Out of all military transportation methods they've chosen the most dangerous one.
"A Japanese looking chef with out-worldly cooking skills from no background, admitting he's a spy?! No... That can't be true."
@kwendy If they have artillery on standby, it's not nearly so dangerous. It's even less dangerous if they have close air support. Or they could have a second wave ready to deploy. Or they could have ground assets infiltrated around the site.
Snapshot pictures are a terrible way to judge they efficacy and competence of a military action. It's a flaw with this manga that it does not always show the full extent of an op (see the combined-arms attack on the dragons at the volcano) - but that's no excuse to succumb to the flaw and assume what you see is all there is.
If you don't want to read about the details of an operation, that's your choice. If the author doesn't adequately explain / hint at those details, then that's their fault. But your / their refusal to take that information into account doesn't make that information irrelevant.
Modern Artillery: Has a range of dozens of kilometers before accuracy degrades to unacceptable levels. Hundreds if you're talking about missiles. It is absolutely feasible for them to have artillery support.
Close Air Support: Any modern plane or helicopter can be stationed dozens (helis) or hundreds (planes) of kilometers outside an operation site and still reach the target in a timely fashion. And even if for some contrived reason you can't use those, drones work too.
[/quote]Second Wave / Ground assets: You're making a false assumption - these do not have to be line elements. There's nothing in the story or modern doctrine that says they can't have multiple spec-ops teams assigned. We've already seen demonstrations of this in prior scenes.
This base has been operational for months in a massively politically-charged and economically-profitable location; it is silly to assume it is not very well stocked for extended operations. In the alternate world, supply lines are greatly eased by the use of heavy cargo helis and planes as shown in previous chapters. Logistics is a concern, but P5 means it's not as big as you're making it out to be.
Fair point, but the JSDF SOF was trained by US Army SF, and they have shown that the JGSDF can indeed bring artillery, like when they took down the fire dragon.
Have you considered the time tables? How far away is Tanska from Alnus? How long can you tie up the artillery battery for? What about ammunition, supplies and fuel for the towing vehicles and their crews? How about a security force for the artillery battery? Could you even get there by ground with all those assets? How do you link up and coordinate? Can the operation wait until the slower moving ground assets get in place? Or will they need to be airlifted in? What if they get entangled in combat on the way there? A battery of artillery and their security force is not exactly stealthy. The Dragon operation was literally an expeditionary force. They even brought engineering vehicles to cross the rivers with. Just the logistics of their supplies and fuel must have been staggering. This operation is a rescue and exfiltration of a single civillian, not a shock and awe display. Sometimes, less is more.They used the large tracked Type 99 155mm howitzers. The M1 field guns used by the JGSDF are small, lightweight, and can be towed by a Toyota Mega Cruiser, so why can't they bring those?