It's better to conquer them than to command the steel torrent

Chapter 233 | One-time Use, Ready to Go

"Commander! The new trucks have arrived!"

"Oh? I'll take a look later."

Shang Ke calmly finished his lunch and left the division headquarters.

A convoy of more than 20 armored personnel carriers drove into the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division's barracks one after another, and soon lined up neatly and parked, attracting the curious attention of many officers and soldiers.

When Shang Ke arrived, many people had already gathered around to comment.

Deputy Division Commander Zhang Anyuan clicked his tongue a few times and complained, "The name 'Mechanized Infantry Division' sounds impressive, but it's not what it seems. After all this time, it's finally going to be a reality."

Wu Zhouhua, commander of the 23rd Mechanized Infantry Regiment, said with some regret, "This batch only has about twenty vehicles. At most, it's just a chance to try it out and get familiar with it. The whole division needs more than four hundred vehicles according to the quota."

Shang Ke, who arrived late, got out of the car leisurely and said with a smile: "It's already in production. The chassis of this thing is still a truck, so it's easy to build. If you perform well, we can complete the order within two months."

Wu Zhouhua quickly stood at attention and saluted, then asked impatiently, "Eh? What ranking do I need to get?"

"Top three."

"Does that include the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division, Commander?"

“Not included.”

Upon learning that the tacit agreement would not compare them with the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division, Zhang Anyuan felt confident of victory and said with great certainty, "Then this is a sure thing. I'm not saying this to be mean, but the performance of the other ten or so divisions is no match for our division. They've simply brought shame upon themselves."

Shang Ke gloated inwardly, but outwardly he still solemnly admonished, "There's no need to be so smug. Be careful that others work hard and overtake our division. Let's see what they're made of. If the training results are not ideal, even if I have connections everywhere, I won't be able to get the best things first."

Zhang Anyuan nodded and replied, "Don't worry, Commander. Everyone is putting in their best effort in training and is determined not to fall behind."

"Also, Lao Zhang, stop watching the show. Although the casualties from the last accident have been dealt with, I don't think it's enough to wake you up. How can you still see people lying next to armored vehicles taking a nap?" Shang Ke waved his hand and instructed, "I think we should call a photography company to shoot a safety training educational video. Also, these twenty-odd armored vehicles should be distributed equally among the regiments so they can take turns driving them and getting familiar with them."

The 1st Mechanized Infantry Division is quite special, as it was the first experimental division-level armored infantry unit to be established. The other nineteen divisions were established a few months after the 1st Mechanized Infantry Division was established, so there is no comparability between them.

Leaving aside this veteran elite unit, the 8th Mechanized Infantry Division, which started from scratch, is the most dazzling new star. The four-month training is about to end, and the comprehensive assessment results are basically guaranteed to be third and strive for first place.

The days between June and July were filled with good news.

On June 23, with the completion of trial production, the Type 40 armored personnel carrier began mass production, and each of the twenty mechanized infantry divisions received 30 to 40 trial production models for early testing.

On June 29, the fourth batch of improved prototype vehicles of "Project 6" completed testing and was officially designated as the Type 40 medium armored vehicle, ready for trial production.

On June 30, a special version of the Jie-37 twin-engine interceptor equipped with an exhaust gas turbocharger caught fire during a test flight, but the development team maintains that turbochargers have more potential than superchargers.

Besides these, the development of small arms has also yielded remarkable results. As the saying goes, there is no best, only the most suitable; what matches the national conditions and guiding ideology is the best.

Regarding small arms, the Federal Army remains skeptical of intermediate-power automatic rifles, with mixed opinions, but is extremely enthusiastic about machine guns.

Small arms are an area that Shank doesn't pay much attention to. Apart from rocket launchers, almost all firearms are left to the military industry to develop freely.

Shank discovered that, without his intervention, the Federal Army had embarked on a path of 'enhancing light machine guns with heavy machine guns'.

The general-purpose machine gun was seen as somewhat inadequate by the military. Infantry units believed that a combination of light and heavy machine guns was more appropriate, with each fulfilling its specific role. The only problem was that the light machine gun, which used magazine feed, had slightly insufficient firepower and could not meet the needs of actual combat.

Therefore, the Southern Ordnance Equipment Group developed the Type 39 light machine gun, which uses belt-fed ammunition. The new light machine gun has a square ammunition box with three sections of 25-round non-disintegrating ammunition belt connected together (75 rounds in total). The unloaded weight is 10.6 kg. It operates on a gas-operated automatic principle, with open bolt standby, adjustable rate of fire, and a theoretical rate of fire of up to 700 rounds per minute.

This new light machine gun boasts unprecedented firepower. Its only two drawbacks are slightly lower accuracy and slightly higher weight. However, its excellent reliability and abundant firepower outweigh these shortcomings, and the Federal Army has procured large quantities of it to replace older equipment.

Even by today's standards, this gun is flawless. If its weight could be reduced, it could become a classic firearm that will endure for a long time.

What made Shang Ke both laugh and cry was the infantry anti-tank weapon.

The rocket launcher advocated by Shank was ruthlessly rejected because the infantry felt that the rocket launcher had too short a range and poor accuracy. It was absurd that an effective range of less than 100 meters would require a separate unit.

The infantry believed that only recoilless rifles were worth having a separate quota, so they directly canceled the development projects of rocket launchers similar to the 'Bazooka' and 'Tank Killer', and replaced them with lightweight disposable rocket launchers.

Disposable rocket launchers are considered worthwhile equipment for infantry units because they do not occupy organizational positions, are convenient and flexible to use, and can be used as needed. Essentially, they are used as "self-flying grenades".

The National Defense Army was overjoyed, believing that it finally had the material basis to match the new tactics, and thus began to implement the brand-new infantry squad tactics.

The project for a lightweight disposable rocket launcher was undertaken by North Chemical Group. The result was the prototype of the Type 40 individual rocket launcher, which weighs 2.4 kg and contains a 1.1 kg rocket. It uses a hollow charge warhead filled with approximately 350 grams of TNT and has a static armor penetration depth of 120 mm.

This type of rocket launcher currently faces a fatal technical challenge—its range is only forty or fifty meters.

Beihua Group has discovered that if too much propellant is loaded into the rocket, it will not burn completely inside the steel tube. The flames that continue to burn after exiting the tube will burn the user's face and eyes. Therefore, Beihua Group can only reduce the amount of propellant to a very small amount for the time being. If they want to load more propellant, they need to develop a fast-burning propellant with an extremely high combustion rate. This is the technical problem they are currently working on.

Of course, as things stand, this thing isn't unusable. Anyway, Shang Ke thinks that a penetration capability of over 100 millimeters makes up for all its shortcomings.

He could only smile helplessly at the fact that the federal military-industrial complex had designed such an advanced disposable rocket launcher years in advance.

He only briefly mentioned it in his report, but it unexpectedly came true.

This time, the legend of the "army of trolls" will be recreated in a different way.

(End of this chapter)