Homo Sapiens

Ovi, a naval officer, carefully examined the parameters of this loitering munition and discovered a problem. He quickly pointed it out:

"Boss, isn’t the speed of this missile a bit too slow?"

According to the design specifications, the flight speed of this loitering munition was between 500 and 700 kilometers per hour.

This wasn’t a design flaw, but rather that the civilian piston engines used in its components could only reach this level of speed.

To increase its speed, they would have to use jet engines or solid-fuel rocket motors. However, doing so would inevitably increase production costs.

Moreover, jet engines and solid fuel were not easy to come by. With Luzon’s current industrial capabilities, mass production was not feasible.

Even if mass production were possible, the cost would keep the production volume low.

The strategic purpose of this loitering munition was to overwhelm the enemy with sheer numbers, so they couldn’t drastically increase the cost just for a partial performance boost.

"Speed is indeed a weakness, but it’s not one that can’t be compensated for." Li Qingye pulled up a new file.

The file contained improvement concepts for the loitering munition.

Since speed was limited by the engine, they would use other methods to compensate.

Plan One: The ultra-low-altitude penetration model.

By leveraging the advantages of Homo Sapiens Company’s biocomputer technology, they could equip the loitering munition with a superior intelligent control system, allowing the missile to fly right along the ground or sea surface.

As one might expect, radar has an insurmountable blind spot when monitoring ultra-low altitudes because it is susceptible to interference from ground terrain, obstacles, and ocean waves.

As long as it wasn’t detected by radar, it didn’t matter how slow the missile was.

After all, modern interception and defense systems rely on radar, sonar, and satellites. Radar is the key detection method. Once radar fails to lock onto an incoming target, the interceptor missiles and systems are essentially flying blind.

By the time the missile is visible to the naked eye, it’s pretty much a death sentence.

Plan Two: The radar-absorbent stealth model.

This involved using materials that can absorb radar waves to make the missile invisible to electromagnetic waves, allowing it to silently attack the enemy.

Plan Three: The undersea submersible model.

Designed in the shape of a torpedo and combined with Homo Sapiens Company’s current anechoic tile and biocomputer technologies, this torpedo could travel submerged near a target and directly attack a ship’s waterline.

Alternatively, it could be modified to transform into a fixed-wing missile after approaching the target’s coastline, attacking land targets near the shore.

Plan Four: The composite model.

It would combine multiple technologies, giving it the capabilities of electromagnetic stealth, ultra-low-altitude flight, and low-noise submerged travel.

This model was also one of Li Qingye’s backup plans for an intercontinental strategic missile.

Its technical specifications required it to be able to secretly travel submerged to the vicinity of America’s North American coastline, then penetrate its territory at ultra-low altitude to deliver a warhead weighing around 3 tons to any city in America.

To go head-to-head with the world’s five hegemons, you couldn’t compete with their financial power. Instead, you had to use asymmetric means and make them hesitate to act for fear of the consequences.

In any case, Li Qingye’s strategic thinking was: ’You can destroy one of my branches, but I can make your homeland suffer devastating losses. Let’s see who can take the most punishment.’

Ovi re-evaluated the performance of these weapons, running a simulation in his mind.

He realized that if these weapons could truly be created, and America tried to take Luzon, an area stretching one to two hundred kilometers inland from the North American coastline would almost certainly be destroyed by Homo Sapiens Company.

After all, many of Homo Sapiens Company’s technologies had very low production costs and used a large number of civilian components. They could easily use missile swarms to exhaust the enemy’s interceptor missiles and CIWS ammunition, thereby creating a blind spot in their defenses.

Li Qingye continued, "I plan to establish a Military Industry Division, dedicated to producing and stockpiling various weapons. This year, I will allocate 200 million US dollars to the Military Industry Division, and the funding in the coming years will be no less than that amount."

"Boss, even though some of the parts are civilian products, I still think it’s necessary to push for domestic production," Ovi pointed out again.

Li Qingye nodded in satisfaction. "You’re right. This year’s allocation for the Military Industry Division is precisely to establish a number of supporting factories on remote islands and in mountainous areas of our own territory."

Having fully boarded Homo Sapiens Company’s pirate ship, Ovi naturally wouldn’t have the comprador mindset of "it’s better to buy than to build."

Even though many of the component suppliers were companies from Huaguo, Ovi did not let his guard down.

Therefore, establishing a self-sufficient supply chain became a matter of extreme importance.

After discussing Homo Sapiens Company’s weapons strategy, Li Qingye gave new orders to Ovi and Chen Jianxiong:

"Ovi, I need you to screen and select a group of suitable personnel from within the navy and assign them to a warship."

"I can do that," Ovi nodded.

"Jianxiong, you will form a special intelligence team. Use pheromone flies to plant pheromone emitters on the warships, aircraft, submarines, and bases of all major powers."

Chen Jianxiong immediately understood Li Qingye’s plan.

This was a contingency plan. If an unexpected situation arose, Homo Sapiens Company could use these pheromone emitters to lock onto the targets and seize the initiative with a preemptive strike.

At the same time, this was also to coordinate with the missiles and achieve precision guidance.

After all, Homo Sapiens Company didn’t have a satellite navigation system. Relying solely on the computational power of their biocomputers, they could achieve precise flight attitude control and the like, but their guidance methods were still relatively crude.

If they could plant pheromone emitters on or around the targets in advance, the missiles could then be equipped with a pheromone positioning system to achieve precision guidance.

Moreover, compared to active radar and satellite navigation, this guidance method had its own unique advantages.

Currently, the coverage range of the miniature pheromone emitters was a radius of about 23 to 28 kilometers in open areas like the sea surface, deserts, or ice fields.

In cities, mountains, or tropical rainforests, they could cover a radius of about 13 to 17 kilometers.

And that wasn’t even the limit.

This was because the pheromone detection system was composed of pheromone emitters, pheromone receptors, and a biocomputer.

The current bottleneck for the pheromone emitters was mainly limited by the transmission distance of the pheromones themselves. The currently equipped Leaf Moth Type-3 tracking pheromone had a maximum transmission distance of only about 30 kilometers.

The pheromone sensors, on the other hand, weren’t much of a problem, and the biocomputer would become increasingly precise as its processing speed improved.

Therefore, the detection range often depended on the type of pheromone used by the emitter.

Li Qingye had already found a potential solution for this.

It was the "progressive variation" method: using technical means to synthesize a large-molecule pheromone.

For example, suppose the large-molecule pheromone is "A." When it reaches the end of its transmission life, it decomposes into pheromone "B." Following this logic, pheromone "B" can then decompose into pheromone "C," and so on.

Through this progressive variation, as long as the number of decomposition variations was high enough, it might be possible in the future to achieve a level of coverage spanning the entire Earth.

After all, just a few milligrams of a substance like a pheromone could cover an area of tens of square kilometers.

In this way, Homo Sapiens Company could establish a global surveillance system completely distinct from electromagnetic wave detection.