What the hell is a private enterprise?

Chapter 520 Type 685 in Action
Despite Robert's enthusiastic hospitality, Tang Wen remained unmoved on the MD.12 project, but expressed a strong desire for McDonnell Douglas to participate in Champs's new passenger aircraft program, offering an extremely high price.

With a total budget of $7 million, almost the same as the budget for the large passenger jet MD.11, it's simply excessive.

Of course, the conditions are also slightly different:
The new passenger aircraft must be designed domestically and possess the production capabilities and authorization for most components, excluding the engine, such as the fuselage, most of the avionics systems, landing gear, and electrical systems.

Therefore, at least $7 million of this $3 million is a "mentorship fee," intended to be used to acquire technology and design experience.

Robert was also somewhat tempted, after all, the performance of the McDonnell Douglas 80 and McDonnell Douglas 90 over the past ten years has indeed been far inferior to that of their competitors in the same class, and now is the perfect time to launch a replacement model.

Moreover, Tang Wen's proposed concept of a new passenger aircraft is different from the traditional classification. With a range of 8000 kilometers, a wide body, and twin large thrust, it has surpassed regional jets but is not quite up to the level of ocean-going large passenger aircraft. It can simultaneously develop short-haul, high-capacity aircraft and meet most long-haul travel needs, while also being more economical.

The CF6 is readily available, and the body can be adapted from the DC10, which is a good thing for McDonnell Douglas, at least.

In addition to business matters at the company level, Tang Wen also gave Robert a big gift:
The $3000 million was entrusted to a real estate fund controlled by the latter for safekeeping, with no questions asked about its use or profits and losses, and was not withdrawn before 2000.

This made Robert even happier. Although it was a nominee shareholding, he could easily earn a billionaire's fortune with this huge sum of money, and it was obvious that the money was a gift to him.

It's getting increasingly difficult to operate in the US manufacturing sector, yet Boeing's acquisition of McDonnell Douglas only cost $140 billion!
一个能独立研发C17“环球霸王”运输机、涉足YF23和A12隐身战机、F18、F15，导弹、火箭技术，并拥有数千顶级员工和先进制造工厂以及全球客机领域巨头居然只值这么点钱。

Compared to the rising internet upstarts that easily make hundreds of millions of dollars with just a single URL, traditional industries do a lot but earn little, and face extremely high risks. Investors would rather put their money in a bank or wealth management product than support the real economy.

The fate of Boeing, the only giant in the industry, proved this point. While internet and semiconductor giants had market capitalizations exceeding one trillion dollars, Boeing's market capitalization was a pitiful less than 2000 billion dollars, hardly deserving of the title of hegemon.

McDonnell Douglas's top executives weren't really interested in the plane; instead, they were incredibly envious of Tang Wen's internet business and couldn't wait to jump on the bandwagon after seeing the explosive success of DaWang BBS.

For Robert, it was more comfortable to focus his energy on anything else than building airplanes.

The domestic internet industry, led by US Online, is still locked in a bloody battle with Gaijin Network.

Currently, pure social networking sites are not valued by the capital market as much; the focus is more on portal websites and yellow pages, which are more convenient for businesses and official users and obviously can charge fees.

Social networking and other personal service websites don't seem to have much of a profit potential. Even if they charge for email, they won't make much money, at most enough to support a few small companies.

But seeing the number of users on DaWang BBS steadily increasing, its competitors couldn't sit still any longer. In addition to copying DaWang BBS, US Online also "borrowed" its UI design and occasionally organized hackers to cause some "minor trouble".

Tang Wen and Song Nan were both well aware of the situation, but this was the United States, and they really had no better options than to retaliate in kind.

When a newcomer from out of town clashes with a long-established local bully, the locals cheer.
There's no way around it, they're really giving out money!
After Gaikin pioneered the cash-sharing race, his competitors had no choice but to join in. Regardless of who wins or loses, it will benefit ordinary netizens. Where else can you find such a good deal as receiving US dollars with just a few taps on your phone?

In addition, Johnson was also pleased that both companies used the terms "Allied Forces" and "Navy" as gimmicks, but they did indeed send money, and tens of millions of dollars is no small sum.

However, this amount of money was still a drop in the bucket for repairing the Enterprise. Due to the shortage of ships at Newport News Shipbuilding, the Enterprise had to undergo damage assessment and cleaning operations in port first, including cutting a hole in the most severely damaged midships deck, and a complete repair plan was just issued.

The shipyard slightly adjusted its repair quote from $10 billion to $12 billion, with the repair period remaining at 18 months. The earliest it could be back in service would be the latter half of 2000. But how long can a severely damaged aircraft carrier remain in service? The Enterprise had already served for 36 years; theoretically, based on a 50-year lifespan, it should have been decommissioned in 2011. If it weren't for prestige, it would have been better to decommission and scrap it earlier.

Damn Hans.

Johnson cursed Rao Xi in his mind, then went to the secret office of the Naval Intelligence Department and entered a... monitoring room.

The Birmingham was, after all, a nuclear submarine, and the cost and reputational damage of its sinking would be enormous. Bean didn't expect a second chance.

In addition to installing a large number of locators and alarms, a month before the operation, a submarine cable company announced that it was repairing a damaged pipeline in the nearby waters. In reality, it dropped two underwater vehicles disguised as rocks and connected them with fiber optic cables to a reef 2 kilometers away, and then used satellite antennas extending out of the sea surface to achieve real-time monitoring.

The sunken Birmingham was just a dozen meters away from the submersible, right at the limit of underwater visibility.

However, to save bandwidth, the submersible does not provide real-time images, but instead sends back still photos at regular intervals. The interval between the two submersibles is only 10 seconds.

Video recordings are also available, but due to storage space limitations, they can only be stored inside the submarine and can only be recorded by remotely triggered commands.

The employees in the monitoring room are responsible for staring at these still photos every day, trying to find something.

However, Johnson was not in a hurry. Fishing requires patience, and he believed that Hans would not be so reckless.

……

Tang Wen was still thinking about the C17, but he was actually quite interested in all the planes in the United States.

就算是C130那个老古董，也比运8这个仿制安12的坑货强得多，Y8为基础的空警200十年后更是直接葬送了34名电子和雷达专家。

However, the opportunity for C17 has not yet arrived. The Empire brings up India almost every few days, and the two sides are still in the stage of bickering. It will take time for the situation to escalate to actual sanctions.

Besides airplanes, Tang Wen also kept the HMS Birmingham nuclear submarine in mind.

Two weeks after landing in the United States, the Imperial Navy's attitude changed from trying to salvage the wreckage to giving up, and finally they decided not to salvage even the wreckage.

The sinking of the HMS Birmingham disappeared from mainstream media five days ago. Although the investigation and follow-up surveys will certainly continue for years, the large-scale and intensive search has ended.

We can start soon.

Considering that Imperial submarines or sonar might still be around the wreckage, Tang Wen did not send a U-boat to avoid alerting them, but instead sent the Kosomoyets, which was cruising in the Atlantic.

(End of this chapter)