1LT Kousei Arima
5th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Division (Mechanized) "Nerima", Japan Imperial Ground Defense Force.

North Jeolla (Jeonbuk) Province, Republic of Korea

May 23rd, 2026

Before we all hop to our tanks, a minute is spared.

For silence, and for many of us, prayer and remembrance.

"Platoon..." I began. "Let us wish for the best today. And also to remember our fallen... especially our loved ones.

The past two weeks as we're establishing ourselves here, more and more missile attacks targeted our cities, not even Watari was spared - despite in his case, his mom was currently recovering from injuries by falling missile debris that hit the front of his house, also, there were too many of men and women of Nerima Division whose family was not so lucky to even be mentioned here...

Special case, two days ago, Lieutenant Arashi of the 31st Regiment broke the news of the death of his parents by air strike... and the loss of four of his "oshi" (favorite idol) of the famous AKB48 group - although those girls he mentioned were graduates of that group.

The idols were all volunteers in the army like us in combat roles, too, in 2nd and 6th Division, all were in the infantry.

Other than idols like I mentioned, there were already nine sports personalities mentioned by my fellow troopers as fallen, not including those that are still languishing in POW camps deep inside China, which unfortunately include one of Tsubaki's favorite baseball player, and a badminton star turned marine.

"Check diesel, electrical, and hydrogen cell" The procedure of starting a Type 10 Kai, or in this case a further modernized Kai Ni variant that have an additional hydrogen cells useful for boosting our movement speed or as auxiliary power alongside the batteries.

"All systems up"

"Drive" that's my command to the driver, still Watari at the controls.

The hum of Mitsubishi hybrid diesel motor started yet another training regimen in this safe-ish part of Korea. Like Japan, the Korean Peninsula is dotted with hills and mountains, now with all Team Kirin had been reassembled but instead of being under Lt. Colonel Okazaki's 11th Tank RCT, now the team had been given to Lt. Colonel Yong-su's 32nd Infantry Regiment in exchange of one of the latter's infantry dominant company task force "Team Toudai (Lighthouse)" organization-wise, it's the 32nd Infantry's 3rd Company.

Accompanied by a composite section of mobile anti-air guns, missile and laser air defense vehicles plus manned air power and friendly swarm drone covers, overall Korean hills means the heavy usage of our tank's (and Koreans) lowriding capability to conceal our movements and also firing in a "hull down" position, tank-speak for a tactic, largely defensive, when most of the tank hulls were covered by the hilltop or other obstacles, only exposing our main gun. Our Type 22 troop carriers of the mechanized infantry cannot change their postures like the tanks, nor the Hanhwa K21s of the Koreans, but it could still cover us in such endeavor.

"Badaboom... badaboom" I mumbled as one of the information screen of the tank showed birdview angle from one of the drones that showed the extensive fortifications by both sides, especially within the vicinity of Seoul Capital Area (Shudo-kwan), followed by videos of real PLA and KPA targets, especially armored vehicles and supply ones, were being hit by friendly first-person view drones loaded with munitions, before it soon changed into views in the vicinity of our training area.

"It's to further familiarize you people with the fighting here..." said one of our Korean liaison officer at that time where the Fighting Fifth had been finally fully assembled.

Anyway, our division had been reinforced in such a fashion of making it a multinational unit, with Foreign Volunteer legionnaires of the 100th Foreign Infantry Regiment, now had been re-equipped with lend-lease US made M1283 General Purpose Vehicle armored personnel carrier, part of Armored Multi-Purpose Vehicle family of vehicles, colloquially called as "turretless Bradley" due to its basis, the famous M2 Bradley directly reporting to the division. In addition, there is also a composite Fijian infantry unit, battalion-sized primarily equipped with Bushmaster wheeled armored vehicles, but those Pacific Islanders were not currently present in our vicinity.

"On the way!"

I was the first to found the simulated column of the reds, made real by the usage of robotic vehicles visually modified to represent PLA vehicles. Simultaneously, artillery began to open up, and air defense crews also reported multiple drones. Unfortunately in their case those are real, autonomous hostile drones trying to observe us for subsequent attack. even with how they had managed to shot those things down.

Same area
1LT Arima Kaori

"Platoon, dismount!"

At the same time as the tanks were taking up their positions, the infantry were also keeping up. Today it's yet another exercise in covering those big guns. As per doctrine, I ceded command of the troop carrier mounted section to SFC. Nakashima, Our presence, accompanied by longer ranged fire assets like the drones, were especially important to prevent hostile infantry capturing higher terrains and endanger our tanks, as well as contributing to ambush operations. Like the tanks, it also involved live fire training on the Type 22 weapons systems, especially with some specialist crews were still green thanks to some experienced folks from the first PLA invasion had been transferred, either to 10th Division, 4th Division, or new units such as the 5th Motorized Division, which I had heard it's scheduled deployment would be this year, when either the 6th Division or 2nd Division needs to be rotated out, or for some NCOs, including Sergeant Morishima, to training role as instructors.

Other than the crack of tank guns and constant drone overflights especially small FPV multicopters, our cover fire include mortars such as the brand new turreted mortars of the same model, Type 24 already used by medium division and brigades, then heavier artillery including the rocketeers - my little brother was surely somewhere with his HIMARS crew...

The scenario got dialed up into eleven, when it's assumed that multiple assault units of the Chinese and North Koreans, although weakened by artillery and long range fires, were still advancing, and that's where a part of divisional reserve were fed into the firing sector we're holding as backup of our own troop carriers - foreign legionnaires riding with their AMPVs. Their Japanese maybe more or less broken, especially newer legionnaires from mostly neutral countries and SE Asian diasporas/exiles in Japan who missed the first phase of action - in Japanese soil, yet, I could see that their determination made up their weakness, and the carrier section were no slouch either - the latter, notionally and also here on field had two HMG armed tracks and two autocannon armed ones, all mounted in RWSs. In addition one of the cannon armed ones also sported a launcher for ATGMs.

"Hostile drones, watch out - this is not a drill, repeat this is not a drill." my radio set crackled with the said warning from our air defense cover.

"FPV, FPV!"

"Must be infiltrators... special ops." I grunted, as I ordered the platoon to spread out, also for two anti-drone guns to be taken out from one of our Type 22s - those are our last ditch defenses, while it's next to useless against swarm attacks.

And so the skies was blanketed by corrected cannon fire, terrifyingly accurate with blast radius that was enough to blast many of them out of the sky, while those burned by jammers or lasers spun out of control and crashed, sometimes with explosions...

"Medic!" It's from the other platoon somewhere on the radio. All in all the border of an exercise and real combat was increasingly blurred over time...