornly dragged by Ouyang Zhiyuan from 20 years to 300 years!
As soon as the fleet sailed out of the Solar System, it immediately restarted various scientific researches, and soon obtained a large number of results that previously could not be obtained on Earth at all.
The fleet stubbornly improved its engines during the flight, increasing its speed to 40% of the speed of light.
Even research on faster-than-light engines made breakthroughs during the voyage, though resources did not permit the construction of a prototype.
Over a dozen years later, the fleet arrived at Cygnus NH558J2 and immediately initiated large-scale ship building and the construction of large experimental facilities.
After another two hundred-odd years of frantic force-building and research...
The human fleet almost dismantled the entire NH558J2 star system, leaving behind only a single star that had been sucked dry until it was sickly.
(At the time, humans did not know of the existence of the strong-interaction multi-functional device; the simulation did not involve pursuing the fleet after it left the Solar System.)
Upon confirming the scale of the Trisolarian fleet headed toward the Solar System, the human fleet immediately set sail, heading straight for the Solar System.
The current three waves of the Trisolarian fleet had already arrived, totaling over 5,000 warships, all moored near Mars and the Moon.
Presently, the Earth Joint Government was locked in a standoff with the Trisolarians using the Dark Forest Law.
Yes, the humans of this timeline had figured out the Dark Forest Law long ago and had successfully set up deterrence signal transmitters.
However, this only delayed the Trisolarians' offensive and could not make them abandon the Solar System...
In deep space, 300,000 human fleets were charging toward the Solar System at three times the speed of light.
There were no wakes behind the fleet generated by early light-speed engines; like phantoms, they plunged directly into the Solar System.
What followed was simple: a large number of warships stopped their faster-than-light engines near the Trisolarians' mooring locations and directly launched a massive amount of antimatter at the Trisolarian fleet.
And then, there was no then.
300,000 against 5,000, with no intergenerational gap in weapons, and it was a sneak attack to boot.
If something could still go wrong with this, humanity might as well stop trying, be exhausted, and let destruction come.
The entire simulation left everyone present dumbfounded.
Everyone else was thinking about how to use the resources at hand to win the Trisolarian's first wave of attacks and buy time for Earth.
As for her, she used Earth to buy time, while the fleet ran off to do scientific research and build up forces.
The photon supercomputer used for the simulation was the one that suffered...
The massive amount of computations nearly burned out the supercomputer underneath the simulator.
Everything related to this simulation was classified as top secret—the kind where not a single word was allowed to leak.
Ouyang Zhiyuan was recorded in the archives with a perfect score, and the assessment content was not mentioned at all.
This was why Ouyang Zhiyuan could now stand aboard the Asian Fleet's flagship, the East.
She looked at the busy crew members around her, and then looked at the warship parameters in her hand...
This piece of junk was even shabbier than the ships she commanded during her simulation back then!
15% of the speed of light! What could this piece of junk speed accomplish?!
Stuffed full of kinetic energy weapons from bow to stern? Were their brains soaked in water?!
What kind of ghost thing was this acoustic hydrogen bomb anyway?! Would there really be air inside the Trisolarians' warships?!
At least the range was decent, with a maximum range of 8 light-years, which was barely passing...
"Little Chen, don't tell me this ship is the best there is..."
Ouyang Zhiyuan turned her head to glance at her adjutant.
"Yes, Admiral Ouyang. This is one of the most powerful warships of the human fleet."
The adjutant saluted and replied.
Ouyang Zhiyuan's eyelids twitched wildly.
After being awakened, she was sent directly to the Asian Fleet's flagship, the East, which was preparing to leave port and line up to "welcome" the Trisolarian probe. There, she was given an explanation about what the Sealers were and why they were suddenly awakened, among other things.
Right now, the warships were forming up, and large telescopes had already transmitted back the appearance of the probe.
That was a reflective object shaped like a water drop...
Upon seeing that image, the hearts of all the old-timers who graduated from the first class of the Space Command Academy turned completely ice-cold...
"Captain, Natural Selection has sent an audio broadcast to the entire fleet. Shall we receive it?"
Little Chen held a panel and asked Ouyang Zhiyuan.