Han Zuo Gaomen

Chapter 808 Ordnance Heavy Industry
Xi Jian came to Huainan this time, apart from inquiring about the victory report, he also had another important purpose, which was to discuss the purchase of armaments.

Today's north-south situation can be said to be unexpected by many people nowadays, including Fang Bo of the border town like Xijian. It can be said that the north-south situation is the most favorable state since Yongjia.While people are excited, it is inevitable that they will be caught off guard and caught off guard.To put it bluntly, it is that there is not enough preparation to deal with the sudden and great situation.

The scale of the Xuzhou Army's armored troops is far superior to that of Huainan, but their performance in actual combat is not as good as that of the Huainan Army. military industry.

In fact, purely in terms of military industry foundation, Xuzhou is better than Huainan. Whether it is in terms of technology or resources, including smelting and casting, Xuzhou's foundation is better than Huainan.But these industries also have a problem, that is, they are too scattered, making it difficult to integrate and coordinate production.

In other words, there are not many military industries that Xi Jian, the governor, can control, and most of them are scattered in the hands of various military leaders.And these military leaders, to be honest, do not have a high overall view, and relying on their respective capabilities, it is difficult to operate these industries for a long time, and it is difficult to form a stable scale.Because of this, for a long period of time, the production capacity of Xu Town as a whole was not even comparable to that of the Wujiang base run by the Shen family alone.

Because there is no overall regulation and long-term planning, and with the changes in the situation between the north and the south, many Xuzhou military leaders have expanded their trilogy in order to compete for military merits, or converted the original dependent population production units into armored soldiers, or directly After accepting and accepting prisoners, the scale of Xuzhou's army expanded greatly.However, due to the lack of sufficient ordnance reserves, many recruits did not even have weapons, which not only did not improve their combat effectiveness, but increased the burden of raising the army.

After the decisive battle in Whirlpool, the Xuzhou army performed better than the Huainan army, and several troops passed through Huaibei one after another, but the results were not satisfactory.Of course, there is also the principle of the art of war of not chasing the poor and not stopping the army, but the Xuzhou army itself has a lot of problems.In many places, the generals just organized a group of young men, and they didn't have enough basic weapons and armaments, so they made a noise and went northward, wanting to compete for military exploits.As a result, the military exploits were not obtained, but a lot of defeats were made because of it.

Therefore, as the cold winter came, the Xuzhou army gradually settled down.The previous strong attack, not only did not have much merit to boast, but because of the excessive invasion of the local area, several slave troops entrenched in the area were defeated, especially the slave army Liu Zheng's unit that has been lingering near Surabaya so far. strengthened.

Xi Jian is really troubled by this. On the one hand, the town is also stepping up the organization of armament production, and on the other hand, there is no lack of regret for being too generous before, transferring all the weapons and equipment abandoned by the Kuokou slave army to the Huainan army. Had to ask again.Ordinary armaments are nothing more than tents, boats, bows, knives and arrows. After this cold winter, the production has been stepped up, and when the army is used in the spring of next year, the current disadvantages can definitely be reversed.

However, for the production of machinery such as armor, which takes a long time, it is definitely not a temporary burst of production capacity.In particular, there is one of the most important chariots that Xi Jian most wants to obtain.The chariots of the Huainan Army formed an array, accompanied by Shen Zhezi across the river, and played an extremely important role in many battles.Moreover, when the two armies cooperated earlier, the Huainan Army also presented Xi Jian with more than a dozen chariots. After they were put into use on the battlefield, many frontline fighters were full of praise for them.

If there are large-scale chariots on the battlefield, the Xuzhou army will undoubtedly gain greater initiative in the next year when it goes north, especially against Liu Zheng and other slaves who rely on the complex waterway situation around Surabaya to defend against the defeated slave army.

Hearing Xi Jian's appeal, Shen Zhezi couldn't help laughing.In fact, the Huainan Army's chariot formation is not very technical, and there are almost no barriers to speak of. As long as they are willing to invest, the Xuzhou Army can also build it with their own strength, and they don't need to be restrained by Huainan in terms of technology.

In fact, similar to the overall production technology environment in ancient times, even if Shen Zhezi has some technological innovations that are one step ahead, it is difficult to create any technical barriers, and the replicability is extremely strong.Even if it includes relatively high-end gunpowder, it is okay to produce a small amount of it behind closed doors for self-entertainment, but once the scale of production capacity is expanded, it is easy to leak out.

Because this process itself does not require the cooperation of the overall productivity of the society, the technical barriers are not high.Especially in a turbulent social background, the mobility of people is high, and technology exchange and diffusion will become common.If you want to keep it secret for a long time, the management cost will become extremely high.

Therefore, although Shen's workshop has been continuing to develop the various ratios of gunpowder, Shen Zhezi has never regarded it as the winner of the world.Especially in the absence of an obvious dominant advantage, someone is willing to pay as much as your technology is tempting.Even if a complete set of technologies can be completely kept secret, then the Huainan army's transportation team will become the object of competition in the future.At that time, allies will become unreliable, and the black hand will be harder than anyone else.

Of course, this does not mean that technological leadership is meaningless. The pioneers have a great advantage, that is, they can set industry barriers and standards.The greatness of Qin Shihuang lies in creating a ruling template of a unified empire for later generations.And with this template, no matter how chaotic the world is, those with aspirations will work hard for it.

The great inertia of path dependence and the constraints on human behavior are continuous and long-standing.To give the simplest example, it is not the front-line scientific researchers who determine the width of the rocket propeller in later generations, but the width of the buttocks of two horses, which was determined more than 2000 years ago.The width of two horses is the width of the ancient Roman chariot, and the width of the chariot determines the width of the road, and the width of the tram track invented by later generations is also determined by this.And this standard was later applied to the train gauge, and the vehicle for transporting rocket propellers is the train.

There are countless examples that seem absurd but are actually true.

The chariot formation of the Huainan Army has confirmed its military significance through repeated actual combat.Then, if the imitators want to pursue the same record and victory, the first thing they want to do is to fully imitate the Huainan Army.In this regard, the Xuzhou Army has a unique advantage. There is no shortage of the power to witness the formation of chariots, and even the actual chariots.

The standard configuration of the chariot of the Huainan Army is to carry 20 people, bows, crossbows, guns, lances, knives, sticks, hammers and other weapons are readily available. The entire chariot uses an uncommon double-axle suspension box structure.Among them, the rear car is the main part of the battle, and the two-layer shield defense of wood and iron is used.And because of the need to close together and form a tight formation during combat, the axles are round axles instead of the pointed axles of ordinary chariots.

In fact, after seeing the record of the Huainan Army's chariot formation, the Xuzhou Army had adopted a similar combat method before, slightly modifying the original army's military vehicles and putting them into combat. However, the final battle results were quite different from the Huainan Army's record. Far.

Of course, there are many reasons for deciding a battle, such as the comparison of military strength between the two sides, the difference in terrain, and the timing of the battle, etc. There are so many reasons that it is difficult to count.But the most obvious of them is naturally the difference in the use of the two machines, which is also a factor that is best corrected and made up for.

Therefore, after receiving the gift from the Huainan Army, the Xuzhou Army then put it into combat, and the record has improved a lot.This undoubtedly further established the brand effect of the Huainan Army's chariot ordnance, but in fact the reason is really only because of the different use of the weapon?No one can tell.

In fact, Shen Zhezi himself didn't know what the style and structure of Liu Yu's Queyue formation and chariot were.However, the Huainan Army's tactic has been polished and matured. In fact, there are many reasons for it.

For example, the dual-axle structure of a chariot is naturally more flexible than a single-axle chariot when it moves on the battlefield.In particular, the Huainan army lacked animal strength, and the chariot activities on the battlefield had to rely on a considerable part of manpower to complete.Moreover, such a biaxial structure can split the chariot into two parts, the front and the rear, which not only increases the carrying capacity of a single chariot, but also makes it more convenient to transport it into the battlefield by boat.

As for the coordination of personnel and equipment, there are some unclear reasons.For example, the ratio of various weapons, the Huainan Army uses ten sticks and five hammers. In fact, why this is so, even the current Huainan Army themselves can't explain it clearly.However, when the Xuzhou Army followed suit, they still strictly followed this ratio.

Of course, the entire chariot is not without technology at all. For example, the outer armor of the rear trailer compartment is first forged as a whole, and then heated and carburized in a crucible after forming.Shen Zhezi doesn't know if this kind of solid-state carburizing method exists anywhere else in this world, but the technology mastered by Huainan was summed up by Wujiang Smelting and Casting Base's own experiments.The chariot armor cast in this way is extremely hard and tough. Even if it encounters a violent impact, it will neither deform easily nor break into pieces.

All in all, the Xuzhou Army wants to build the same tank as the Huainan Army alone. Perhaps there are not too many technical restrictions, but it lacks a complete military industry system.This time when Xi Jian came to the town to ask for advice, Shen Zhezi believed that Xuzhou must have gone through some trial production, but the finished product was always inferior in effect, or the cost was too high, and the gain outweighed the gain, so he had no choice but to turn to Huainan for help.

Shen Zhezi had long planned to build a large-scale military industrial base in Luojian, the town, and the Xuzhou Army was the target customer in the plan. Now that the customer took the initiative to come to the door, naturally there was no reason to refuse.And not just chariots, he also prepared more options for Xi Jian.

　Letting my pure liberal arts discuss technology is simply embarrassing me, Fat Tiger.As for the examples of path dependence, in fact, there are the most in the field of economics and finance. For example, the great physicist Newton once served as the foreman of the Royal Mint, and the original gold standard system was stipulated by Newton. One ounce of gold is equal to 3 pounds. 17 shillings and 10.5 pence, some are full and some are zero. I don’t know how the old man calculated it. Anyway, it has been used for many years.

　　
　
(End of this chapter)