Don’t raise unruly people in extreme cold weather

Chapter 654: The Rejected Shipbuilding Plan
Do the old generals in the military have money? It depends.

From a personal perspective, although these old generals cannot be said to be very rich, they are basically above average.

After all, they are all generals, and many of them are brave warriors who have spent half their lives in the battlefield. The rewards from the royal family and the spoils of war are enough to ensure that they don't have to worry about money for the rest of their lives.

Even these old generals were able to help their old subordinates, and they even had money to get a private army for Perfecto.

After all, the bulk of an infantry regiment's military expenses are logistical expenses for rifles, cannons, and food for men and horses. If there is no war, it basically costs no more than tens of thousands of gold pounds a year.

According to the military organization of the Victoria Empire, the annual military expenditure of a Guards Infantry Regiment is 100,000 gold pounds, which even includes the soldiers' salaries.

If the expenses of a temporary corps are even smaller, then basically 30,000 gold pounds can cover the annual expenses of an infantry regiment.

This expense is not that large, and a general in the military can afford it even if he has no other income.

It was also because of this that these old guys were able to gather a private army for Perfectot.

But if we look at the naval spending, the little money in these old guys' pockets is simply not enough.

The cost of building a new warship starts from hundreds of thousands of gold pounds, which is enough to take out all the savings of these old men.

After all, even an old-fashioned sailing frigate costs more than 70,000 gold pounds, not counting the cost of personnel training and maintenance, just the cost of building a ship.

The flying battleship designed by Perfecto cost two million gold pounds to build. Of course, these old generals could not pay for it themselves.

They planned to pay for the military expenditure from the empire's central fiscal expenditure.

Although the empire had almost emptied its treasury in order to build the North to cope with the doomsday winter, the central government of the empire has gradually stabilized after moving to the North, and the financial situation has also improved slightly.

In addition, Princess Anne had previously restored the Empire's control over the colonies. Overall, the financial situation of the Empire's core was relatively good, and there was finally a little surplus in the treasury.

But it is obvious that this surplus is not enough to build a flying battleship.

So when the military submitted the shipbuilding plan to the cabinet for discussion, it was directly rejected.

By the way, during the time when Perfect was on his incognito tour, the results of the prime minister election had already been announced.

Wellington, the candidate nominated by the North, defeated Princess Anne, who returned with the power of suppressing the colonies, by a relatively narrow margin and was successfully elected as the first Prime Minister of the Empire.

If he and Kallen had not been running for the election together, he might have lost to Princess Anne this time.

Because he won the election by a narrow margin, Wellington was unable to control all the seats in the cabinet.

The Northern and Dominion Alliance only won two-thirds of the seats in the cabinet, while the remaining one-third was occupied by the Royalists represented by Princess Anne and the opposition composed of other forces.

As for other small neutral factions, they failed to get cabinet seats, but only occupied a certain number of seats in parliament.

Perfect was satisfied with the result of the first election.

She didn't mind that the cabinet was not completely under control. She thought that having opposition was actually a good thing, as long as they didn't fight for the sake of fighting and opposed for the sake of opposing. However, judging from the current situation, the opposition party headed by Princess Anne still put state affairs first and did not oppose for the sake of opposing.

Of course, this also has a lot to do with the fact that they only occupy one-third of the seats. More cabinet seats are in the hands of the North and the Dominion Alliance. Relatively speaking, the North and the Dominion Alliance naturally have a greater impact on national policies.

If the opposition party does not want all its proposals to be opposed and rejected, it must carefully consider whether to provoke a struggle.

However, the shipbuilding plan submitted by the military was opposed by both sides.

The reason is simple: it’s too expensive.

These old men in the military unceremoniously proposed a massive shipbuilding plan of twelve battleships, attempting to create three fleet clusters, with three new flying battleships designed by Perfectoct as the core, and then building nine smaller frigates around the three battleships.

These twelve warships will be organized into three fleets, one to guard the center of the empire, one to patrol the colonies, and the other to guard the empire's homeland and deter the old world.

From the military's perspective, this is indeed necessary.

After all, if the empire wants to restore its former power, a fleet of this size may not be enough. It can only be said that it can barely suppress the situation in the absence of competitors.

But the cost of building twelve flying battleships is also an astronomical figure. The total price of 15 million gold pounds is enough to cover the navy's shipbuilding expenses for at least ten years even at the peak of the empire five years ago.

Such a huge expenditure would be beyond the reach of the current imperial finances even in 20 years, not to mention that the military planned to complete the construction of all twelve warships within five years.

It can only be said that the ideal is very full and the reality is very skinny.

Even without considering the cost, it is almost impossible to build twelve flying battleships in five years.

Not to mention how long it would take to complete the supporting facilities of the flying battleship, it would take an uncertain time for the Royal Dockyard to start building the first flying battleship.

Finally, the military argued their case at the cabinet meeting and finally convinced the cabinet to agree to let them build a fleet of only three frigates, but not to approve the air carrier.

Although the military was very dissatisfied with this, there was nothing they could do as the financial situation of the Imperial Center did not allow them to make more demands.

So they had no choice but to go to the Royal Dockyard with the budget approved by the cabinet and ask the Royal Dockyard to make a simplified version of the frigate based on Perfecto's design.

Not only that, they also demanded that the cost of the frigate must be kept within one million pounds, and preferably even cheaper.

After all, the funds approved by the cabinet are limited. If the cost can be reduced, maybe we can build one more ship.

However, these demands were somewhat unreasonable for the Royal Dockyard.

They hadn't even figured out the specific structure and design details of the flying battleship, but the military asked them to improve the blueprints. How could the engineers at the Royal Dockyard possibly do that?
After several rounds of tug-of-war, they finally had no choice but to turn to Perfecto and ask her to help design a flying frigate with a cheaper cost and reduced performance.

However, Perfect had already boarded the train to Pripyat.

(End of this chapter)