I want to be emperor

Chapter 1195 The Crown Prince Attends a Weapons Exhibition

In February of the spring of the fifty-fifth year of Chengshun, Crown Prince Luo Jun and his entourage, along with a large group of military generals, arrived at the Royal Guards training ground outside the city of Jinling.

This training ground is not only the daily training ground for the Guards, but also an important weapons display venue in the empire. All previous royal weapons displays have been held here.

Luo Zhixue often held imperial weapon exhibitions here to observe and inspect the research and development of new weapons and equipment.

Many famous weapons were officially finalized here after being reviewed by Luo Zhixue.

Now that Luo Zhixue no longer handles daily affairs, it is now the turn of Crown Prince Luo Jun to be responsible for these matters.

Today's weapons exhibition is also the largest-scale weapons display since the crown prince took full charge of military and political affairs.

Even the navy has prepared a number of large-scale models of warships for the exhibition to highlight the navy's construction achievements in recent years.

At nine o'clock in the morning, the prince and his entourage arrived at the Guards training ground on time. After a brief meeting with relevant personnel, the prince, accompanied by a group of people, began to visit various types of weapons.

At the beginning, there were some indoor exhibitions of small and medium-sized weapons and military equipment. There were many kinds of military equipment... not just limited to the category of weapons.

The first exhibition hall is one of them, which is an equipment booth. Many of the exhibits seem to have nothing to do with weapons, but they are still important materials related to combat effectiveness.

  Such as tents, military uniforms, and military shoes!

These may seem simple, but they are actually very important. For example, warm combat uniforms have always been a key research and development project that the military pays close attention to, because the Chu army is deployed globally, and there are many high-latitude areas in the deployment area, such as Northern Europe, Siberia, northern Eastern Europe, etc.

When deploying and fighting in these places, the biggest enemy is not the natives, but the severe cold weather in the local winter!

It is actually very difficult to ensure that soldiers can fight in temperatures of dozens of degrees below zero.

This requires various types of highly efficient and warm military uniforms.

In addition, since the Chu army had entered an era of large-scale use of breech-loading rifled weapons and had abandoned line warfare for decades, military uniforms no longer needed to be as brightly colored as before, but instead began to require concealment and camouflage.

Therefore, in the past decade, military uniforms of various colors have appeared one after another, from the khaki used in desert areas, to the gray-white combat uniforms used in high-altitude cold areas, and snow-proof and windproof cloaks.

Then to the brown-green military uniforms used in conventional areas.

Although the Chu Army's ceremonial uniforms, especially the officers' ceremonial attire, did not change much, their combat uniforms actually changed a lot.

In addition to military uniforms, other textiles are also very important, such as tents. From the early traditional tents of various types to the current individual rain cloak/tent dual-purpose waterproof cloth, these are inseparable from the promotion and development of textile technology.

This kind of individual waterproof cloth is actually very small. It can be rolled up and tied to the soldier's backpack. It can be used directly as a waterproof raincoat when it rains. When resting, you can just use a simple method to build an individual tent. You can also use multiple pieces of individual waterproof cloth to connect together to form a tent for multiple people.

In addition, there was a new gadget in the booth. This thing didn't have much technical content, but the prince and many other generals stayed at the booth of this new product for a long time. The prince asked many questions and watched the demonstration of the model arranged by the manufacturer.

This thing is a marching vest with many pockets and holes that can be used to store grenades, bullets, water bottles, emergency food, medicine, daggers and other combat supplies for personal use by soldiers.

Through effective design, soldiers can easily carry a certain amount of combat supplies without affecting their movements.

This thing, also known as the "Type 54 Individual Soldier Vest", is the first equipment in the Great Chu Empire that was designed and developed specifically for soldiers to fight more conveniently.

But it is worth noting that this type of individual vest can also be installed with steel plates and used as a bulletproof vest.

However, due to the limitations of material technology, the performance of steel plates these days is relatively average. At the same time, modern firearms all use full-power rifle bullets with large calibers.

  The muzzle energy is very strong!

Even the muzzle energy of a smoothbore gun reaches more than 3,000 joules, and that of a rifle is also greater.

It far exceeds the muzzle energy of one or two thousand joules in later generations.

This means that it is actually very difficult to withstand such bullets, and it requires very thick steel plates...but steel plates that are too heavy cannot be carried.

Therefore, tactical vests with steel plates are actually not very useful in modern times... If the Chu army fights a civil war among itself, this thing will be even more useless.

This thing is just a psychological comfort...it can only block some stray bullets flying from a distance.

If a soldier is hit by a bullet from a Type 27 rifle at a medium or short distance, a steel plate that is only three or four millimeters thick will not be able to withstand it. Even if it can withstand it, the huge kinetic energy will cause fractures in the soldier.

But... the Chu army's enemy is not themselves, and there are no enemies of the same level. There are only some natives using backward weapons, so the bulletproof steel plates are somewhat useful.

It’s just that the frontline soldiers don’t like it... This tactical vest was used in many troops last year, and as a result, the frontline soldiers complained that the bulletproof steel plate was too heavy and useless.

However, in some specific situations, such as fighting against enemies with strong firepower in a complex environment, this bulletproof steel plate is useful.

So the regular army doesn't think highly of this thing, but the armed tax police and armed patrol police are very interested in it... because they often need to fight against criminals with high firepower in complex environments, and many criminals' firepower is still shotguns and pistols.

Therefore, starting this year, some local armed patrol police and many armed tax police units have purchased some tactical bulletproof vests for use, and then put on helmets, inserted bulletproof steel plates, and rushed forward with short-barreled spray guns...

By the way, not only criminals like to use shotguns, but armed patrolmen and tax police also like to use shotguns in urban combat.

There is no need to aim carefully at medium and short distances, just shoot in the approximate direction of the target and you're done.

Very simple and easy to use.

After the prince and others viewed the booth of individual soldier equipment, they went to the exhibition hall of various military foods next door. Here, in addition to various dry rations, canned foods, regular canned meat and canned fruits, there were also some high-calorie individual soldier food packages, such as chocolate, candy, etc.

In the contemporary Chu army's field supplies, chocolate and candy are extremely important materials. These things are small in size and light in weight, but they can provide soldiers with sufficient calorie supplements and are very good field rations.

Then the prince also saw all kinds of messy canned food... In order to meet the needs of the soldiers on the front line, the Chu army has been researching various canned foods for decades. Basically, they have tried to stuff anything edible into cans and send them to the front line.

There are canned beef, canned pork, canned mutton, various canned fish, canned fruits, and canned beans.

However, up to now, the most mainstream is still a kind of synthetic canned meat, which uses beef or pork as the main raw materials, and then adds starch and other foods after processing. At the same time, this thing is already cooked food, and soldiers can eat it directly after opening the can.

Of course...the taste is not very good!

It tastes good, but it has too many additives and we can’t give it to the soldiers…

So this led to a very funny scene. The military canned foods that the Chu Army exported in large quantities to various vassal states, whether they were canned meat or canned fruit, all tasted great... but the various canned foods used by the Chu Army themselves did not taste very good.

There is no other way. Technology and hard work cannot be put in too much, and large-scale industrial mass-produced military food is needed, so the taste is just like this. Of course, in most cases, the soldiers of the Chu army will not eat these field food. This stuff is used for emergency during combat. During normal deployment, they still eat big pot meals. Whether it tastes good depends on the level of the cooks.

Even when deployed for combat, the logistics department will do its best to ensure the supply of fresh food... Anyway, there are no serious enemies, so ensuring the logistics supply is not a big problem.

Only in some special and extreme circumstances would soldiers be allowed to eat these field rations.

This is different from the indigenous armies... Among the indigenous armies, the canned food of the Chu army is not field food, but a luxury item.

Because they couldn't supply too much meat to the army, and the canned food exported by the Great Chu Empire had a lot of technology and hard work, and was cheap, so it was used as a meat substitute by many people in the vassal states...

  Why is it cheap?

Because there is actually not much meat in these canned meats exported. They are all made from various purified starches that are processed into something similar to meat.

By the way, the food and drug management department under the health department of the Great Chu Empire has completely banned the export of food back to the country...

If you want to sell canned food in China, you must strictly follow the food management laws and regulations to produce it. You are not allowed to use harmful additives. Otherwise, you will be fined to death...

But as for exports...as long as the importing country has no objection, you as a manufacturer can do whatever you want.

After all, the food regulatory department of the Great Chu Empire is in charge of the domestic market and has no control over what the indigenous people eat.

Therefore, there are two types of approval documents for food processing and production in contemporary Chu State. One is the regular production and sales approval document, which is only for domestic supply. Of course, you can also export it... This type of approval document requires strict implementation of food management standards.

There is another type, which is the export approval... There are basically no restrictions on this type. You can even sell arsenic as food as long as you can sell it.

However, everything from raw material procurement to production and sales must be under supervision. Even the production site must be carried out in a special food export industrial zone, and then it is directly shipped for export after production. It is not allowed to circulate domestically at all.

Of course, in order to avoid these troubles, many food processing factories produce and export pets under the name of pet food or feed. At most, they just change the packaging after arriving abroad.

This results in the fact that packaged foods produced and sold domestically, including those purchased by the military, actually taste very average and have a short shelf life.

But many of the packaged foods exported taste great and have a very long shelf life. Some foods even have a shelf life of more than ten years...

The additives used in this thing can kill bacteria directly!

After the prince and his entourage briefly inspected the military food area, they also took a look at the newly built field kitchen, a field kitchen converted from a truck that allows the logistics department to carry large amounts of food and then cook directly at the front line... It looks very novel, but it is flashy and impractical.

It's not that the things are bad, but that we can't afford them... The Chu army doesn't even have enough trucks to transport artillery and troops, they think they are too expensive... You still use an expensive truck to transport a field kitchen, which is a waste.

However, the research and development of military equipment does not mean that it will be used now. Many of them are developed first and used later depending on the situation.

The emperor and his entourage then visited some other non-weapon military equipment, and finally arrived at the weapons platform.

The first to be affected are the booths of various light weapons. The companies and research institutes under the five major weapons companies have produced a large number of various new firearms for today's exhibition.

There are a lot of weird things, but what really attracts attention are the improved models of several main firearms.

Among them, the improved models of the Type 27 rifle and the Type 28 rifle attracted great attention from the prince and other generals. These two rifles are the main rifles of the contemporary Chu army.

Among them, the Type 27 rifle is the main rifle of the army, and the Type 28 rifle is used as a backup equipment for some non-mainstream second-line troops, but the number of equipment is also not small.

Equipping two standard rifles at the same time, one as the main rifle and the other as a backup, is a practice formed by the Chu army over the years.

After years of improvements, the Type 27 and Type 28 rifles now have their own advantages and disadvantages. It is hard to say which one is better or worse.

  They are all bolt-action rifles anyway, so there is not much difference!

If I have to say, the Type 27 rifle has a larger ammunition capacity, but it has a downward thrust and better firepower sustainment capability.

The Type 28 rifle has a built-in magazine, but its structure is simpler and its accuracy is also very good.

Some special units in the Chu Army chose an improved model of the Type 28 rifle, which was equipped with a scope and used as a precision shooting rifle with high accuracy within a range of several hundred meters.

The prince also tried his hand at using the latest models of the two rifles himself. To be honest, he couldn't feel any significant advantages or disadvantages between them.

Next is the light machine gun project. Currently, there are three types of light machine guns in service in the Chu Army. The Guards use the expensive Type 54 light machine gun that uses magazine feeding, while the Army mainly uses the Type 55 light machine gun that uses drum feeding, which is also nicknamed "big plate chicken".

The Marine Corps and the armed tax police used the Qiming machine gun... It would be more appropriate to call it an automatic rifle... because it was originally developed as an automatic rifle for individual soldiers, but unfortunately it was not very successful. In the end, it was changed into a light machine gun and it is quite useful.

Crown Prince Luo Jun also watched the test firing of the three light machine guns, and after watching them he was most satisfied with the Guards' Type 54 light machine gun...it had the best performance in all aspects.

But there's no point being satisfied, because this thing won't be equipped and used by the entire army in a short period of time... because it's too expensive.

Only those prodigal sons of the Guards would use such an expensive light machine gun!

As for Lu Jun, he said that the cheap and affordable big plate chicken is the best.

After looking at the light weapons, I looked at the artillery, but there was nothing new about the artillery. They were all improved versions of the same old artillery.

After viewing these conventional guns and artillery weapons, the prince and his entourage went outside and began to look at the key projects of this trip, various armored mobile vehicles, especially the prototype vehicle of the No. 78 tank project, which had completed multiple rounds of tests and had undergone multiple rounds of upgrades and improvements during the research and development process.

If nothing unexpected happens, the Battlefield 78 project, after many adjustments and improvements, will be officially finalized and mass-produced after today.

This will be the first fully tracked tank in the Chu Army, and it is a tank specially developed and equipped for complex terrains such as cities!

Yes, the Chu army’s first type of tank was not used to break through trenches, nor was it used for rapid assaults, nor was it used for anti-armor attacks.

But it is used for urban combat!

The Chu Army has high hopes for this chariot, hoping to use this epoch-making new chariot to reverse the situation in urban street fighting where there are too many uncertainties and casualties, thereby achieving the diversity of the regular army's tasks.

Instead of avoiding casualties in street fighting as before, the foreign legions were basically sent directly into the city to fight after the field battles were over.

It’s not that the foreign legion is bad... but no matter what, the regular army must also have this capability and cannot suffer too great losses.

They wanted to enter the city to fight, but also wanted to avoid heavy casualties... After much deliberation, the Chu army leaders decided that only iron cans like chariots were the most suitable.