I want to be emperor

In the spring of Chengshun's 34th year, when the army was in Burma, it was rarely embarrassing because of the local terrain and climate.

Of course, there are also local aboriginal real power factions who are willing to give up their rights, and ordinary aboriginals are even more unwilling to lose their homes.

So much so that the army was a little embarrassed to fight there... The natives on the opposite side of the frontal battle naturally couldn't beat or even dared to fight.

But he was not willing to resist, and gave his head to the Chu army!

Therefore, they will always find ways to carry out various small-scale harassment operations.

As for war, in fact, most of the time it is not a large-scale battle of hundreds of thousands or tens of thousands of people on both sides. This scale of battle is relatively rare even in ancient wars, but whenever it occurs, it is basically decisive. Great battle, decisive battle.

Most of the time, the two warring parties are actually fighting scattered small and medium-scale battles, or the scale of thousands of people, or the scale of hundreds of people, around cities, traffic arteries and other important places.

Of course, if the fight reaches a certain level, large-scale decisive battles will also occur, with tens of thousands or even tens of thousands of people fighting large-scale decisive battles.

Therefore, small and medium-scale engagements are actually the norm, even the mainstream, in wars.

However, in the past, when the Chu army fought abroad, even small-scale battles with hundreds of people or even only a few hundred people had their advantages.

Because even if there are only more than a hundred people, the infantry of the Chu army can form a line, using standard line tactics to give full play to the absolute firepower advantage of the flintlock/flame cap percussion gun.

It is supplemented by the large-scale equipment of the Chu army, and the firepower of the 65mm light field guns at the battalion level below.

Basically, there is no disadvantage to those indigenous troops who are still using matchlock guns with spears, are still alternating between hot and cold, and even are still using pure cold weapons.

However, as for the Burmese, they have fully understood the strength of the Chu army in the past 20 years. In addition, the high-level Burmese people also have a sense of crisis. country invasion.

Therefore, they have not been idle in the past few years. On the one hand, they have respected Chu State and agreed to a series of conditions of losing power and humiliating the country.

But at the same time, they are also actively training the army to prepare for war, and import a large number of matchlock guns, smoothbore guns, plate armor and a lot of cold weapons from Chu State.

In addition, the Burmese have been fighting Siam and the natives in the west all year round, so they have relatively rich combat experience.

Therefore, relatively speaking, the combat effectiveness of the Burmese army is not weak.

Of course, the more important thing is that they have self-knowledge, knowing that they will never be able to defeat the Chu army on the frontal battlefield, so they gave up frontal battles, especially field battles.

Only carry out stubborn defense in some special terrains, and at the same time dispatch a large number of troops to form small-scale troops to frequently attack the small and medium-scale troops of the Chu army and even the logistics.

In fact, if this kind of attack with scattered forces is placed on flat terrain... Well, even flat terrain like the Great Plains is not needed. Even if it is only in a hilly area, the Chu army can let them know that the Chu army is attacking the surrounding countries. Not only infantry and artillery, but also powerful cavalry.

However, the place where the Burmese choose to fight is generally in the tropical rain forest area, and it is also a land with high mountains and dense forests, which makes it difficult for the powerful cavalry of the Chu army to perform.

After several months of fighting, although it seemed to be going smoothly, it also won many big cities in a row, and even approached its capital, Ava.

A regiment of marines in the south, also with the assistance of the Dagon garrison, quickly attacked the city and conquered a large amount of territory in the local triangular plain.

But behind these victories is that the logistics line of the Chu army is getting longer and longer, especially on the northern front. The main force of the Eighth Division, which sent troops from Yunnan to the south, has penetrated hundreds of miles into Burma.

Moreover, the grain, grass and logistical ammunition needed by the Eighth Division were not produced at the border and organized and transported on the spot. In fact, they were collected and transported from the entire Yunnan area, and some ammunition had to be transported from other provinces and then transported to Myanmar.

The logistical pressure is enormous!
The Eighth Division has more than 1 soldiers. As a first-class combat readiness division, it is equipped with a large number of mules and horses when marching and fighting. The number of war horses and service horses directly under the division alone has reached more than [-].

At the same time, in order to ensure the needs of these troops and military horses, the rear needs a logistics regiment composed of tens of thousands of temporarily recruited and hired civilians to transport food, grass and ammunition.

Because the mountain roads are rugged and difficult, especially after entering Myanmar, most areas are even impassable for horse-drawn carts, so they can only rely on trolleys or even shoulders to transport grain and grass.

This logistics transportation is already very troublesome.

And these Burmese people are still attacking twice a day... They don't attack your large-scale logistics force, they attack some small outposts along the way, and then cause damage on the road, such as demolishing bridges and the like.

In fact, these sporadic attacks did not have much impact on the main military operations of the Chu army, let alone causing any actual casualties to the Chu army.

But it makes people feel very aggrieved... and there have always been sporadic casualties, which is not a small number in the end.

To be honest, the Chu army has fought abroad for many years, and they have never really fought such an aggrieved war.

This seems to have an advantage everywhere, and even almost killed their capital, but it feels restricted everywhere. If you want to speed up the progress and go directly to their capital in one go, and then disintegrate the regime of the Burmese Kingdom, it is discovered Well, before they reached their capital, Ava, they had already moved their capital early, and moved directly to the mountainous areas in the west.

Ava, the capital of the Burmese Kingdom, is now an empty shelf, and it doesn't have much political and military significance if it is defeated.

The front line is aggrieved. It just so happens that in this war, the only infantry battalion of the Eighth Division equipped with a rear-loading rifle and an artillery post with a rear-loading rifle performed well, especially these new rear-loading rifles. , in this scattered small-scale combat performance is even better.

The rate of fire is several times faster than that of the front-loading musket, and it can reach an accurate and effective range of 500 meters (although few soldiers can accurately target enemy soldiers at such a long distance), and the convenient rear loading allows soldiers Status and fire in various stances.

If we say that the two-year series flintlock guns, the 30-year series flintlock guns, and the 13-year/21-year series flintlock muskets equipped by the Chu army in the past 23 years were born for the line.

Then the Chu Army has just begun to equip the Type [-] breech-loading rifles in batches, and the Type [-] breech-loading rifles. These two are currently in fierce competition, and each wants to become the rear-loading rifle of the army's new generation of official standard rifles. Rifled rifles were born for skirmish formations.

Equipped with breech-loading rifles, the No. 30 First Battalion of the Eighth Division of the Chu Army, which adopts skirmish formation, belongs to the first battalion. Although it is only an experimental one, it is not proficient in weapons, equipment and tactics, and is in a state of groping , but in this war still played a huge power.

A mere battalion has almost undertaken more than half of the main battles of the entire division, and its own battle casualties are extremely low. It has performed well in some small and medium-scale raids against the enemy.

And the same outstanding performance is the third artillery post of the first battalion of the Eighth Artillery Regiment. The six 75mm rear-loading rifled field guns equipped by the post are originally only experimental equipment, used to explore the use of new artillery Tactical, but in this war, his performance was extremely eye-catching.

There are only six artillery pieces, but their actual firepower is greater than the dozens of smoothbore field guns and field howitzers equipped in the Eighth Division.

Its four-kilometer effective range, super-high hit rate, and the huge explosive power brought about by the huge charge unique to cylindrical howitzers made this field gun immediately become the new favorite of the army.

After a series of battle reports from Burma were brought together to the various departments of the army in Jinling City, a large number of heavyweight generals of the army had to look at the tactical changes and advantages brought about by rear-loaded rifled weapons again.

The generals of the Chu army are naturally not pedantic. They have no resistance to the breech-loading rifles. In fact, the army, especially the high-level people, still like these breech-loading rifles. The large-scale refitting of the Guards is really too expensive for the current breech-loading rifled weapons... A Type 40 rifle costs more than 40 Chu Yuan, and [-] pieces of this equipment cost more than [-] Chu Yuan.

And the quantity needed by the army is not 1 to [-], but at least millions of them. How much does it cost?
More than 4000 million Chu Yuan!
What is this concept?
The annual central fiscal revenue of the Great Chu Empire is only 8000 to [-] million yuan, and the army's annual conventional military expenditure is only more than [-] million yuan.

You let the Army spend more than 4000 million Chu Yuan just to replace the rifle, the Army really can’t afford it... After all, the Army’s military expenditure items are too many, such as combat costs, personnel salaries, mules and horses procurement and consumption, artillery procurement, and even The construction of some military facilities and so on need money.

To be honest, the funds used to purchase guns each year actually only account for a very small part of military expenditures. If you misappropriate tens of millions to purchase new rifles, the more than 100 million people in the army will really eat dirt!
Therefore, even if the army wants to change equipment, it is impossible to change equipment on a large scale now. It can only be done slowly, equipping one batch a year, and at the same time wait for the price of breech-loading rifles to gradually decrease, and finally realize the entire army's equipment replacement. .

According to the estimates of the army bosses, the duration of this change of clothes may last for more than 15 years!
However, the war in Myanmar has made the top army officers more determined to replace the single-shot rifle as soon as possible.

Some ordinary troops garrisoned in the country and those C-class troops can wait for a while, but those A-class troops, especially the first-class divisions that are fighting or facing border troubles, must be equipped with new rear armor as soon as possible. rifled rifle.

The same thing happened with breech-loading rifled guns.

This thing is more expensive, not only the purchase price of artillery is expensive, but also the price of shells!
At present, there is only one rear-loaded rifled field gun used by the Army, and that is the 32-year-old 75mm rear-loaded rifled field gun produced by Hebei Arms Company.

Although this artillery is just a gun mount with a gun barrel, but to be honest, this thing is a veritable high-tech weapon for the contemporary Great Chu Empire.

From the wheels to the gun carriage, to the core gun barrel, and then to the matching high-explosive grenades with collision fuzes, all of them are the core integration of the industrial technology of the Great Chu Empire in the past 30 years.

This thing, not to mention the seventeenth century, even if you put it in the twentieth century, it is the patent of various industrial countries. If ordinary small countries want to develop it alone, it is impossible to even think about it.

Because what is needed behind this is the support of a heavy industry system.

Of course, if you can also buy equipment and materials, it will be much simpler, and you can get a mechanical processing factory in future generations, and it can be done for you.

In the current Great Chu Empire, it is very technically difficult to produce this kind of artillery. The materials used are all newly developed. Many of the equipment to be processed are specially customized by those equipment manufacturers.

The R&D cost is huge.

The production cost of the artillery and shells produced here is not low, and then the research and development costs have to be spread, and the purchase price is extremely high.

The average unit price of dozens of 32-style 75mm field guns purchased by the Army for the first time reached more than 2000 yuan... This price is extremely expensive for contemporary artillery.

It doesn't matter that the artillery is expensive, after all, it's a one-shot deal, and it's enough to spend money once, but the shells are also expensive.

The supporting 75mm high-explosive grenade costs more than 20 yuan to purchase, and a gun with 250 rounds of shells costs more than 6000 yuan, which is much more expensive than the artillery itself!

Moreover, these shells are used during training, and a large number of them are fired during combat. The cost of shells alone is very high.

So the rear-mounted rifled gun is good, but the army can't afford it either...

This is the embarrassment of breech-loading rifled guns in the contemporary Great Chu Empire...there are things with excellent performance, but the problem is that the things that have just been produced are still too expensive for the army to use.

However, it is not necessary. The Burmese war has fully proved the importance of rear-loading rifled guns, and also proved the huge limitations of front-loading smoothbore guns.

Therefore, the army is thinking about increasing the purchase volume of breech-loading rifled guns, but at the same time it must also suppress the price.

A breech-loading rifle with more than 40 Chu Yuan is absolutely unaffordable.

A field gun plus supporting shells costs more than 8000 Chu Yuan, which is even more impossible.

Therefore, the army bosses in Jinling City began to think of ways to lower the price.

It's not just these two projects that are lowering the price, but also the new 75mm mountain gun project.

In order to lower the price, the army also gritted its teeth and made a cruel decision, directly increasing the number of orders, and further lowering the cost with a larger number of orders.

Also introduce plenty of competition!
In June of Chengshun 34, the confident Hebei Arms Company brought their newly modified 75mm mountain gun project to the Army Ordnance Department, preparing to bid for the project.

As a result, I was told that the purchase quantity this time will be very large, the first batch will be at least [-] doors, and there will be a second batch and even a third batch later.

At the same time, it was learned that the Army was planning to purchase more breech-loading rifles and 75mm field guns.

Among them, the number of rear-loading rifles purchased has reached 20, which is extremely amazing.

The 75mm field guns are also procured in a huge quantity, reaching 250.

After learning that the Army is planning to purchase a large number of new-generation breech-loading rifled guns, how can Hebei Arms Company sit still.

The supervisor of their company directly brought a large number of management and technical personnel to Jinling City, preparing to participate in the army's unprecedented large-scale military procurement bidding.

The same is true for the other four weapons companies. Even the Jiangnan Weapons Company, which is focused on the naval artillery project, was shocked by the army's large-scale procurement.

Directly organized a temporary project team, preparing to enter the army artillery project, and at the same time speed up the research and development progress of their own breech-loading rifle.

At the same time, major companies are trying to find ways to reduce costs.

Because the army has already revealed its style, the price is the top priority for this purchase.

Don't expect to get an order if the quotation is high...

At the same time, in order to reduce the overall procurement cost, the Army will not split up the procurement of major orders to achieve equal benefits. Instead, it will directly award the orders of major projects and even follow-up orders to a certain weapon company to dilute the cost. Lower purchase prices.

For example, for breech-loading rifles, the first order of 20 units will be awarded to the same company, and the second and third orders will be signed later. Give it to a company to do it.

The same is true for the artillery project. For a type of artillery, only one company is selected in order to reduce costs through centralized procurement.

In this regard, the heads of the major weapons companies are both excited and worried... This bidding can be said to determine the fate of their companies for the next few years or even ten years!
It would be good if the bidding is won, and it will directly obtain stable orders for the next few years or even ten years.

But if the bidding fails...then you're in big trouble!

This time the bidding is so important, the five major weapon companies naturally attach great importance to it, and even the Ministry of Industry pays close attention...

Although the Ministry of Industry does not care about the specific businesses of the five major arms companies under it, nor can it interfere with specific military procurement decisions, it is the Ministry of Industry's basic policy in the defense industry to deploy multiple parties and maintain healthy competition.

For example, the military said that for the future standard rifles, only one model will be purchased from one company, so what about the other four weapon companies that failed?

There is no order for future military standard rifles, how can we survive in the future?How to maintain technology research and development capabilities?
These are issues that require the attention of the Ministry of Industry.

For this reason, the Ministry of Industry has also discussed with the Army, whether it is possible to implement a [-] or [-] policy, not to be so extreme, and to give all orders to one company.

But the army asked them in turn: Can you lower the price of the breech-loading rifle?
You don’t need three or five Chu Yuan, or even seven or eight Chu Yuan, as long as you can bring the price down to fifteen Chu Yuan each, not to mention centralized orders, the order can be divided equally among five companies.

The purpose of the army's centralized order is to support a manufacturer, and then reduce the cost significantly, and then purchase at a low price.

The purpose of the Army is clear and simple. He wants to purchase large quantities of rifled breech-loading rifles at a low price. Your defense industry has no solution, so I will give you a solution!
In the words of the Minister of Staff, Military Affairs Commissioner, Imperial Earl, and Chief of Staff General Huang Jinkui: "I still don't believe it, the price of more than 100 million guns can't be lowered!

The army wants to directly lower the price of the rifle to [-] Chu yuan a piece, and also asks for it to be cheaper and cheaper in the future, and finally reach a price of around [-] or [-] Chu yuan... The bosses of the Ministry of Industry are also helpless.

At this price, according to the current industrial base capabilities of the empire, and the costs of major weapon companies, not to mention R&D costs, even the production costs are not enough...

We can't let the major weapon companies produce weapons for the military at a loss...

Therefore, after discussing with the military to no avail, the bosses of the Ministry of Industry had no choice but to think of other ways, not to mention that the bosses of the Ministry of Industry were not vegetarians either.

Seeing that the centralization of orders was unavoidable, the leaders of the Ministry of Industry discussed internally and also considered whether to take advantage of the trend to carry out certain reforms on the five major arms companies.

Let the five major arms companies have their own focus, instead of the current situation, the five major arms companies are involved in almost all defense industries, even the Shaanxi-Gansu Arms Company has a shipyard to produce ocean-going warships...

The army can't control the internal thinking of the Ministry of Industry so much. Anyway, now they want a large number of breech-loading rifled weapons, but they don't have that much money, and they don't want to pay that much money, so centralized procurement of orders is the general trend.

The defense industry is unwilling and must accept it!

After some preparations, the army took the lead in bidding for the urgently needed 34mm rear-mounted mountain gun project on July 75, [-] in Chengshun.

The army still has some rear-loading rifles and 75mm field guns for the time being. Some of them have been mobilized from other troops and shipped to Myanmar, and some have been seconded from the Guards to go to Myanmar to improve the plight of local combat troops.

However, there is no way to transfer or secondment the 75mm mountain artillery, but the demand of the frontline troops is extremely strong, so we must call for bids now and then urgently produce them and send them to Myanmar.

So the project is the first to call for bids!
The five major arms companies and their respective artillery factories have brought a total of thirteen designs of 75mm mountain guns to participate in the bidding.

Among them, the most eye-catching ones are the 75mm mountain artillery project designed by Hebei Arms Company Tianjin Artillery Factory and the 75mm mountain artillery project designed by Huguang Arms Company Hantian Artillery Factory.

Prototypes of these two types of artillery have been manufactured and sent to the Guards artillery testing ground on the outskirts of Jinling City.

The bidding projects under the other three arms companies actually brought sample guns, but the performance standards in all aspects were far from the army's requirements.

The 75mm mountain cannon project brought by Liangguang Arms Company is seriously overweight, with a weight of 320 kilograms...

No way, Liangguang Arms Company is not very skilled in small-caliber rear-loading rifled guns, and the rear-mounted rifled mountain gun project has not been there before. This is a temporary design.

Of course, this does not mean that their technology is weak. In fact, the Guangdong-Guangzhou Weapons Company is also capable of artillery technology, but just like the Jiangnan Weapons Company, it has put its technical strength on the research and development of naval guns in recent years. .

And the project they brought, although the weight exceeds the standard, but the barrel life and effective range are very good, claiming that the effective range has reached 4000 meters...

From this look, you can tell that it was temporarily modified with the Navy's rear-mounted artillery project!

The five major weapon companies took out thirteen types of rear-mounted mountain guns for bidding, and they had to compete in the same field at the weapon testing ground on the outskirts of the Guards. Not only the high-level army paid attention to this, but even the emperor Luo Zhixue was also concerned after hearing about it. I was very concerned, and even prepared to watch the test launch in person.