Aliu Islands, Keith Naval Air Station.

After nightfall, the northwest service area, which usually serves large patrol aircraft, was brightly lit, and hundreds of ground crew members were busy.

However, it is not the ground crew of the naval aviation, it is all the officers and soldiers of the Air Force!

In addition, it was not a patrol plane that stopped here, but two planes belonging to the Air Force and of a very strange appearance.

Nicknamed the "Dark Night Phoenix", the "Detective-333" high-altitude and high-speed reconnaissance aircraft.

If anything, the Imperial Air Force has been secretive about the existence of the "Detective-333".

More than a decade ago, before the advent of the SR-71A Blackbird of the Newland Air Force, there were rumors that the Imperial Air Force was also developing such high-speed reconnaissance aircraft. However, the Imperial Air Force has never admitted it, and has also questioned this kind of reconnaissance aircraft that relies on altitude and speed to counter air defense systems. The reason is very simple, no matter how good the performance of the reconnaissance aircraft is, it will certainly be inferior to the anti-aircraft missile.

Obviously, it's a different story.

When the Nuland Air Force was in the limelight with the SR-71A, the Imperial Air Force was also developing a high-altitude and high-speed reconnaissance aircraft, but it encountered technical difficulties.

The engine developed by the supporting group did not pass the test acceptance!

If anything, this is the pot of the Air Force command.

At that time, the number one project of the Imperial Air Force was not a reconnaissance aircraft, but a "double-three" bomber codenamed "Thunderbolt".

According to the requirements put forward by the Air Force, on the premise that the range and bomb load meet the standards of strategic bombers, the "Thunderbolt" must also have a flight speed of Mach 3 and a ceiling of 30,000 meters. In the final design, the Thunderbolt will be equipped with four large turbojet ramjet composite engines.

Actually, this is what came to be called a variable-cycle engine.

As for the difficulty of development, there is no need to say much.

The Imperial Air Force worked hard for more than ten years, investing at least 20 billion gold dollars, and finally built three prototypes for technical verification.

The prototype had an empty weight of more than 100 tons, a maximum take-off weight of almost 300 tons, a fuel load of up to 160 tons, and was equipped with 4 turbojet ramjet composite engines with a maximum afterburner thrust of 160 kN. It's just a pity that the performance indicators proposed by the Air Force were not met. Although at an altitude of 22,000 meters, the flight speed can reach Mach 3, but the ceiling is only 24,000 meters, not 30,000 meters.

Crucially, the economics of "Thunderbolt" are so bad.

Even according to the most optimistic estimates, the cost of the Thunderbolt is as high as five times that of the H-9, and it is possible that it will eventually double again.

In addition, after burning 160 tons of fuel, the "Thunderbolt" can only throw 20 tons of ammunition to a distance of 6,000 kilometers, while under the same circumstances, the "H-9" only needs 120 tons of fuel. The point is that the "Thunderbolt" cannot use external pylons, so it cannot carry large-sized ammunition.

Of course, the most important thing is the service performance.

Until the dismount, the supporting engine failed to pass the test and acceptance, and the estimated service life was only a pitiful 100 hours.

Even the design life of the "Thunderbolt" is not long, only 2,000 hours, which is only one-third of the "H-9", but it is equipped with engines with a life of only 100 hours, and there are four, which also means that in the whole life cycle, the cost of replacing the engine will exceed the price of the bomber itself.

What's more, this engine is very unreliable, and no one knows when it will reach maturity.

Before the three technical demonstrators were mothballed, they flew for a total of more than 100 hours in almost three years, most of the time on the ground.

The reason is that the failure rate of the engine is too high.

If you want to say it, in fact, the engine is too unreliable, so the "Thunderbolt" was shelved by the Air Force after building 3 prototypes.

Also finished with the matching engine.

Herein lies the problem.

The engine used in the high-altitude and high-speed reconnaissance aircraft project is actually the engine developed for the "Thunderbolt," but it has been appropriately adjusted according to actual needs.

In fact, at the initial stage, the Air Force engaged not reconnaissance planes, but interceptors!

The key point is that the Nuland Air Force is also developing a bomber on a par with the "Thunderbolt", that is, the XB-70 "Valkyrie", which also ended up on horseback.

At that time, there was also intelligence that the Empire was also developing a 3x sonic bomber, only slightly smaller, at most a medium bomber. Although this information is not very accurate, that is, the Empire and Siluosha developed the TU-22M, which flew at only Mach 2.4, at the time, this information was enough to prompt the Imperial Air Force to develop a-for-tat, or interceptor, that could catch up with these bombers.

In any case, in the face of a bomber with three times the speed of sound, the flight speed of previous fighters and interceptors was too slow.

On this issue, the Imperial Air Force and the Nuland Air Force can be said to be on the same path.

When the Nuland Air Force was developing the SR-71A, what it wanted to obtain was actually an interceptor, and it had been dominated by interceptors in the development stage.

It's just that the difficulty of developing an interceptor is too great.

In addition, after the successive disembarkation of triple-speed sonic bombers in various countries, coupled with the increasingly advanced performance of missiles, there is no longer a need for triple-speed sonic interceptors.

As a result, the Nuland Air Force first abandoned the tripleonic interceptor, and then used the results of the development to make a tripleonic reconnaissance aircraft.

It must be admitted that at this point, the Imperial Air Force did not do it well enough.

Because the development of the engine was too slow, after the "Thunderbolt" was dismounted, the enthusiasm of the Imperial Air Force also fell to the bottom.

It took three years to learn that the Nuland Air Force was developing a three-fold sonic reconnaissance aircraft, and the Imperial Air Force turned over the previous high-altitude and high-speed interceptor project. The point is that after 3 years of accumulation, several key technical problems have been solved, and there is hope for the engine.

Since then, there has been the "Detective-333" project.

Although the number of the regular military aircraft is used, this is not a real military number, but a relatively intuitive development code.

The three "3s" represent the three main performance indicators, the flight speed is Mach 3, the flight altitude is 30,000 meters, and the combat radius is 3,000 kilometers.

It can be seen that at least at the beginning of the project, the Air Force played the trick of borrowing the corpse to resurrect the soul.

To put it simply, it was not the Air Force that let the "double and three interceptors" project be discontinued, but the National Defense Budget Committee, which is controlled by the two houses of the debate. It is precisely because of this that after the project was launched, the Air Force was still breaking the model for the supporting engine, and there was a breakthrough in the future.

From the standpoint of the Imperial Air Force, flying faster and flying higher is the eternal goal.

The key is that many of the technologies used in the tripleonic interceptor are ahead of their time, and they will certainly be used in other combat aircraft in the future.

The most representative is actually the turbojet ramjet composite engine.

Now called the variable-cycle engine, this engine is the standard power of the Fifth Generation Fighter of the Imperial Air Force, the "Battle-20". It is clear that if there had been no investment in the development of composite engines at that time, the acquisition of variable-cycle engines by the Imperial Air Force would have been delayed by at least 10 years.

To put it bluntly, it's a good deal to push a variety of cutting-edge technologies with a project that's not too big.

Not only the Air Force, but also in the Imperial Navy, there were many similar projects.

In addition, the Air Force is keen to develop a tripleonic interceptor, and it is also doing preliminary exploration for the fifth-generation fighter and using this to determine the direction of development.

Do not forget that at the time of the development of the "Detective-333", two main fourth-generation fighters had already been successfully developed and entered the stage of mass production. In accordance with the practice of producing one generation and developing another, the Air Force started the pre-research work of the fifth-generation fighter before the "Zhan-11A" was put into production.

Obviously, in those days, no one knew what the fifth-generation fighter looked like, and it was only then that it needed to be tried and explored.

It's a pity that this time it's obviously a big eye.

Soon after the project was launched, the Imperial Air Force discovered that the 3x sonic interceptor was not only very difficult to develop, but also had little real combat value.

The reason is also very simple, the DK-10 "Sharpshooter" air defense system, also led by the Air Force, has entered the finalization stage, and its design index is to be able to intercept high-altitude targets flying at a speed of less than Mach 6, shooting at an altitude of 30,000 meters and a range of more than 100 kilometers.

In addition, the Navy-dominated DK-9 has a maximum range of 160 km, and the improved version has a range of more than 200 km.

Compared with these air defense systems, the three-speed sonic interceptor is not only expensive, but also has a relatively simple purpose, which is obviously not suitable for future wars.

It was only at this time that the Air Force officially determined that the "Detective-333" was a high-altitude and high-speed reconnaissance aircraft.

In the first few years, the Air Force's aim was not to develop such a reconnaissance aircraft, but to use the project to obtain funds.

Later, the start-up funds for many advanced technologies used on the "Zhan-20" actually came from the "Detective-333".

Of course, this kind of selling dog meat on the head of a sheep is very common in all branches of the armed forces.

It is precisely because of this that the Imperial Air Force has not publicized the "Detective-333" project to the outside world, and even repeatedly denied its existence, so as not to get into trouble for itself.

It was also in the past few years that the Nuland Air Force completed the development of the SR-71A "Blackbird" and procured dozens of them.

It was not until 8 years ago, when an SR-71A Blackbird flew over Ebony Island, that the Imperial Air Force woke up from a dream.

At that time, the remote system deployed on Ebony Island discovered the "Blackbird" in time, obtained fire control data, and even continued to track it, but it was never able to lock, or not get a chance to fire, and watched the "Blackbird" fly over Ebony Island throughout the whole process.

For the next two years, the "Blackbird" became a nightmare for the Imperial Air Force.

Almost every week, one Blackbird flies over the Aliu Islands or Honu Islands.

The ** of the "Blackbird Plague" came in the year when Zhou Yongtao became the first assistant of the empire.

At that time, without warning, a "Blackbird" secretly deployed by the Nuland Air Force in the northeast of Van Luo broke through the air defense system in the southwest of the empire, and then penetrated 1,000 kilometers deep into the empire's mainland and flew over Yuzhou before turning back.

This incident directly contributed to the downfall of the civilian chief assistant at that time.

Although after that, that is, under the command of Zhou Yongtao, the empire put on a posture of fighting a global war, forcing the Nuland Republic to withdraw the "Blackbird" troops from the Van Luo country, and also made the Van Luo authorities promise not to provide support for the Nuland air force, but the impact of this incident cannot be underestimated. To put it more seriously, this was the first time since the Second Global War that the empire itself was under real military threat.

For the past few decades, it has been the Empire that has threatened other countries!

In a sense, the Empire's dispatch of troops to Sealand a few months later had a lot to do with the matter, and could be seen as a distraction from the outside world. According to rumors at the time, it was likely that the rebellion in Sealand was planned by the Military Intelligence Agency behind the scenes, creating a reason to send troops.

The most direct impact is that the Air Force has increased its investment in the "Detective-333" project.

Because it is no longer required to carry out interception missions, some performance indicators have been adjusted, such as no longer requiring a combat radius of 3,000 kilometers, but the maximum range without air refueling must not be less than 6,000 kilometers, and the flight time at Mach 3 sprint is at least 30 minutes.

Of course, more than 10 years of research have played a key role.

The key is that the funds are sufficient.

As the saying goes, money is easy to do.

In just 2 years, the Imperial Air Force received 7 prototypes of the "Detective-333" and completed all acceptance tests with great efficiency.

The final mass-produced model is actually a large strategic reconnaissance aircraft.

The empty weight is 43 tons, the normal take-off weight is 88 tons, the maximum take-off weight is 112 tons, the maximum flight speed at an altitude of 30,000 meters is Mach 3.3, the maximum cruising speed allowed at an altitude of 28,000 meters is Mach 3, the practical ceiling is 32,000 meters, the maximum ceiling is 330,000 meters, and the maximum range is 7,500 kilometers.

In order to achieve these performances, two turbojet ramjet variable-cycle engines with a maximum thrust of 220 kN are matched.

Compared with the "Blackbird," the "Detective-333" is a genuine "strategic reconnaissance aircraft."

Theoretically, the "Detective-333" can break through all today's air defense systems.

The Imperial Air Force procured 86 aircraft in 4 years. In addition to 6 two-seater trainers, the other 80 were organized into 4 brigades, which were deployed in 4 major theaters.

Because of its extremely advanced performance, it received the name "Phoenix".

That is, 4 years ago, that is, after the mass production model began to enter service, the outside world learned about the existence of "Detective-333".

It's just that the Imperial Air Force never recognized it.

The reason is also very simple, many of the performance of the "Detective-333" exceeded the design indicators, to an unknown area!

During the test flight, the No. 05 prototype flew at an altitude of 30,000 meters at Mach 3.5, and the No. 07 prototype flew to 36,000 meters. The mass-produced No. 03 reached a limit speed of Mach 3.75 at an altitude of 33,000 meters by diving at a small angle.

Through this series of test flights, the Imperial Air Force has a new understanding of "hypersonic" and "middle layer".

If you want to say it, the main purpose of the "Detective-333" after its service is actually to help the Imperial Air Force, to be precise, the scientific researchers of the Imperial ** side to study and understand these unknown areas. As for its essential work, because of the presence of reconnaissance satellites, it has become less important.

Because all of them are top-secret scientific research projects, the "Detective-333" is basically dispatched after sunset and returns before dawn.

For this, there was the nickname "Phoenix of the Night".

Before the Newland Republic entered the war, there was a small team of 4 "Detective-333s" deployed at the Ebony base, which was actually temporarily stationed. According to the Air Force's arrangement, the main thing is to strengthen combat readiness training and ensure that the "Night Phoenix" deployed at the base can be used to carry out strategic reconnaissance missions immediately after the Nuland Republic enters the war. The point is that the military satellites to which the Imperial Air Force had high hopes have already been badly damaged.

Unfortunately, no one expected that the Nuland army would raid the Aliu Islands first, and focus on bombing Ebony Island.

Until now, the Ebony airbase is paralyzed.

As for the four "Detective-333s" dispatched, three of them have been damaged, and the other one happened to leave the Ebony Air Base at the beginning of the war and was saved.

Fortunately, the Keith Naval Air Station is much less concerned and has a 3,000-meter Grade A runway.