I want to be emperor

Chapter 1168: Navy Conservatism

Looking at the development of science and technology in the Great Chu Empire, it is somewhat different from the original time and space, mainly because some things develop faster, while some things develop slower.

For example, the technology for the application of internal combustion engines represented by automobiles, both for civilian and military use, has developed very rapidly. If we look at it from the perspective of the technological level of the original time and space, it can even be said that it has reached the level of 1910, and is even higher in the civilian field.

This can be seen from the fact that the Great Chu Empire now produces more than two million motor vehicles of various types each year, and is still growing at an extremely astonishing and exaggerated speed.

Its civilian automobiles are developing extremely rapidly, and technology is in a state of explosive growth.

The reason why the automobile industry has developed so rapidly is closely related to the huge market demand and the strong economic driving ability of the automobile industry, which has received strong official support.

Because in the Great Chu Empire, the official authorities believed that the automobile industry could replace tens of millions of mules and horses, thereby saving enough food for hundreds of millions of people... At the same time, the automobile industry had the role of an industrial economic leading industry similar to the textile industry, which could drive the development of a huge upstream and downstream industrial chain, and thus occupy an extremely exaggerated proportion of the entire industrial output value.

These two points directly led to the fact that the officials of the Great Chu Empire spared no effort in providing a series of policy and financial support to the automobile industry in the early stages. Even Emperor Luo Zhixue and Prince Luo Jun personally acted as spokespersons for the automobile industry.

With a series of strong policies and financial support, the automobile industry of the Great Chu Empire received strong support for rapid technological research and development and iteration.

After the automobile industry initially matured, its huge potential was valued by capital, and countless funds were invested in it, thus forming an extremely competitive automobile industry with five major automobile companies at the core.

Policy support, capital influx, and intense competition within the automotive industry have ultimately resulted in an annual production of more than two million motor vehicles, and the annual production is heading directly towards three million.

It can be said that the reason why the automobile industry of the Great Chu Empire was so developed was entirely the result of the imperial government's high level of intervention and support, and not the result of the industry's normal free development and competition.

The developed civilian automobile industry directly promoted the development of military motor vehicles and even aircraft. Various armored vehicles, cars, tricycles and other motor vehicles were gradually finalized and used on the battlefield. For this reason, the Chu army even began to establish a special armored force... Well, to be precise, it was an "armored vehicle force", not the armored division with tanks as the core in later generations.

Because the contemporary Chu Empire has not yet developed a reliable and practical tracked tank, but instead has developed a wheeled armored vehicle equipped with small-caliber artillery.

This is also a manifestation of the fact that automobile technology is too advanced and other industries have not been able to keep up in time...

The same goes for airplanes. Although the air force of the Great Chu Empire does not even have dedicated fighter jets, it is not that it cannot make them, but that there is no need to... The aircraft equipped by the Great Chu Empire's air force, navy, and guards are mainly used for reconnaissance and air strikes.

As for escort and intercepting enemy bombers, these two tasks that belong to fighter jets... they don't exist at all, because those natives don't have airplanes, let alone airplanes, they don't even have airships, so there is no air force at all.

Under such circumstances, the Great Chu Empire Air Force would naturally not be idle and would develop a fighter jet specifically for air combat, escort and interception missions.

On the contrary, the contemporary Chu Empire Air Force pays more attention to maneuverability and payload in the research and development of military aircraft, and also pays a little more attention to speed.

Needless to say, controllability is paramount, and safety comes first... This is the core performance that the Air Force pays the most attention to. In terms of control safety, everything else can be abandoned.

As for payload, it is related to range and the amount of ammunition carried, which are essentially the same concept: payload.

  The bomber's load is limited. It is a trade-off between carrying more fuel to increase the range or carrying more bombs to increase the strike capability.

A larger payload and more fuel can allow the aircraft to fly farther, and the aircraft can perform reconnaissance and air strike missions in a larger area. More bombs can strike more enemies.

As for the speed, it is not for the purpose of gaining an advantage in air combat or avoiding ground fire. It is purely because a faster speed allows the aircraft to reach the battlefield faster to perform reconnaissance or strike missions and then return to report.

Control safety, load and speed, these three points are the core that the Air Force currently focuses on, among which control safety is the most important... No one wants to fly a plane that often has accidents.

Various motor vehicles and aircraft are the achievements of the Great Chu Empire in the field of internal combustion engines. If these achievements are compared horizontally, they can probably reach the level of 1910 in the original time and space, and even higher in some areas.

But in other fields, the technology of the Great Chu Empire is not that advanced... such as the field of ships.

Although the navy's military ships are also continuously upgrading their technology, the extent of the improvement is not that great... For example, in terms of power systems, the navy still uses reciprocating steam engines and has little interest in new and expensive steam turbines.

For example, the navy's rapid-fire gun technology still remains at 250 mm, and no breakthrough has been made in the new 300 mm rapid-fire gun technology. This is the reason why the Great Chu Empire Navy has repeatedly postponed the construction of new first-class battleships. Instead, it has started construction of a North Africa-class second-class battleship equipped with 250 mm...

Although there are new naval guns with better performance for many other naval guns, the navy often prefers to use old technology... For example, the widely used 120mm naval gun, which is not only the secondary gun on the main battleship, but also the main gun on a large number of frigates and even large inland gunboats. It is widely used.

But the industry can obviously come up with better and more advanced naval guns. For example, the Songjiang Naval Artillery Factory sold the 120 -caliber rapid-fire naval gun to the navy a few years ago, saying that the design was already perfect and that they had even produced a prototype at their own expense. If the navy wanted it, they could just place an order and purchase it.

However, the navy remained unmoved and continued to purchase and use 120 forty-caliber rapid-fire naval guns. You should know that this level of rapid-fire naval guns is the navy's earliest first-generation rapid-fire naval guns. According to the speed of contemporary technological development, it is considered outdated.

However, the navy continued to use it, making some improvements to details such as the gun mount, but the core gun barrel remained unchanged...for no other reason than to save money.

The larger the caliber of the gun barrel, the more difficult it is to manufacture, the lower the yield rate, and the cost will increase significantly. Therefore, the navy now tends to use gun barrels of about 40 times the caliber, which are mature in technology and cheap in cost. As for performance, they are sufficient anyway.

  Therefore, the 120mm 150x naval gun is estimated to be used for many, many years after some modifications... A similar situation is with the 150mm 150x naval gun. Littoral combat ships still use a large number of this first-generation mm rapid-fire gun, and the more advanced mm x naval gun is only used as a secondary gun on a few battleships, while the more advanced mm x naval gun, which has already been developed, has not yet been installed on any ship... The navy thinks it's too expensive!

The design of naval warships is actually very conservative in terms of technological application. Unless the cost does not increase too much, don't expect the navy to use the latest technology just for a little performance improvement.

The same goes for power, naval guns, and armor. To be honest, many things used by the navy are probably equivalent to the technological level of around 1895 in the original time and space... It's not that there are no better ones, but that the navy thinks they are too expensive and is unwilling to use them.

The only exception is probably radio equipment.

However, radio, a groundbreaking communication device, solves the problem of whether or not to have a device, rather than the problem of improvement. Therefore, even though contemporary shipborne radio communications are relatively expensive, the Navy still generously equips every newly built warship with one, and installs radio equipment on almost all active warships.

After all, even if radio is expensive, it actually has its limits. Compared to the expensive price of a battleship which starts at hundreds of thousands and a battleship which costs several million Chu Yuan, the cost of radio equipment can be ignored.

The original time and space radio equipment had just been released not long ago, or to be more precise, the commercial mass-produced equipment had just been released not long ago, when the Nanyang Fleet of the late Qing Dynasty and the Royal Navy used it in the same year, purchasing dozens of units at a time.

Even the Nanyang Navy could afford it at the first time, so although the radio equipment looked advanced, it was actually not that expensive... at least compared to the cost of a warship, it was not worth mentioning.

It was similar in the Great Chu Empire. When radio equipment was mass-produced, the production cost was actually not high.

The military and various administrative agencies purchased a large amount of radio equipment. The total number of orders for shipborne radio equipment of various specifications placed by the Navy alone reached thousands of sets, and they were installed on various ships within just a few years.

Now the navy continues to increase orders... Anyway, according to the navy's plan, let alone large and medium-sized ocean-going warships, even various auxiliary warships and some small-tonnage inland gunboats, offshore patrol ships and the like, all that can be installed will be installed on it.

Of course, due to the limitations of size, weight and more importantly, power supply, the communication distance of radio equipment on small ships will not be too high, generally only a few dozen kilometers to one or two hundred kilometers.

However, medium and large ocean-going warships have sufficient space and load capacity to accommodate larger and heavier radio equipment and supply them with power. Therefore, the communication distance of long-distance radio equipment on medium and large ocean-going warships can reach more than a thousand kilometers, and the communication distance of the newly commissioned batch will be even higher.

So far, the Navy can proudly say that it has achieved real-time communication and command of warships around the world through radio equipment on ships and in various naval bases.

If Your Majesty needs it, you can order the navy now to mobilize the fleet that is cruising in the English Channel in Europe and performing combat readiness missions to launch artillery attacks on any place in the English Channel and surrounding waters.

This radio communication capability is extremely important for the navy, and it can even be said to be able to effectively reduce the navy's overall combat maintenance costs and improve combat efficiency.

In the past, there were no radio equipment on warships, so once a fleet went out to sea, it was basically lost contact. The fleet could only be contacted via telegraph after it docked again. This meant that if there was any emergency, it would be difficult for the navy to call back the fleet that had gone out to sea, or to temporarily pass on new orders to have them turn around and perform new tasks.

Even if there are fast communication ships to catch up, it will take a long time, not to mention that they may not be able to catch up... It is very difficult to find your own fleet that is cruising or training in the vast ocean, even if you know the approximate direction.

This means that, in order to be prepared for any eventuality, the navy has to maintain a fleet in the port base all year round to deal with emergencies.

This will inevitably increase the number of naval ships and increase the cost of naval deployment.

Simply put, if you wanted to control an area of ​​sea before, you had to deploy several warships at the same time, taking into account the problem of ships losing contact as soon as they went out to sea and being unable to communicate in time.

  Some warships went out to sea for training, and also carried out various missions such as escort, deterrence and even combat;

Some warships were undergoing maintenance, and the soldiers were allowed to go ashore to rest. It goes without saying that ships need maintenance. Besides, sailors are also human beings. They cannot stay on the ship all year round. They have to be allowed to go ashore to rest for a while.

Another part is performing combat readiness tasks in the port, ready to be dispatched at any time to carry out various tasks, whether it is rescue or combat.

This was a necessary measure in the era without radio communications.

But with the advent of radio, things became simple. There was no need for a combat-ready fleet to remain in the port. If anything happened, all they had to do was send a telegram to the fleet on duty for training at sea and have them rush over.

This will greatly improve the combat efficiency of naval ships and effectively reduce deployment costs.

The Navy has always been keen on saving money.

In the eyes of many naval generals, even if the radio is a bit expensive now, it is not as expensive as a warship. If the advantages of radio communication can be used to deploy fewer warships, the cost saved will far exceed the cost of purchasing the radio.

In recent years, the Navy has been thinking about how to use fewer warships to complete tasks and improve the combat efficiency of a single ship. Well, this single ship cannot be expensive.

It may sound petty, but you have to know that the navy of the Great Chu Empire is a global navy, and the sea areas it needs to control are not just one or two, but the global sea areas.

The so-called strategy of using sea to control land by the navy of the Great Chu Empire includes such a concept: global presence and global strike!