Zhao Bing did not give his spare effort to promote logistics construction, and the results achieved were also obvious. The soldiers' physical fitness was significantly improved. Even if they were like Lin Daiyu before joining the army, they usually became a fierce Zhang Fei after half a year of new training. Therefore, it can be said that the Song army is no less than the authentic Mongolian soldiers in terms of physical fitness in individual soldiers, and they will never be at a disadvantage even if they use cold weapons to fight one-on-one.

In terms of comprehensive qualities, Zhao Bing thought that the difference was practical experience, but these could be compensated by the generational difference of weapons. After all, a mature Mongolian soldier would have to undergo long-term training to develop, while the Song army could train an ordinary young man into a qualified musketeer after half a year of training.

In this way, the overall advantage of the Song army was revealed. Since firearms are not only powerful, but also can be fired without consuming a lot of physical strength, the physical requirements for soldiers were reduced accordingly. In the past, when cold weapons were used, tall and strong would definitely have the advantage over those who were shorter. Using firearms to fight a small man is not as good as a big man’s disadvantage.

Don’t underestimate this gap. In this way, the Song army’s range of available troops has expanded. Soldiers who could only enter the wing army by the height standard of the selection of soldiers in the past can also be selected as the imperial guards. In this way, after the war broke out, the casualties of the Song army can be continuously supplemented, and it will be much easier to expand the army, and the overall quality of the army will not decline too much.

However, the Mongolian and Yuan army are much worse in this regard. Not to mention a qualified cavalry, even a qualified archer requires up to four or five years of training and has high physical fitness requirements. Once the loss is lost, it is difficult to get quick replenishment. It can be said that one death is less than one death. If you want to maintain the strength of the troops, the standards have to be lowered, and the overall quality of the army will also decline.

This is also one of the reasons why Zhao Bing wanted to fight an annihilation battle in the Song Dynasty's recovery of Jiangnan and Northern Expeditions. It is also because the Mongolian and Yuan dynasties lost a lot of troops, and they became weaker and weaker even if they wanted to recover lost territory, and they were powerless and had to make peace with the Song Dynasty. On the contrary, even if the Song army suffered heavy losses, they could quickly recover their combat effectiveness, and the backbone trained after actual combat would become more and more courageous after being supplemented.

This exercise was also a test of the logistics system. The troops participating in the First Army, Second Army and Fifth Army also shortened the assembly time because they had a close distance, so their logistics supply pressure during the marching was less. Soldiers only had to eat simple combat-ready food every day to maintain their physical strength and did not need to carry a large amount of food and grass.

However, the bases of the Third Army and the Fourth Army's participating units are more than 500 miles away from the exercise ground, and require long-distance and long-term rapid marches to arrive. It is difficult to ensure sufficient physical strength by eating fast food and dry food on the way, and a large amount of materials are also required to consume, so the logistics pressure is great.

However, under similar conditions, the two units chose different plans. As early as after the recovery of Jiangnan, Zhao Bing began to equip vans in order to increase the power of the infantry, and achieved good results in the Northern Expedition, so he began to install various units. However, it is necessary to fully realize the transportation of mules and horses into a single army, which is unrealistic in the current situation of serious shortage of horses.

After many discussions, a compromise plan was adopted. Each army expanded to a support brigade based on the logistics regiment, with a logistics regiment under its jurisdiction, and expanded the engineering battalion into an engineering regiment. A transportation regiment based on vans was added, equipped with more than 500 vans to transport materials and soldiers, and to improve the overall mobility of the troops.

However, the methods of each division are different when it comes to how to use the transportation regiment. In fact, an army is not all stationed in a city on weekdays, but is scattered in important areas of defense areas, or prefectures and counties under its jurisdiction, and only when they go to war, they will be concentrated and departed.

Zhuang Siqi's department is to separate the transportation regiments and sub-divisions. The advantage of this is to reduce the pressure to ensure the transportation and maintenance of brigades, and facilitate the departments to arrange transportation and maintenance and transport personnel as needed; Sun Kai's department maintains its organization and still directly under the military department to manage and organize training, and coordinate the dispatch according to the requests of each department.

These two methods have their own advantages in daily life, but when you suddenly receive an emergency order, you can see the advantages and disadvantages.

Zhuang Siqi's troops were scattered in various places, lacking unified training and lacking maintenance, and it was difficult to collect them in a short time after receiving the order. Some vehicles were difficult to march for a long distance due to poor conditions. This prevented him from choosing most of the hikes, reducing the baggage he carried and replenishing supplies on the way, which led to the evil incident of forcing local granaries to rob local granaries.

Since the transportation regiment is uniformly dispatched and managed by the military headquarters, Sun Kai's troops can transport the dispatched troops from various places to the assembly site in a short time after receiving the order, and can carry the materials needed on the way. They can also use vans to build temporary camps. This not only ensures the speed of the march, but also reduces the physical energy consumption of soldiers and preserves combat effectiveness.

However, using vans also has disadvantages. Because the road conditions are different in various places, some places are not conducive to vans and require detours. Some bridges cannot bear the weight of vans when crossing the river, or because they are narrow and difficult to pass, bridges need to be reinforcing or even temporary bridges are built to extend the marching time.

However, Sun Kai sent scouts first to check the road traffic and allowed the engineers to travel with the van, so that he could adjust the marching route in time, or build bridges and pave roads first, so that the large army could pass in time, so that his troops could reach the destination on time, basically maintain complete combat effectiveness, and quickly build a defensive formation with vans when attacked by the enemy.

In Zhao Bing's view, Sun Kai's army's approach is more in line with actual combat needs, can quickly send troops and increase self-sustaining time. This review is actually to test the combat effectiveness of the troops and find tactics and tactics that are more adaptable to the new combat environment. So although he scolded Sun Kai, he affirmed his way of using vans, and asked him to summarize his experience at the meeting and promote it to various departments.

Although the heads of the emperor were a bit tempting to deal with this, they were not in conflict with each other. After all, they were all veterans of the founding of the army. At that time, most of them were grassroots officers, and even from the rebels. Zhao Mengjin, who had the highest position, was just a deputy general of the city. They all lacked the experience of organizing large-scale battles and commanding large troops. They suddenly rose to the high position and were all feeling their way across the river.

At that time, whenever a battle occurred, no matter how big or small, the young emperor would organize the generals to summarize, retain the advantages and promote them, and correct them if they make mistakes. This is how the generals grew up little by little by little through continuous summarizing experience and mutual learning. Until now, each department still retains the practices of that year.

But everyone is a general of the army and is stationed in various places. It is difficult to sit together under the organization of the little emperor as in the past to share their own combat and training experiences. Now that we have such an opportunity, the generals actually cherish it very much. They share their military training experiences without reservation at each meeting. However, some of them were scolded by the emperor in public, and some were praised, which made those who were criticized still feel that they could not bear the face...

However, the generals, based on the scale of the participation of His Majesty and the important officials of the court, mobilized five infantry divisions, two artillery divisions, five cavalry divisions and direct teams of various arms, and more than 100,000 troops to participate in the drill. Everyone knows the importance of this drill and understands that this drill can be called a preview of the second Northern Expedition.

The next exercise plan announced by the emperor surprised the generals. It was different from the usual practice of camping, individual skills and battalions and above, and the combined combat of various types of troops. This exercise is closer to actual combat, mainly in frontal attacks by infantry and cavalry, marching encounters cavalry raids, cavalry hiking operations, cavalry long-distance raids, and infantry and cavalry combined to fight against cavalry, etc.

Moreover, there were no plans before the war, no specific troops were designated, and no information about the drill situation. Everything was decided the day before the drill. The winner was judged by the Ministry of War, the Privy Council and the heads of each department. This made each department not know in advance what kind of opponents they would encounter and what situations they encountered. This most tests the overall quality and training level of the troops, and of course made the general feel unsure.

In order to create a real battlefield atmosphere, the ammunition used in the drill is specially made. Although the shells are not made of iron, the projectiles are also filled with gunpowder to explode. They have no lethality but can determine casualties by splashing white ash. The bullets can only use empty shells without warheads, but the sound and smoke generated by the firing are exactly the same as the real battlefield.

This arrangement is because it has been four years since the last Northern Expedition, and even the troops stationed at the forefront have only experienced small-scale conflicts over the years. According to the military system, veterans who have participated in the war have retired one after another, or have transferred to local state troops, which has left about 40% of veterans with combat experience, resulting in many new recruits having no practical experience and can also experience the atmosphere of the real battlefield.

According to the drill plan, the school review will last for a month. It is said that the emperor had privately said that through this school review, the real combat effectiveness of each department was tested and potential problems were found. Those generals and officials who were lazy in training, incompetent in training and serious problems would be severely punished, and the bad apples would be driven out of the army. The troops with poor performance would be cancelled and demoted to the state army.
Chapter completed!