Valley Emperor

Vol 2 Chapter 1632: awkward rifle

Although the tonnage of the Wandan battleship is still only 10,000 tons, it is impossible to do so. At present, the largest shipyard in the empire can only build 10,000-ton warships, no matter how big it is, there is no way to build it.

Even if it is a 10,000-ton dock, in fact, there are only two at present!

Before the Datang Empire Navy did not continue to build the third battleship, in addition to other factors, there is also an important reason that the Datang Empire currently only has two 10,000-ton docks, which are the two 10,000-ton docks in Hong Kong's Dingsheng Shipyard. , the first block was used to build the Canton, and the second block was used for the Luzon.

But now, the Guangdong ship has completed the hull construction, and the outfitting is about to be completed. It can be freed up to start the new Wandan first, and the subsequent outfitting can be carried out directly on the wharf.

According to the scheduled plan, the Banten will start to prepare other work, such as the main hull materials, which will officially start in three months.

The navy has high hopes for the Banten, believing that the design of the Banten is the perfect steel battleship design. As for the Canton and Luzon, they are said to be half-baked.

However, compared with the high expectations of the Navy, although Li Xuan, the Son of Heaven, also paid attention, he was obviously not as concerned about it as the Navy.

In the past two years, Li Xuan has paid more attention to the war on land.

As for the construction of the navy, the importance is actually very general. The current Datang Navy cannot even find a half-dead enemy. The overall state is the same as that of the American navy in later generations. Its conventional military strength has surpassed the sum of the navies of other countries in the world. No one is their opponent except aliens.

The same is true of today's Datang Navy!

In order to maintain its own right to speak, the navy will deliberately exaggerate certain threats, but Li Xuan is very clear that the threat does not exist for the time being, so the navy is willing to toss now, and Li Xuan is too lazy to deal with it.

He is still concerned about the army side, and the military expenditures in recent years have also tended to the army.

In the past three years, for the Central Asian war, Li Xuan has successively allocated additional military expenses to the army several times, mainly to expand the army's cavalry force.

In Central Asia, the cavalry is the main force, and the infantry and artillery are the auxiliary forces.

The formation of cavalry costs a lot, and relying on the army's own conventional military expenditure, it is already difficult to continue to expand the cavalry force on a large scale on the basis of maintaining the existing huge army size.

Therefore, Li Xuan also gave a lot of additional support.

The Army's side is also very competitive, and they fought vigorously on the Central Asian side. After two years of fighting, the large tracts of Central Asian grasslands have been completely turned into no-man's land!

In order to avoid the losses caused by the war, the Tatars organized local people to migrate to the eastern plains of Ukraine at the beginning of these years.

As for the vast Hackstein Plain, there are basically no civilians, and only the armies of both sides are tugging back and forth here.

Moreover, the main force of the armies of both sides is mainly cavalry, and at the same time, they have avoided large-scale main force decisive battles, mainly in small and medium-scale battles.

However, in this small and medium-scale battle, it seems that there was no decisive battle between the two sides, and there was no large-scale battle in which tens of thousands of people were killed or injured at one time. However, the losses caused to both sides were actually not small.

This is a very typical war of attrition. After a small-scale battle, maybe only dozens or hundreds of people are killed or injured, but it is fought all year round, and the accumulated casualties are very terrifying.

Although this kind of war of attrition is very beneficial to the Tang Empire, the army thinks that it is not the way to consume it. This year, it is already preparing to launch a large-scale battle, and then completely kill the Caspian Sea. And control the entire Central Asian plain.

To achieve this strategic goal, two points are indispensable.

One was a railway, while the other was a massive cavalry unit.

Needless to say, the cavalry unit, if you want to completely defeat the Tatars in this direction, a large-scale cavalry unit is indispensable, otherwise, let alone defeat the enemy, and even the enemy's tail cannot be caught.

As for the railway, it is the logistical lifeline of the Datang Army, and it is also the most favorable weapon for Datang to control the local area and migrate people to the area for reclamation.

Datang's external expansion has always been the kind that occupied it but refused to leave.

If the people are unable to gain a foothold in the local area, the Army would rather slow down and delay the fight for a while.

Otherwise, if you defeat the enemy, you cannot actually control the occupied area, and if you have to retreat in the end, it will undoubtedly be a loss-making business.

At present, the extension line of the Northwest Railway has bypassed the southern part of Lake Balkhash and arrived in the Tashkent area. Here, the extension line of the Northwest Railway has actually reached its end.

Here, the Datang Railway Corporation is continuing to build a relatively short extension line to the south, but at the same time it is also building a new military railway to the west, which will go straight to the Caspian Sea, called the Central Asia Railway.

When Datang can actually control the Central Asian Plain, depends on when the Central Asian Railway can be built to the Caspian Sea.

The railway construction in this section is actually relatively simple, because it is located in the plain, and it is not the northern ice field further north, so the construction difficulty is not high.

The only difficulty is that many construction materials such as rails need to be transported from China.

Datang's current westward expedition strategy is, to some extent, more like a railway strategy.

Conquer and control wherever the railway is built!

In addition to the transportation supply problem, the army has another small worry, that is, the Tatars have now adopted flintlock guns on a large scale.

This also means that in terms of army weapons, in fact, the Tatars have no generation difference with the Datang Army. Even if the various weapons of the Datang Army are better and more numerous, it is still difficult to occupy anything. advantage.

For this reason, the Army has been tossing the three major weapon companies every day in recent days, asking them to come up with rifled rifles as soon as possible.

But I didn't expect that the rifled rifle has not been developed yet, that is, the rifled artillery appeared first, not the front-loaded rifled gun, but the rear-loaded rifled gun.

When the Navy officially placed the order for the rear-mounted rifled gun, the Army did not go to the Shanghai Gun Factory. Everyone knows that the Shanghai Gun Factory is the son of the Navy, and almost all of its output is supplied to the Navy. of.

Even if the Army comes to the door to place an order, it is estimated that there will be no production for them.

Besides, the Shanghai Gun Artillery Factory mainly focuses on medium and large-caliber artillery, and mainly naval guns. It pursues range and power, but it is not sensitive to weight.

What the Army wants is small and medium-caliber field guns, but it has extremely high requirements for weight.

The navy has its own imperial factory, the Shanghai Gun Factory, and the army also has its own imperial factory, the Tianjin Gun Factory.

Therefore, the army found the Tianjin gun factory and asked them to immediately develop field guns of various calibers for the army, especially medium-caliber field guns.

Although Tianjin Gun Factory has insufficient technical reserves for rear-mounted rifled guns, they have also gained some experience in lightning strikes in front-mounted rifled guns in recent years, and they have also engaged in rear-mounted rifled guns before.

Now that the problem of the bolt has been solved, after the Tianjin Gun Factory obtained the technical patent, according to the technical requirements, an army field gun was quickly designed.

This is a 75mm caliber rear-mounted rifled field gun, and in order to reduce weight while ensuring the range, they boldly adopted an all-steel barrel.

Makes the barrel wall thinner and lighter.

The Army is quite satisfied with the design parameters of this 75mm field gun, and has given a formal R&D contract to allow them to produce sample guns as soon as possible. Once the sample guns pass the test, there will be hundreds or even thousands immediately. The calculated artillery order came over.

However, although the army has a son like Tianjin Guns and Guns Factory, for the sake of safety, they also found Foshan Guns and Guns Factory, and they also signed a 75mm field gun research and development contract.

In addition to the 75mm field gun, the Army also asked the two companies to develop other caliber guns, such as the 100mm field gun and the 150mm siege artillery.

There are even smaller caliber 50mm light howitzers.

At this time, it also means that the army is also following the navy and has begun to enter the era of rear-mounted rifled guns.

But what is embarrassing is that ~www.wuxiaspot.com~ these artillery have entered the era of rear-loaded rifled guns, but the rifles used by the Datang Army are still muskets!

The breech-loading rifle that the Army wanted had never been available before.

To this end, the Hanyang Arsenal has already provided an alternative, that is, the use of front-loading rifled guns, which is a Mini rifle in Li Xuan's words.

After the army test, I think it's pretty good. The accuracy and effective range have been greatly improved, but the loading is still troublesome.

Therefore, although it is already a small batch of equipment, especially in the Central Asian battlefield, the Army is not satisfied with this front-loading rifled gun.

Because the Army wants a rear-loading rifle, not a front-loading rifle.

In addition, the performance of the rear-mounted rifled gun is too sturdy at this time, and many army generals are already boldly imagining that the future combat distance of the army will soar from the current distance of 500 meters to a kilometer or even two kilometers. above.

Moreover, this distance will be further improved as the technology of the rear-mounted rifled gun matures and stabilizes. Perhaps within a few years, the distance of the gun battle will be opened to more than 5,000 meters.

The effective range of the army's artillery has always been higher than that of the navy, because the army's artillery is directly placed on the flat ground to shoot, and the shooting is all fixed targets, and the navy's action-to-action combat mode, And the more terrible sea bumps are not the same.

Therefore, as long as the effective range of the artillery can be reached, the army can shoot as much.

As for the Navy, if they were given a naval gun with an effective range of four or five kilometers, they would not be able to hit the enemy ship at such a long distance.

The great progress of artillery technology has led to the present rifle in a very awkward state.

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