Mu Haoyang remained silent in mid-January, which was also related to one thing: the war situation in the Southwest Pacific.

After more than two months of fighting, the Navy and Marine Generals realized that capturing the Solomon Islands was almost a thankless thing.

More importantly, half of the time window has been used up, and the battle has not yet achieved a decisive victory.[..com]

At that time, the Marines had reached eight Marine divisions sent to the Solomon Islands and captured the entire New Georgia Island and Bougainville Island to the north. The military increase operation continued, and it was estimated that it would reach sixteen Marine divisions, because the purpose of the Marines was no longer to directly attack Guadalcanal, but to sweep away other islands and completely isolate the US troops on Guadalcanal.

The question is, how easy is this?

At that time, it was proposed to directly attack Guadalcanal Island in order to resolve the battle once and for all.

The result was that not only Mu Haoyang opposed it, but even Pang Yuelong firmly opposed it, because all the information showed that the attack on Guadalcanal was definitely a bloody battle. The subsequent facts proved that the two of them were right. In the event of having to do it, the Chinese Marine Corps lost nearly 30,000 lives for the island, and more than 50,000 were disabled. The entire Guadalcanal Island was soaked in blood.

In fact, the best choice at that time was to give up the offensive, stalemate with the US military, and even leave the Solomon Islands.

Unfortunately, it is easy to climb the Solomon Islands, but it is not easy to give up the Solomon Islands.

Not to mention anything else, at least Huang Hanlin would not let Mu Haoyang do this. It can even be said that as long as Mu Haoyang proposes to withdraw troops from the Solomon Islands, Huang Hanlin will dismiss him.

The reason is very simple. This is the first strategic offensive launched by the Chinese army in the Southwest Pacific.

Don’t forget that the direct reason for attacking the Solomon Islands was Huang Hanlin’s strategic guarantee to Southeast and South Asian countries at the Oriental Alliance Group summit. Although Huang Hanlin’s guarantee was to enter the Australian continent, at that time, attacking the Solomon Islands was regarded as the first step to enter the Australian continent. If he missed the first step, who would still believe that the Chinese army was able to capture the Australian continent?

There is no doubt that in politics, Chinese troops are absolutely not allowed to retreat from the Solomon Islands.

In addition to political factors, there are also military factors.

Although it is thousands of miles apart, the bloody battles on the Solomon Islands have indeed helped the mainland battlefield, such as forcing the United States to begin to consider guarding the Australian continent.

In the last month of 2053 alone, the United States sent 300,000 ground troops to Australia.

In addition, the United States also transported Australia the main combat equipment that was enough to equip twenty divisions, and continued to provide three divisions and main combat equipment every month to help the Australian armed army. At that time, Australia had recruited 1.8 million soldiers, formed 60 regular divisions, and opened dozens of training camps. It is expected that these troops will complete training in the second half of 2054. That is to say, by then, Australia will need at least 60 divisions of main combat equipment, while Australia itself does not have a complete military industry, and almost all main combat equipment needs to be provided by the United States. If Australia continues to expand its army, it will still need more main combat equipment.

The resulting impact is that it dispersed the United States' military power.

You should know that if Australia is not threatened, by the end of 2053, the United States will be able to send 300,000 ground troops to Russia and transport the main combat equipment sent to Australia to Russia to help Russia form the main force equivalent to 500,000 regular troops.

In addition, Australia made a commitment in early 2053 to provide five divisions for the Western Alliance. In the future, these Australian troops would definitely be sent to Russia or to the Middle East to replace the US troops. As a result, Australian authorities refused to fulfill their commitments on the grounds that local threats were threatened.

It can be seen from this that the Battle of the Solomon Islands contained at least 900,000 ground troops from the Western Alliance Group.

You know, this was still in 2053.

If the battle situation in the Solomon Islands continues to develop in 2054, the United States and Australia will have to consider fighting a strategic defensive battle on the Australian continent. In this way, the ground forces of the Western Alliance group that are trapped on the Australian continent will only be more.

These two factors combined, even if Mu Haoyang wants to withdraw his troops, it will definitely not become a reality.

Of course, Mu Haoyang never thought about withdrawing his troops, but just thought that he would either fight harder or not, and that soldiers should not make worthless sacrifices.

In fact, by the end of 2053, the purpose of the Battle of the Solomon Islands was achieved and there was no need to continue to fight.

Don’t forget that there are two main purposes for the Navy and Marines to launch the Solomon Islands Battle. One is political, that is, to make Huang Hanlin’s promises valuable, and the other is military, that is, to cover up the offensive launched by the Army on the mainland battlefield and to restrain the enemy’s forces.

As can be seen from the previous introduction, both purposes have been achieved.

More importantly, in Mu Haoyang's strategic plan, there was no such part of entering Australia from the Solomon Islands.

To put it bluntly, the Solomon Islands are not a must-pass place to attack the Australian continent.

To be narrower, the Navy and Marines attacked the Solomon Islands only hoped to consume a lot of vitality from the US military here, so that the US military could shed more blood and thus unable to defend the Australian continent. As for the next entry into the Australian continent, it is completely different.

In Mu Haoyang's strategic plan, entering the Australian mainland will be at the end of 2054.

By then, the Chinese army will definitely have more than 10,000 large electric transport aircraft, and the electric tactical transport aircraft is expected to reach 12,000. After deducting the air transport forces deployed on the mainland battlefield, the Navy and the Marine Corps can be divided into at least 5,000 large electric transport aircraft and 8,000 electric tactical transport aircraft, and they will have the ability to fight a cross-sea battle without the landing fleet, that is, to directly attack the Australian continent by airborne and air transport.

At that time, all the Navy has to do is to prevent the US fleet from entering the waters between the Australian continent and Southeast Asia.

As for the Marines, they will no longer take landing warships to fight, but will directly use transport planes to send them to the battlefield, opening a "landing ground" in the northern part of the Australian continent.

In a sense, Mu Haoyang's understanding of future ground wars is more than Qi Kaiwei.

You should know that by the beginning of 2054, Qi Kaiwei did not completely let go of his previous army offensive tactics and did not fully utilize the huge potential of air transport.

Of course, this is also related to the bystanders.

In terms of understanding the direction of strategic development, especially in terms of the impact of new weapons on tactics, Mu Haoyang, who does not understand ground wars, will not be influenced by traditional tactical ideas and can more objectively evaluate the value of new equipment and its impact on the mode of war.

Unfortunately, Mu Haoyang is not the chief of staff of the army and has to obey political decisions.

The result was that even though he knew there was no need to continue fighting in the Solomon Islands, Mu Haoyang still had to bite the bullet and fight.

What he can do is to reduce the casualties of the troops as much as possible.

As for losses and consumption, Mu Haoyang really didn't consider it, because in his opinion, the lost equipment and consumed materials can be made, and only excellent soldiers cannot make it. Even if they recruit more recruits, it will take a lot of time to train. Only soldiers who have fought a few battles and rolled in blood can be qualified to be called real soldiers.

By the standards of this world war, behind a veteran is the remains of two or three new recruits.

In other words, in the front-line combat troops, less than one-third of the new recruits can grow into veterans and gain recognition from other veterans.

In order to reduce casualties, Mu Haoyang naturally would not let the Marines attack Guadalcanal Island.

To put it bluntly, Mu Haoyang was also spending time, that is, delaying it for a long time, until Huang Hanlin believed that even if he did not attack Guadalcanal Island, it would have no effect.

If you understand this, then look at Mu Haoyang's performance at the strategic decision-making meeting in mid-January, you can understand why he has remained silent.

Obviously, Mu Haoyang also hopes that Qi Kaiwei's gamble can make a fortune, because it means that Volgograd's huge victory can dwarf the Battle of the Solomon Islands, which can make Huang Hanlin proud, and thus allow Mu Haoyang to end this bloody battle that is no longer of much practical significance. At least, Mu Haoyang can take this opportunity to convince Huang Hanlin and make the head of state believe that attacking Guadalcanal is already a trivial matter.

Unfortunately, Mu Haoyang ignored or avoided a problem.

That is, if the combat operation to attack Volgograd fails, then attacking Guadalcanal will no longer be a trivial matter.

Politically speaking, if this happens, it will be inevitable to attack Guadalcanal.

You should know that there are only two ways to cover up a tragic failure, one is a happy victory, and the other is a more tragic failure.

Judging from the battlefield situation in early 2054, no matter which method is used, it must be implemented in the Solomon Islands.

In other words, as long as the attack on Volgograd fails, whether Guadalcanal can be captured or not, it will become the main means to cover up strategic setbacks.

In fact, Mu Haoyang had already realized this and began to prepare.

At that time, the first thing he did was to let the Marines increase troops to the Southwest Pacific and to draw the Marine Division from other theaters as strategic reserves so that when they were forced to launch a combat operation to attack Guadalcanal Island, rather than make preparations at that time.

Immediately afterwards, Mu Haoyang did something more important: to rectify the fleet.

In his opinion, the best way to make up for the setbacks in land warfare is to achieve a major victory on the marine battlefield, and only the fleet can achieve this goal.
Chapter completed!