Didn't arrive at Gwadar port. Pei Chengyi's first feeling was that the vicissitudes of life were like a giant cannon screaming into the thugs

Years ago, Gwadar Port was a very humble fishing village in Pakistan's Balochistan province that can't be found on many maps. Because it is only more than a kilometer away from Iran and only about a kilometer away from the Strait of Hormuz, the strategic location is very important, so as early as the era of the Li century, the second Indo-Pakistani war broke out, and Pakistan decided to build the Gwadar port into a naval base. Affected by factors such as the Second Indo-Pakistani War, political turmoil, and slow economic development, until the end of the century, Gwadar Port was still an obscure small village.

It was not until the second year of the century, the year of the Lunar New Year, when the Republic participated in the construction work in the form of funds and joint use, that Pakistan officially decided to build the Gwadar port into a naval base. At the beginning of the year, the Deputy Prime Minister of the State Council of the Republic and Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf jointly presided over the groundbreaking ceremony of the first phase of the Gwadar port. From then on, the port of Gwadar came into view.

The construction of the Gwadar port did not go well, and by the end of the year, the third phase had not yet been completed. The reasons for the slow progress of the project are very complex, such as the political turmoil in Pakistan, the changing situation in the region, the intervention of local forces, and the opposition of the local people. Among them, Musharraf's resignation has led to a delay in the progress of the project for at least three years, the United States has successively launched the war in Afghanistan and Iraq have affected the construction work, and the local patriarchs and elders are worried that a new Gwadar port will squeeze them out of the power structure, and even lead to foreign forces to control the area.

Overall, the problems posed by the Gwadar port are complex.

Although many years old. The authorities of the Republic have resorted to a number of methods to solve the problem of slow progress of the project. For example, when subcontracting projects, priority is given to local people. Because most of the local Wang people have no formal education, the Republic also arranges for professional engineers to train them. In the words of the Republican chief engineer of the Gwadar port construction project: There is no country in the world that exports capital and provides technology free of charge like us, and the Gwadar port construction project has trained a large number of local technicians. In response to this problem, the Pakistani authorities have also taken a number of measures, such as making a solemn promise to the current patriarchs and elders that their interests will not be threatened. However, these measures did not have an immediate effect, and it was not until the fourth Indo-Pakistani war that the construction of the Gwadar port took a turn for the better.

It is known that the immediate cause of the republic's involvement in the Fourth Indo-Pakistani War was the bombing of the port of Gwadar by fighter jets of the Western Fleet of the Indian Navy, which resulted in the casualties of dozens of republican engineers. In this bombing, hundreds of local engineers were killed or wounded. At that time, Pakistan's security services arrested a group of locals suspected of providing military intelligence to India, including several members of the tribe who had previously opposed the construction of a naval base. Although the matter was eventually settled, according to some information that the Republic had declassified since the end of the Fourth Indo-Pakistani War, it is likely that the Pakistani authorities would use this to silence the locals who opposed the construction of the naval base.

In fact, the greatest contribution of the Fourth Indo-Pakistani War was to demonstrate the importance of the Gwadar port.

At that time, the biggest problem facing the republic was not how to defeat India, but how to defeat India. In other words, it is how to unleash the combat effectiveness of the republican ** team. The first thing that needs to be solved is the problem of logistical support. In order to deploy tactical and support aviation to Pakistan, the authorities of the Republic have mobilized tens of thousands of military vehicles to travel around the clock on the highway from Kashgar to Islamabad. After the task force of the Republic Navy seized sea supremacy, sea transport replaced land transport, and convoys replaced convoys. The problem is that the throughput capacity of the port of Karachi is not sufficient for wartime requirements. In order to ensure the smooth flow of sea transportation lines, the fleet is given priority to enter the port; Task forces operating in the Arabian Sea do not rely on ocean-going integrated supply ships arriving from mainland China, but cannot go to the nearby port of Karachi to obtain supplies. In a sense, Ji Jieguo did not take the opportunity to recover the southern Tibet region that had been occupied by India for decades, but left this historical task to the aftermath of Xian, and Wang Yuanqing took action to solve it. One of the most critical reasons was that the logistical support capacity at that time could not support a full-scale war.

Because the Fourth Indo-Pakistani War did not completely eliminate India's strategic threat, both the post-war republic and Pakistan recognized the seriousness of the problem, increased the scope and depth of military cooperation, and ranked hundreds of military cooperation projects between the two countries in order of priority. In important strategic projects. The construction of the Gwadar port project is ranked second, after the construction of the Kwai strategic railway.

At that time, Pei Chengyi had just graduated from the military academy and worked in the General Staff for less than a year.

Although Pei Chengyi did not have the opportunity to go to Gwadar Port for inspection like several other young officers who entered the General Staff with him, these young officers later became senior staff officers of the Logistics and Equipment Department of the General Staff, and some even became generals, but according to the rules of the General Staff, the newly arrived staff officers will spend a year familiarizing themselves with the situation of all departments, and Pei Chengyi also participated in the planning of Gwadar Port. To be precise, he was fortunate to come into contact with the joint judgment of the Gwadar port, because with his level at that time, it was impossible to play a big role Second, he did not study logistics majors, and he was not even qualified to give opinions.

There is no doubt that the port of Gwadar has been designated from the beginning as a comprehensive naval base shared by the Republic and Pakistan.

The so-called integrated naval base. It is of the nature of a "base camp", including a deep-water port for the fleet to dock, including supporting docks, warehouses, shore camps, communication command centers, intelligence centers, etc., large air stations for carrier-based aviation are often also bases for long-range patrol aircraft and air bases, and camps for marines or expeditionary forces to be stationed include supporting barracks, warehouses, training sites, traffic stations, communication centers, etc., and are specially provided for submarine caverns, because few countries deploy strategic nuclear submarines overseas. Therefore, it is not necessary to have the ability to support strategic nuclear submarines, but it must have the ability to support attack nuclear submarines, and the ground transportation system connecting various military facilities and military bases is mainly freight railway lines and high-grade road networks, as well as various supporting facilities.

It can be seen that at the beginning of the century, when the construction was carried out, the scale of the Gwadar port was extremely staggering.

It is precisely because of this that the construction of the Gwadar port is so remarkable and has encountered so much resistance in the construction process.

Shortly after the end of the war on the peninsula. Pei Chengyi, who has been promoted to major general in the army, once went to Gwadar Port, and although he only stayed there for less than two days, he was still extremely impressed by Gwadar Port.

At that time, the fourth phase of construction had already been completed. The military base group has begun to take shape. According to the relevant information released by the Pakistani authorities at that time, after the completion of the fourth phase of the project, the Gwadar Military Port, the Gwadar Submarine Base, the Giji Naval Air Station, the Bernice Marine Corps Barracks, and the Givoni Strategic Intelligence Station under the Gwadar Naval Complex Base were all put into use, forming the largest sea, land, and air joint military base group in South Asia, with the Gwadar Military Port as the core, spanning an area of 1 kilometer from east to west and 1,000 kilometers from north to south, and covering a total area of more than 10,000 mu.

Compared to the original plan, the Gwadar port at that time was already greatly marked.

The problem is that the construction work doesn't end there.

The inspection report provided by the delegation attended by Pei Chengyi elaborated on the importance of Gwadar Port, and gave a detailed explanation of the existing problems and solutions to solve them. As one of the drafters of the report, Pei Chengyi made it clear that the transportation facilities of Gwadar Port still need to be improved.

Coincidentally, Wang Yuanqing, who was already in power at that time, attached great importance to the South Asian region.

From an after-view perspective, Wang Yuanqing attached great importance to the South Asian region and prepared for the later war in India. In a sense, what Wang Yuanqing wanted to fight most was not the Japanese War, but the Indian War, because after the end of the Peninsula War, Zhao Rundong put forward the view that "the Japanese war was inevitable", and on this ground, the second military reform was launched, which forced Japan to a dead end in just a few years, and turned the Japanese war into a war that had to be fought.

It was highly valued by Wang Yuanqing. It is equivalent to giving the green light to the expansion of the Gwadar port.

Among the many expansion projects, the most notable are none other than the two two-way railways from Benda, the capital of Balochistan, and Karachi, the capital of Sindh, to the port of Gwadar. Because these two railways were not in the original regulations, in fact, there were a total of 10,000-ton single-track railways at that time, so after the Republic proposed the expansion plan, the Pakistani authorities did not buy it. After several years of negotiations, Kistan finally agreed to build the two railways, with the Republic bearing all the costs and compensating the people along the way.

It can be said that if it were not for the rapid end of the war with Japan, the fact that the war expenditure of the Republic was much lower than expected, and the fact that Wang Yuanqing was actively planning a military operation to recover southern Tibet, and had even begun to prepare for war operations against India, I am afraid that the Pakistani authorities would have been held responsible for this kind of mischief.

Of course, there is no benefit to investing alone, that is, it can greatly speed up the construction degree.

Fearing that military action to retake southern Tibet would lead to an early outbreak of war, these two extremely critical strategic railways were opened to traffic before the conflict broke out in southern Tibet. Although the Republic paid billions more for the construction of these two railways in order to catch up with the schedule, the few years thus won provided the Republic with more options. Before the outbreak of the war in India, the ground transportation system around the ports of Gwadar and Karachi was already very good. Although Pei Chengyi did not consider entering the Indian states of Gujarat and Rajasthan from Pakistan's Sindh province during the entire war, and did not even deploy the republic's ground combat troops to Sindh province, relying on the high-level ground transportation system, the military supplies delivered to the ports of Karachi and Gwadar could be delivered to the frontline troops within hours. It effectively improves the efficiency of logistics support and provides more tactical options for front-line commanders.

In fact, these two railways affected more than just the Indian War.

In a sense, when the war in India was coming to an end, Pei Chengyi sent part of the equipment of the front command to the port of Gwadar. A very important reason for setting up the later Theater Command in Gwadar Port is that Gwadar Port has the most ideal ground transportation system.

The railway from Gwadar port to Banda must be mentioned here. As early as the beginning of the second century, because the republic's oil imports came from the Gulf region, and the imported oil spider needed to pass through the Strait of Malacca, and the republic did not have the ability to control the Strait of Malacca, the Octave Strait is located at the southern tip of the Indian Peninsula, and it is the only place from the Strait of Hormuz to the Strait of Malacca and the Strait of Hormuz, so while actively building its navy, the Republic must seek to obtain a more secure energy transportation channel. In this context, the Republic has provided great assistance in the construction of the railway line from St. Pakistan to Zahedan in Iran. In fact, the Republic is building heavily in the port of Gwadar to cover the railway from Zaheedan to Benda.

With the addition of the later strategic railway between the Republic and Iran, the ground communication line from the Republic to Iran was opened.

It is precisely for this reason that during the Iran War, a large number of weapons and equipment produced by the Republic were transported into Iran from the Ben-Iran Railway and delivered to the Iranian army. Because Pakistan was not at war, and the United States had not fully withdrawn its troops from Afghanistan at that time. Therefore, the US military did not dare to bomb the railway line in Pakistan, so it could only try to paralyze the Zahedan railway station and blow up the railway line in Iran. According to unconfirmed folk rumors, during the Iran War, the Republic sent at least one volunteer engineering unit of about the same size to Iran, and the main task of the unit was to ensure the unimpeded railway line from the Pakistan-Iraq border to Zahedan. Thankfully. The railway line in Iran is less than a concave kilometer, and all along the way are highland deserts, and the blown up railway is easy to repair, and the only thing that is difficult to deal with is the various sensor munitions used by the US military specifically to deal with engineers.

All in all, this strategic railway saved Iran.

In a certain sense, because Shengda is the rear of aid to Iraq, when the Pakistani authorities are unwilling to pay for the construction of the Shenggua Railway, the Republic of China invested tens of billions of yuan to build this railway, which is a kind of preliminary strategic deployment by Wang Yuanqing for the future situation in the Middle East. In any case, Wang Yuanqing has no reason to believe that the Republic will be able to build a powerful navy that can rival the US Navy in just a few decades. In fact, until the time when the war in the Middle East was no longer a suspense, the overall strength of the Republic's Navy was still only about seventy percent that of the US Navy. Under such circumstances, as the leader of the country, Wang Yuanqing must consider a very extreme consequence, that is, how to transport combat troops and war materials to the Middle East after losing sea supremacy. There is no doubt that under the protection of the world's number one army, the ground lines of communication are the safest. Although it is difficult for land transport to completely replace sea transport in a large-scale war, after all, the transport capacity of railways is far inferior to that of the fleet, but when necessary, land transport can effectively make up for the problems caused by the lack of sea transport, at least in the short term.

In this context, it is not only the Bengua Railway that is being built.

According to information published by the Pakistani authorities. At the time when the Republic financed the construction of the Benza Railway, the Pakistani authorities also spent a lot of money to build the Pakistani section of the Benza Railway.

Although affected by the political situation at that time, the Iranian authorities, who were in the honeymoon period with Russia, did not actively cooperate, and even the Zazaheedan Bandar Abbas, which had been built by the Jigo thugs for a long time, was not opened to traffic, and the railway was divided into three sections: Zahedan to Shulgaz, Shulgaz to Manujan, and Manujan to Bandar Abbas, of which the southern section from Manujan to Bandar Abbas was opened to traffic in the year of the year, and the middle section from Shulgaz to Manujan was opened to traffic in Shu Nian, and only the northern section from Zahedan to Shulgaz with a mileage of about 4,000 meters was not started for a long time. It can be seen from this that the Iranian authorities are not unaware of the importance of the Zaafa railway, but are only worried about the impact that the construction of the railway will have on Iranian-Russian relations. So that Iran will be in a two-sided unpleasant situation. So three-quarters of the southern section of the road was repaired, and when the situation required it, the northern quarter of the road could be repaired in a very short time, but Ahmadinejad came to power and pushed for economic reforms. One of its major reforms was the construction of infrastructure, and Ahmadinejad's apparently pro-China stance led to the end of the year that the strategic ground line of communication from the Republic of Bandar was connected to Bandar Abbas, north of the Strait of Hormuz. Because Shulgaz also has a straight line to Kerman, and Kerman has a trunk railway to Tehran, as long as the straight line from Shulgaz to Kerman is built into a trunk railway, the strategic main line from the Republic to Iran will be fully connected.

On this strategic line, the railway network with the Gwadar port as the core plays a role in "increasing capacity". important role.

To put it bluntly, the right to control the sea is relatively rare. Or rather, the scale of the war did not expand before. Even if the Republic's fleet cannot reach Iranian ports safely, they can go to Gwadar Port and then send military supplies and combat units into Iranian territory by rail and then to the front lines. Even in the event of an expanded war, the security of the fleet is relatively guaranteed, and the fleet can still be used to undertake most of the transport tasks, because the route from the mainland of the Republic to the port of Gwadar is all covered by shore-based aviation.

It is precisely in this way that Yuan Chenhao will insist on his own views on the issue of the theater command.

Of course, how much of a role the Gwadar port can play depends on how far the impending Middle East war will be. Extent.