Traveling through the sword to engage in military industry

#477 - pirate

In Africa, after nearly two years of construction, the infrastructure iron army from Dongda University has completed the first phase of the Nigerian heavy-duty railway and mine construction. The initial annual output of selected iron ore can reach more than 5 million tons.

Ten new 100,000-ton long-distance self-unloading ore carriers have also been launched, opening a regular route directly to North Africa, transporting a constant stream of industrial products to North Africa and the Mediterranean, and then transporting iron ore back from Nigeria.

From the mine to the Southern Steel Plant, a complete closed loop has finally been formed. The Southern Steel Plant's 20 million tons of steel production capacity now has nearly 5 million tons provided by Nigeria annually. The other iron ore comes from the Thousand Island Country and Australia, initially achieving a diversified supply of raw materials.

After these iron ores are turned into high-quality construction steel or steel products in the blast furnace, they are sold to distant lands by ship again.

The dense transportation giants from Dongda University, carrying huge profits, flow on the ocean, also bringing ubiquitous sea flies and vultures.

"We have received reports that, according to statistics from the past six months, 15 of our Far-Voyage class and 20 Dawn class transport ships have been harassed by pirates, of which 18 have been extorted, resulting in losses of over one million. According to our statistics, from the Strait of Malacca to the Indian Ocean - Red Sea near North African waters, these areas are where pirates frequently appear," Staff Officer Ye brought another headache to Ren Zhong.

"We are basically helpless against these pirates now, and it is difficult to prevent them. Old Brother Ren, you have a flexible mind and broad ideas, can you think of a way for us?"

Staff Officer Ye was really anxious.

The large-scale maritime transport brought by overseas trade, although the losses are still a minority, but as the scale of maritime transport becomes larger and larger, the development scale of pirates has also increased a lot. According to international maritime statistics, from last year to now, there have been hundreds of reported incidents alone, and the casualties of maritime sailors have reached dozens.

This has led to a significant increase in maritime personal insurance costs.

This is very uncomfortable for countries like Dongda University that rely heavily on maritime transport.

Not to mention anything else, the cost of security alone has increased a lot.

And it hasn't had any effect.

After listening, Ren Zhong also felt a headache.

They have specifically studied this issue, but modern pirates in the main world are still very rampant, proving that this problem is really difficult to solve.

"Wait for me to study it and then talk about it, Staff Officer Ye. You are really good at finding problems for me. The pirate problem, according to the current means of combating it, I am afraid it is not easy to deal with. Although I have not yet researched a method, this vast ocean is full of places to hide. With the current technical means and methods, it is impossible to quickly discover the pirates' tracks. Moreover, these pirates are easily mixed among fishermen, and how to identify them is a big problem." Ren Zhong gave Staff Officer Ye a heads-up to avoid him being too optimistic.

"Of course I understand. If these problems were not very棘手, they would not have reached my hands. Now that the problem has risen to me, it means that the people below are really forced to have no other way," Staff Officer Ye said with a wry smile.

"We are not talking about a fundamental solution, just to alleviate some of it, so that our losses can be minimized."

"If this kind of loss is not resolved, what is lost is not only money, but our maritime transport will also face a huge blow in the future. Maybe no one will be willing to be a seafarer in the future."

Staff Officer Ye said, and he was not exaggerating.

If a job does not even have basic security, there are many factors to consider for potential workers in this position.

This is not defending the country, which is something that passionate men must do, and sacrifice is glorious.

"I'll do my best." Ren Zhong nodded. He also knew that this matter would be encountered sooner or later with the development of shipping, but he didn't expect it to come so quickly.

From the Strait of Malacca to the North African waters, pirates are rampant. From fishermen to sailors, local tribes and warlords are all participating in this dangerous game. Even in 2024, the main world has not been able to solve this headache.

For commercial operating fleets, non-armament is the most basic requirement, which means that merchant ships basically lack the means to confront the pirates' force.

It is also not feasible to equip merchant ships with hot weapon equipment, and many countries will refuse armed merchant ships.

After Ren Zhong's search, he finally sorted out some clues about this matter. Although there is no fundamental solution, there are still some ideas for temporary measures.

In the South China Sea, a Dongda freighter full of goods was rushing on its way under the starry night.

This Yangbo No. 1 giant ship was a little different this time because of one more person.

Lin Liang, originally a marine engineer, was summoned for intensive training a month ago. After training, he became the chief security officer of a Dongda-affiliated giant ship, and began a six-month follow-up action with the giant ship.

"Everyone, pay attention. The subject we are going to learn today is archery." On the wide deck of the giant ship, several targets were erected more than forty meters away. Lin Liang held a strange-looking bow and arrow in his hand and said to the sailors on the ship who were free.

"The bow in my hand is called a compound bow. It has the characteristics of high precision, high stability, high power, and easy to use. Under suitable angle and downwind conditions, the longest arrow range can reach three or four hundred meters. The arrows you have in your hands are made of alloy steel and are very powerful. Do not point them at people or things on our ship. This thing can penetrate explosion-proof shields and car door panels outside of ten meters!

After everyone has been trained, they can basically accurately hit the bullseye outside of tens of meters. If you train harder, you can accurately shoot targets within about 80 meters for effective killing. Facing our maritime situation, the effective killing range for the human body is about 150 meters."

In the face of the oncoming deck wind, Lin Liang's voice quickly scattered on the sea.

However, the more than twenty sailors in front of him were all very excited.

"Instructor Lin, is this the self-defense weapon that the captain told us about?" A middle-aged man grinned and said, "I heard that we would be equipped with some self-defense weapons. I thought we could get some rifles for the brothers, but I didn't expect it to be this. But after listening to you, Instructor Lin, I feel that this thing is not bad."

"If you want to hit someone with an AK, it's not easy to use beyond a hundred meters. With this thing, we don't have to worry about AKs or anything."

"This is just a piece of self-defense equipment we've provided for everyone. Note that from now on, everyone should uniformly call these things 'sports equipment' or 'simple self-defense equipment'. We are merchant ships, not armed warships," Lin Liang said with a smile, correcting the others.

He was the first batch of seed instructors to carry out self-defense activities on the Dongda ocean-going giant ship, according to Ren Zhong's suggestion of a five-piece self-defense kit, which Ren Zhong researched and sorted out in the main world.

He provided the giant ocean-going sailors with a five-piece self-defense kit: a three-piece combination of bulletproof vests, bulletproof helmets, and bulletproof shields; a compound bow; a spiked club; a high-pressure water cannon; and barbed wire around the giant ship.

This immediately raised the close-range combat power of the giant ship to a very high level.

Now, each giant ship is equipped with more than 10 compound bows and at least 500 lethal alloy arrows, as well as dozens of training arrows. If they are well-trained, the young sailors on the giant ship have a chance to fight against small groups of three to five pirates, or even ten or so pirates.

The compound bow has direct long-range killing power, and the long-range suppression and boarding prevention effect of the high-pressure water cannon is very obvious. Coupled with the suppression of barbed wire and spiked clubs in the final close combat, it is extremely difficult for ordinary pirates to attack such a giant ship with simple AKs.

This level of defense can deter 70% to 80% of pirates acting on impulse.

For well-equipped, organized pirates, Ren Zhong has another trick: dispatching warships for escort.

On every Dongda giant ship, a set of maritime wireless communication systems has now been installed, supporting direct voice calls for help at a distance of about 100 kilometers, and also supporting remote Morse code telegraphy, directly connecting to similar equipment on the escort fleet's ships, calling for help in case of danger, and automatically reporting the current latitude and longitude of the giant ship.

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This maritime safety wireless system, based on the navy's wireless system, has been simplified and redesigned, and can now be seamlessly integrated with Dongda's giant ship driving system.

All Dongda's registered ocean-going shipping or fishing vessels must be installed with it. Since the shortwave is connected to Dongda's current satellite system, the distance of the Morse code communication system is almost unlimited globally.

In this way, basically every Dongda ocean-going shipping giant ship can transmit the information of the attack back to a unified maritime emergency rescue center after calling for help, and the maritime emergency rescue center will carry out relevant rescue work.

This provides the escort fleet with first-hand on-site information.

In order to ensure the timeliness of the rescue.

Ren Zhong suggested carrying out normalized, combat-oriented patrols and escorts in pirate-infested waters such as the Strait of Malacca and the Gulf of Aden!

According to the Dongda Navy's training plan, this kind of training and escort can be single ships or mixed formations of fleets, which is a good way to promote training through combat.

It's just that facing the vast sea area to carry out combat training and escort, the current supply system cannot support it, and it cannot completely rely on its own supply ships.

However, for the current Dongda, these are not big deals. Now Dongda has good foreign relations, and it will soon negotiate several commonly used supply ports, setting up supply points in Phuket, Maldives, Djibouti, and Seychelles. In this way, the ships patrolling the Indian Ocean and the Strait of Malacca have supply points about 3,000 kilometers away. Even the smallest Jianghai-class destroyer can now freely patrol these waters.

In this way, the Jianghai-class, Luhai-class, and Luyang-class destroyers in Dongda's current fleet can all take turns to the Indian Ocean for combat-oriented routine training.

The Strait of Karimata.

Local time, past 12 o'clock at night.

After a week of sailing, the Yangbo No. 1, if it safely passes through the Karimata Strait, will smoothly cross the entire dangerous Malacca Sea area. Pirates generally ride small boats, which do not have too long endurance. This kind of small boat with a large number of engines installed does not carry too much fuel, generally only two or three hundred kilometers. Only very professional pirates will be equipped with large-capacity 500 nautical mile ultra-long endurance speedboats.

But for the Yangbo No. 1, which has been training for a week, this time they are not only fearless of pirates, but even hope that some ignorant people will come up and let everyone try their skills.

"Instructor Lin, you said that our escort ships are also in this sea area, why haven't we encountered them?" In the evening, sailor Tong Wenbo, who shared a cabin with Lin Liang, asked curiously.

"We have only invested two destroyers in this sea area, so of course it is not easy to encounter them at any time." Lin Liang thought for a while, this information would be made public anyway, there was nothing to keep secret, so he said to Tong Wenbo, "Under normal circumstances, one usually patrols around Phuket, and the other is near Singapore. Generally, if something happens, it can arrive in up to ten hours, of course, it may be summoned immediately if it is nearby."

Generally, escort is now carried out in the form of a detachment. Usually, an ordinary destroyer detachment has 5 Jianghai-class and 3 Luhai-class as the main combat force, and an elite destroyer detachment is mainly composed of 5 Luhai-class destroyers, with one Luyang-class destroyer and two Jianghai-class destroyers.

Therefore, when performing escort missions, from Malacca to the Gulf of Aden in Northeast Africa, there are more than two ships forming a patrol and alert zone within a 500 nautical mile range within the area.

In this way, even if the scene of the giant ship incident is further away, it will only take more than ten hours to arrive, and if it happens to be nearby, it can arrive at the scene soon.

"Then we can sail boldly in the future. The pirates in the past period were really too hateful, making the brothers who run the sea panic. Now with Instructor Lin and the safety devices you brought, we now have confidence in our hearts." After a few days of training, Tong Wenbo admired Lin Liang, who was superior to them in all aspects.

"We still can't be too careless. The appearance of pirates is completely unpredictable. In the future, the brothers responsible for lookout must be vigilant and always pay attention to the situation on the sea, especially the brothers on night watch. The night vision is not good and it is easy to make mistakes. We must overcome the fatigue brought by the night and pay attention at all times..." Before Lin Liang finished speaking, a shrill warning bell suddenly came from the ship!

"Pirates are coming! Go!" Lin Liang and Tong Wenbo heard the alarm and jumped up, quickly putting on the helmets and bulletproof vests next to them.

Then they opened the cabin door and trotted onto the deck.

The rest of the weapons were on the deck. After hearing the warning, all the sailors who were originally resting trotted to the deck where the weapons were stored.

"Archery team, spiked club team, water cannon team, take your positions!" (End of this chapter)