Rise of Australia

Chapter 688 Heir to the Throne

Arthur was still very interested in the automatic rifle developed by Browning, and even personally watched the actual test of the BLN-28 rifle.

In order to facilitate the later stage, this rifle was designed to use the same rifle ammunition as Lee Enfield, with a caliber of approximately 0.303 inches, which is 7.7 mm caliber ammunition.

The use of this ammunition gives the Lee-Enfield rifle good lethality and can play an unexpected role in trench warfare.

The actual test limit speed of the Lee-Enfield rifle is about 30 rounds per minute, which is almost the limit of current semi-automatic rifles.

You know, Lee Enfield's magazine only holds ten rounds of ammunition, which also means that it is quite difficult to empty three magazines in one minute.

This is why Arthur said that the firepower of the Lee-Enfield rifle was enough, and no country could bear the consumption of more weapons and ammunition.

Although fully automatic rifles look more attractive, even the test version of the BLN28 automatic rifle can fire at a rate of more than 60 rounds per minute.

But this also means that the consumption of ammunition during the war has doubled, which is a huge test for logistics and the country's finances.

Although fully automatic rifles can also effectively increase the firepower of troops, a large part of this firepower is redundant and does not have much impact on actual combat.

If firepower is really needed, it is better to continue to increase the number and power of light machine guns and artillery. This is the truly effective way to increase firepower.

Although Arthur has no idea of ​​​​equipping fully automatic rifles on a large scale, the current BLN28 automatic rifle still plays a great role.

After the rifle test, Arthur expressed the idea of ​​forming a new army to several generals in the Ministry of Defense and stated that he would name the new army "Royal Commandos."

In a monarchy like Australasia, anything with the word "royal" has a special meaning.

Needless to say, Arthur said that these generals were instantly interested in the Royal Commando to be established, and many generals even asked Arthur to appoint them as commanders of the Royal Commando.

But it is obvious that as an outstanding special forces force in Arthur's mind, the commander of the Royal Commando is also destined to undergo strict selection.

Even if he is just an ordinary team member, he must be carefully selected among the hundreds of thousands of troops in Australasia. At least he must be selected from a thousand.

Yes, regarding the size of the Royal Commandos, Arthur does not plan to train too much for the time being. He is just setting up the framework first and exploring the specialized training.

This also resulted in the number of members of the first batch of Royal Commandos being limited to about 200, and they were selected from all soldiers in the entire army, including the regular army and the Guards.

Arthur even regretted revealing the plan to form special forces to the army generals in advance.

During this time, many people have volunteered to become the commander of Australasia's first special force.

Helpless, Arthur could only announce some other news to attract attention and prevent the news of the formation of Australasia's first special forces from leaking out.

This news is about artillery research. World War I was the era of giant cannons. A large number of giant cannons were born during World War I, and the caliber even exceeded 400 mm.

Such a huge cannon is extremely wasteful to use in land warfare, and its large caliber also represents a huge volume and weight, making it very difficult to transport.

After the end of World War I, artillery research in Australasia basically focused on 127 mm and below. Although this allowed for repeated breakthroughs in the technology of small-caliber artillery, there was indeed not much progress in medium- and large-caliber artillery.

In order to change this situation, under Arthur's order, the Royal Ordnance Factory also developed a new generation of M1928-150mm howitzers and CA1928 105mm semi-automatic artillery, enriching Australasia's artillery system.

The first is the M1928-150mm howitzer, which is the masterpiece of another arms factory controlled by Arthur, called the Melbourne United Ordnance Factory.

On the surface, the capital of this military factory is controlled by multiple individuals, but in fact, it is entirely controlled by the royal family consortium.

Through the capital support of the royal family consortium, the Melbourne United Arms Factory has developed into the largest "private" arms factory in Australasia. Its main business includes the research and development and manufacturing of artillery and firearms.

The codename M1928 is actually easy to understand. M stands for model, which means standard model. The code name of this artillery means the standard 1928mm howitzer developed in 150.

Through the news about the Melbourne United Military Factory, we can actually see Arthur's thoughts on supporting other military industrial companies.

While it is good news that the Royal Ordnance Factory is getting bigger, Australasia cannot have just one large arms factory.

It is a good thing to have competition in the research and development of weapons. Only involved companies can exert their greatest passion and motivation, and they can have more ideas when developing weapons.

More importantly, from a strategic perspective, it is also more difficult for many large military-industrial enterprises to penetrate. At least the enemy's intelligence work will become much more difficult.

The 150mm artillery basically meets Arthur's ideas. Although the traffic conditions in World War II were much improved compared to World War I, the transportation of 150 mm artillery was still too difficult.

When most of Australasia's wars were fought in Europe or other regions, it was even less likely to have high expectations for logistics.

As for the CA1928 105mm semi-automatic artillery, its previous generation product is actually the GA1906 artillery jointly developed by Australasia and Germany.

This is a large-caliber semi-automatic artillery model based on the M1897 artillery in Germany and Australasia. Generally speaking, it is relatively successful.

But after all, it was a product more than 20 years ago. The CA1928 105mm semi-automatic artillery is basically a new and improved product of the Royal Ordnance Factory.

如果不出意外的话，下一次大规模战争澳大拉西亚军队大量装备的火炮应该是CA1928式105毫米半自动火炮，M1928-150毫米榴弹炮，M1922-75毫米半自动火炮和CA-2-27毫米高射防空炮。

The first three types of artillery are used to suppress enemy fire, while the anti-aircraft artillery is specifically used to fight enemy aircraft.

In addition, Australasia's light and heavy machine guns can also be improved into anti-aircraft machine guns, which can be considered to have a certain amount of anti-aircraft firepower.

After all, real air defense depends on your own aircraft. Having air supremacy over a certain area is the real last word.

Rather than using artillery and machine guns to shoot down planes, Arthur obviously hopes to directly use planes to destroy enemy planes and gain complete and complete air superiority.

Sure enough, as soon as the news of the two artillery pieces was announced, it immediately caused a rush by various army units.

Because the number of armies has increased significantly, artillery equipment cannot be equipped to all armies at once.

In addition to the existing divisions, the new army will definitely have to fight for these weapons and equipment.

When training levels are about the same, whichever side has more new weapons and equipment will definitely have a stronger combat effectiveness.

As for the candidate for the Royal Commander of the Special Forces, Arthur has no good choice yet.

After much thought, Arthur still felt that former Prime Minister Kent was more suitable. But Kent's political career was much longer than his military career, but this does not mean that Kent's military talents were weak. As Australia's first Minister of Defense, Kent graduated from the Military Academy, but also conducted frequent further studies at various universities, and is considered a relatively versatile talent.

Arthur was relatively relieved to temporarily hand over the special forces to Kent for training and management.

Just wait until there is a more suitable candidate in the future and then replace him. Anyway, Arthur is still trying to train the special forces. It is better to let Kent, who graduated from the Military Academy, give it a try.

After all, before the formal training of the Royal Commandos, what needs to be done is to select the most suitable special soldiers among the hundreds of thousands of people in the army.

To select only 200 people out of hundreds of thousands, how to make a fair selection and select the soldiers with the most potential and strength is the biggest test for Kent.

Arthur would definitely not provoke a war before the British took action, which also made Arthur quickly focus on domestic development.

In the absence of a war, what Arthur must do is to carry out various constructions in Australasia to bring the country's potential and comprehensive strength to a higher level, and to have more capital in the future.

In fact, logically speaking, the sixth cabinet government should have ended its term in the middle of last year, and now the seventh cabinet government has already ushered in.

However, due to the economic crisis, Arthur naturally announced a one-year extension, causing the cabinet election to be postponed to this year.

The economy has completely improved this year, which has also allowed this year's cabinet election to be held smoothly.

Arthur is also looking forward to the birth of the seventh cabinet government. Each change of cabinet government also represents a further step in the development of Australasia.

The efforts of six cabinet governments have created the current Australasia, and Arthur has also witnessed the development and growth of Australasia during these six cabinet governments.

To borrow the words of foreign media when evaluating Arthur's status in Australasia: "He created and witnessed the development of this country. In the eyes of those people, he is the entire country."

This sentence is not an exaggeration at all, and it is also the best language to describe Arthur's status in Australasia.

It is precisely because of Arthur's deliberate influence that Arthur himself is completely bound to this country.

Arthur represents this country, and this is the real reason why the royal family's status is so stable at present.

But in other words, because of the high degree of binding between the royal family and the country, Arthur himself, including the entire royal family, and the country both prospered and suffered losses.

As far as Arthur's personal prestige and status are concerned, even without the royal consortium and the army, no one can compete with Arthur from a purely political perspective.

Arthur's status in Australasia has surpassed Queen Victoria's status in Britain, and Australasians are willing to fight for Arthur, even if they pay their own lives.

Although the cabinet elections are held from May to June, the whole of Australasia becomes lively starting from April.

The system of government elections has changed repeatedly, and Arthur has been exploring the most suitable electoral method for Australasia.

The current election method is not much different from before. Each member of the House of Representatives can nominate candidates for various cabinet positions, and the person with the highest number of votes wins the final cabinet position.

However, the election of the prime minister can only be contested among members of the previous cabinet and candidates from various parties (with more than 5 seats in the House of Representatives), making the election of the prime minister more difficult.

Regarding the previous stipulation that the Prime Minister was nominated by Arthur for election, such election rules undoubtedly weakened Arthur's power.

But this is what Arthur is happy to see, and he has begun to weaken the royal power in some places in advance.

Although so far, the training of several princes has been very smooth. William, the nominal first heir to the throne, showed good talents and was even recognized by Arthur as being a good ruler.

But this did not stop Arthur from weakening the king's power, which must be completed before Arthur abdicated.

Compared with Arthur's limited and purposeful weakening of the royal power, if the next ruler is allowed to weaken the royal power, there is a high probability that he will be forced to do so.

At that time, Australasia will be like when the Netherlands established a constitutional monarchy. The monarch will lose power overnight, and almost lose most of his rights.

Rather than doing this, it would be better for Arthur to weaken the king's power in advance and limit the king's power to a controllable range.

If the future monarch is capable and prestigious, he can obtain higher rights by virtue of the system established by Arthur.

If the future monarch is not very capable, his royal power will be relatively limited, and he will be a peaceful and stable king of a constitutional monarchy.

In this way, the wise king can gain power, the mediocre king can lose power, and the status of the royal family can become more stable.

Judging from the framework and foundation that Arthur left to future generations of monarchs, it would be no problem for Australasia to become one of the great powers and spend hundreds of years peacefully.

As long as there is no competition for world dominance, the Australasian royal family will be safe and sound.

As for what will happen a few hundred years from now, Arthur cannot predict it, and naturally it is impossible to prepare in advance for a few hundred years from now.

But in other words, a few hundred years of rule was enough. After all, the subsequent monarchs hundreds of years later did not actually have much blood relationship with Arthur.

At least for Arthur now, how to deal with his several adult children is the most important issue.

William and Anna were both born in 1909, and are currently over 18 years old, which is definitely considered an adult.

Arthur has not yet decided on the division of William and Anna's titles. What kind of titles to create is indeed a headache.

Fortunately, the titles were not given to several sons at once. At least there was a certain amount of time for planning and preparation.

Arthur was very assured of William's ability. The next king of Australasia would basically be William.

It was also decided to create a title exclusive to the heir to the throne, just like the Prince of Wales in the UK.

The crown prince automatically receives this title, which also represents the crown prince and is specifically used to designate the next heir to the country.

　That’s all for today, please take a day off, sorry!

　　Please explain, the second uncle is gone. As a nephew, the author is very busy these days and has to send me to the mountain tomorrow.

　　

　

(End of this chapter)