Chapter 657: Mavericks Go Out

The two sides encountered each other suddenly. After capturing Gewash, this tank unit originally planned to launch a surprise attack on Tatvan. They did not expect that the two sides would encounter each other on this rugged mountain road!

In fact, if the Turkish army had been more resolute, they would have discovered that the Kurds they were dealing with were just a group of novices. Their operations were quite unskilled and they could not bring out even 10% of the combat effectiveness of their tanks.

For example, they only need to set up roadblocks, or even simpler, set a few cars side by side on fire, and they can stop the Kurds from advancing! Although they use tanks as bumper cars, they definitely dare not hit a burning car. As long as the road here is blocked, the mountain road is rugged, and the Kurds will definitely not be able to find a second way to go!

As long as the Kurds are blocked here, they can be completely wiped out when the subsequent reinforcements arrive!

Unfortunately, they were so frightened that after one of their Kurdish tanks was knocked off the cliff, the Turks behind them lost the courage to resist. They only cared about escaping and were completely routed. They were severely beaten by the Kurdish tank troops!

The Kurds did not push all the cars off the cliff. Since the Turks in the cars had fled, these cars were their property! The tank troops were only the vanguard, and there were infantrymen behind them! The Kurds were very poor, and the infantrymen relied on their two legs. It was good enough to have a motorcycle. Now, they got these cars for free, so of course they had to use them!

The rear team became the front team. The Kurdish infantry passed through their tank troops and climbed onto the cars. The mountain road was too narrow and the tank troops could not pass first, so the infantry driving the cars walked in front.

The army marched along the mountain road towards Tatvan!

An infantry brigade was defeated by the Kurds! Heavy casualties! The Kurds actually have tanks! This shocking news soon reached Ankara in the rear.

We must not let the Kurds occupy Tatvan! Compared with Van, Tatvan has a larger population! If the Kurds cause unrest there, it is likely to make the situation even worse! More Kurds will respond!

Evren was still meeting with the heads of state at the NATO headquarters to coordinate, and the chiefs of the general staff of the armed forces in Ankara knew that the matter was of great importance, so they immediately mobilized more troops to Tatvan!

At the same time, the Air Force also quickly dispatched a bombing formation consisting of four F-4 fighter jets, flying rapidly towards Lake Van.

The army troops are just a bunch of idiots, and they can't even beat a group of mountain Turks! Turan, the lead pilot flying at high altitude, couldn't help but be full of contempt.

Now, under the order of the superiors, the Air Force had to support the troops in combat. Originally, the confrontation with the Soviets on the border was very tense, and the Air Force was always on guard against the Soviets and Iranians suddenly launching a large-scale attack. Therefore, every fighter plane was equipped with anti-aircraft missiles, Sparrow missiles and Sidewinder missiles, ready to strike the enemy at any time.

And now? They were originally eagles in the sky, but now they have to do ground attack! Each fighter plane has an AGM-65 "Maverick" air-to-ground missile on its pylons, and only two Sidewinders for self-defense are on the wingtips. They need to find the Kurdish tank troops and launch an attack!

This is a very difficult task to accomplish, because the terrain here is quite complex, with towering mountains below, and the jet fighters are very fast. In this case, it is not easy to detect them visually when they fly past.

At the same time, the AN/APQ-120 fire control radar is an early model radar. It has no synthetic aperture mode or pulse Doppler mode and cannot filter ground clutter. Therefore, this type of radar cannot be used for this type of attack mission.

Fortunately, although the carrier aircraft is backward, the Maverick air-to-ground missiles it carries are not backward. It is a good at attacking armored targets!

During the Cold War, the Soviet tank forces could roll forward at any time and submerge the West in a sea of ​​steel. The West's choice was to use quality to overcome the advantage of quantity. It was necessary to use fighter jets to launch a ground-attack missile. The Maverick missile was developed under this circumstance. As a small tactical missile, six missiles could be mounted on an F-4 fighter to attack six ground targets, and tanks were one of the important targets.

Türkiye is NATO's front line against the Soviet Union. All kinds of advanced weapons will be equipped to Turkey first, and the same is true for this Maverick missile!

There is no need to use outdated radars. Maverick missiles can be television-guided, infrared imaging-guided and semi-active laser-guided. Now, Turan's fighter jets are equipped with television-guided Maverick missiles.

The onboard AN/ASX-1 optical/electronic target recognition system has started working, displaying the scanned image on the IP-1094/APQ-120E display in front of the radar operator in the rear seat of the F-4 fighter, and synchronizing it with the IP-1093/APQ-120E display in the front.

In order to observe the target more clearly, the F-4 fleet flew towards the target at high altitude. When they saw the vast Lake Van, they lowered their altitude and speed so that they could better spot the target.

The weather was clear and the television images were quite clear. The radar operator in the rear cabin kept adjusting his C-8909/APQ-120E display control device to make the target clearer.

There were mountains ahead, and then valleys, and just as they flashed by, the shadows of a convoy appeared below!

"Target found!" the radar operator in the rear cabin shouted, "It's in the valley we just flew over."

"Target spotted, go-around, prepare to attack!" Turan shouted on the radio, ordering his formation to prepare to attack.

After two turns, it flew over a valley on one side. Now, a huge convoy appeared on the display. The radar operator in the rear cabin carefully adjusted the control device. Finally, he could see clearly the convoy below. They were indeed tanks!

"Target, Soviet tank, attack immediately." The radar operator in the rear cabin said as he used the aiming device to switch to continuous tracking mode. In four seconds, he intercepted the target. He moved the control stick a few times to place the target in the center of the aiming crosshairs. He quickly selected a Maverick missile, unlocked the gyroscope, threw away the hood, and the camera of the Maverick missile transmitted the image to the display in the cockpit of the aircraft. It coincided with the target indicated by the AN/ASX-1 optical/electrical target recognition system. Then, with the sound of fire, flames flashed under the wing.