Taking advantage of the internal and external stability, the Army of the Dachu Empire completed the reform of the overall framework of the army, formalizing the three-level units of combat readiness, standing and garrison, which had been implemented in the past few years but did not have a formal name.
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As a result, a three-level army composition system was established: the combat readiness A-level division, the standing B-level division, and the garrison C-level division.

Further make better use of effective military spending to complete more combat missions and complete them better.

After all, although the Army's military expenditures are large, it is Alexander who supports more than one million people... In order to save military expenditures, the Army generally conducts military reclamation. Even in areas where there are no conditions for military reclamation, the army will

Growing vegetables, raising pigs and chickens is to reduce food expenses.

Don't think that just saving some money on food is not worth such a huge effort, but in fact, most of the cost of raising an army these days is actually personnel and mules and horses, including personnel salaries and subsidies, as well as people eating horses and horses.

That is, food expenses.

With more than one million people plus hundreds of thousands of mules and horses, the food cost is so high that guns and guns are much more expensive.

Things like guns and guns cost money to purchase at the beginning, and the prices of guns have never been expensive.

An 11mm standard field gun only costs 500 to 600 yuan... which is less than the personnel expenses of the artillery crew for half a year.

At the same time, in the later daily use of guns, the cost is actually not much. At most, it is just the cost of some ammunition used for training.

During non-combat periods, the loss rate of equipment is very low, not negligible, but the overall loss level is also very low.

A front-mounted copper alloy artillery can be used for decades if it is used in large-scale operations and properly maintained...

And you don’t have to worry about not being able to use it after ten or twenty years, because the life of a gun is not calculated by time, but by the life of the barrel.

If a bronze artillery fires out a thousand rounds in continuous combat, it will be scrapped if it is only equipped for a few months. If not, the charge will be reduced, because after firing so many shells, the strength of the barrel will be reduced.

It is no longer enough. If you continue to use it with normal charging, there is a risk of the chamber exploding.

Of course, this is without considering the upgrading of equipment. If it were in the original time and space, it would be normal for the front-loaded smoothbore cannon to last for decades and not become obsolete. But in the Da Chu Empire, with the current situation of the Da Chu Empire

Judging from the speed of industrial advancement, it is estimated that we will enter the era of rapid-fire guns in a few decades... No matter what, we will also enter the era of breech-loaded rifled guns.

Therefore, the equipment in the Chu army may be updated relatively quickly, but this is another matter.

Generally speaking, the equipment loss rate in peacetime is relatively low. At the same time, the technical level of guns and artillery these days is just like this. They are all stupid and thick things that are easy to maintain. They are not like the tanks and aircraft of later generations.

Likewise, maintenance is troublesome and expensive.

On the other hand, battleships in the Navy are relatively expensive to maintain, especially wooden battleships, if they are not properly maintained and maintained, they will turn into a pile of rotten wood in just a few years!

Therefore, the navy's maintenance costs are very high even in peacetime. Even if the sailors do not train and hide in the port doing nothing all day long, the regular maintenance of warships parked in the port is also very expensive.

The Army doesn't have so much to worry about. If the artillery is stretched to death, it just needs to be rust-proofed, and then add some lubricating oil to the bearings and that's it.

The same goes for muskets, just wipe it with some gun oil and it's almost done.

On a daily basis, the army's biggest beginning is still people eating horses' chews.

Therefore, the Army vigorously promotes military settlements in all units, planting vegetables, raising pigs, chickens and ducks to save food expenses.

The effect is also very good. Large-scale military reclamation allows the Chu Empire Army to maintain a large number of troops within limited military expenditures.

However, despite this, the Army's military expenditure pressure is still very high.

Now that there is a three-level organization, one of the main purposes of the Army is to obtain stronger combat effectiveness within limited military expenditures. In other words, it is to further tilt resources towards combat readiness, so that combat readiness units have stronger combat capabilities, and then retain these combat readiness units.

Establish military advantage on the battlefield.

Spend your money wisely!

This is an important starting point for the Army's continuous internal reform in recent years. In this regard, Luo Zhixue also supports the Army's internal self-reform.

I’m not afraid of you messing around, but I’m afraid that you’ll just sit there and wait to die.

If you mess around and create problems, then you can just solve the problem, and you can also control the problem through small-scale pilots. First test with a small-scale army. If the test effect is good, then extend it to more troops, and finally

It is promoted by the whole army, just like the previous model of combat readiness force and standing force.

But if you don't give in, you will just stick to your own way. When one day you find that the enemy has become stronger or even surpasses you, it will be over.

And when the time comes, if you want to change it, you won’t be able to change it in a short while.

Luo Zhixue does not want to see the Army rest on its laurels, nor does he want to see the Navy self-restraint. Instead, he wants to actively innovate and continue to explore and develop better warships and more advanced tactics as domestic industrial technology continues to develop.

This is why Luo Zhixue directly approved hundreds of thousands of additional special funds for the Navy to develop iron-ribbed wooden hull ships.

With the support of Luo Zhixue, the emperor of the Dachu Empire, the navy's research and development of iron-ribbed wooden hull ships is progressing very quickly!

The Navy's Ship Administration Department quickly based on the new material capabilities of various iron parts provided by many manufacturers, especially Daye Iron and Steel Company and Daye Heavy Machinery Company, which is responsible for processing large wrought iron parts, and then in Chengshun Ten

In June of the same year, the design of the first iron-ribbed wooden hull test ship was completed.

This test ship is not large, with a design displacement of just over 600 tons, and its tactical positioning is only a frigate, not a larger cruiser or even a battleship.

This test ship will fully use iron materials as the main load-bearing components, such as ship ribs, beam frames, etc., and then lay wooden shells, wooden plywood and superstructures on the iron load-bearing frames.

In order to reduce technical difficulties and reduce research and development risks, apart from the heavy use of iron materials in the load-bearing structure, other aspects have not changed much. The deployed artillery and ship types still adopt many designs of the original frigates.

To put it simply, compared with other frigates of the same class being built and used by the Da Chu Empire Navy, this test ship only differs in load-bearing structural materials, and other changes are basically not major.

After the initial design was completed, the Naval Ship Administration Department submitted the design plan. After Luo Zhixue read it, he did not interfere too much, let alone some of the design details.

This is Luo Zhixue's consistent approach of letting professional people do professional things. He rarely interferes with specific matters in the professional fields of his subordinate officials.

Not to mention this test ship, even if it is such a big thing as the army reform, Luo Zhixue only looks at the results and not the process, let alone interferes too much in specific matters.

He does not think that with some knowledge from later generations, he will be smarter and more thoughtful than the professionals of this era.

Even in the research on the army's line tactics, today's Luo Zhixue is actually not as good as those professional generals in the army. People think about and study these things every day, but it is not Luo Zhixue who relies on some common sense knowledge from later generations to come up with a brainstorm.

You can come up with a better solution just by taking pictures.

Because many things do not mean that they are good as long as you think they are good, nor do they mean that the more advanced things in future generations will be the same.

With the current technological level of the Chu Empire, even if Luo Zhixue proposed some tactical ideas such as the trinity of land, sea and air, and the coordination of infantry and tanks, it would be of no use.

When it comes to tactics, it’s not that the advanced ones are good, but the ones that are suitable are the best!

The same goes for the Navy's iron-ribbed wooden hull ships. Luo Zhixue knew very well that steel battleships were better, even if it was just laying wrought iron armor on the outside of the wooden hull, but the problem was the limitation of technical level.

An all-steel battleship cannot be built just by asking. The processing of materials, assembly of parts, welding, etc., as well as the most critical factors such as power, cannot be built by just asking.

How to make a better iron-ribbed wooden hull ship under the current technical conditions is the most important thing in the field of Chu Emperor's warships.

Luo Zhixue, who did not interfere too much, quickly approved the Navy's construction plan for this experimental ship and named it Jiangning himself.

Jiangning County is also a county under Yingtianfu of the Great Chu Empire. It is also the seat of Yingtianfu and the capital of the Great Chu Empire.

Luo Zhixue directly named the experimental frigate after the county where the capital is located, which shows that he attaches great importance to it.

After the design plan was approved by Luo Zhixue, the Navy quickly started construction work.

However, the construction work of this kind of test ship is still very troublesome, and it is expected to take a long time, which is completely different from the mature pure wooden frigates now built.

Now the Dachu Empire is building a frigate. As long as the wood used to build the ship is prepared in advance, the entire construction process is very short. It only takes about half a year for the Songjiang Naval Shipyard to complete the construction, launch, and outfitting.

And several months of trial sailing.

From laying the keel to being officially delivered to the Navy in complete condition, the time required for a frigate is only about a year.

This is still the normal production time. If we work overtime and deploy more workers to speed up the construction, then this time can be shortened by a few more months, and the construction and delivery can be completed and delivered in more than half a year.

However, the Jiangning frigate is a brand-new type of warship. Its construction has no precedent to follow. From the design drawings to the construction process, and even how to construct it requires repeated thinking and study.

Here, there are a lot of technical problems that need to be overcome from zero to one.

This is only a technical problem faced by shipyards, and does not include the various wrought iron parts needed to build ships.

The production of a large number of iron parts is handed over to Daye Heavy Machinery Company. They have begun to carry out relevant technology research and development since last year, specializing in how to process and forge a large number of iron parts better.

Parts.

However, you don’t have to worry too much about wrought iron raw materials. Daye Iron and Steel Company’s wrought iron output is very large and is still increasing rapidly. The small amount of wrought iron material used in a test ship Jiangning frigate is completely useless to Daye Iron and Steel Company.

Not worth mentioning.

You have to know that Daye Iron and Steel Company's wrought iron output reached 8,000 tons in the 15th year of Chengshun, and this number is expected to increase to 20,000 tons this year.

The output is very large, but in fact, the wrought iron currently produced by Daye Steel Company is not mainly supplied to the shipbuilding industry, but to various types of machinery industries.

A mere experimental ship will only use one to two hundred tons of raw materials when it is fully sustained. This also includes the scrap rate...the actual materials used are less.

After all, you can't just use a 600-ton hull material for a ship with a standard displacement of just over 600 tons... it won't float...

Therefore, the problem of raw materials is not big. The technical difficulty lies in how to process these raw materials so that they can achieve the performance required by the design.

Iron ribs for shipbuilding cannot directly use wrought iron with too low carbon content. The reason why wrought iron is wrought iron is because the carbon content is too low. If the carbon content is too low, it will be soft and lack hardness.

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Therefore, Daye Iron and Steel Company will control the carbon content ratio of wrought iron during the production process according to the different needs of customers, and then produce iron products with different carbon contents. Generally speaking, it mainly produces carbon content ratios that are of later world standard significance.

The low carbon steel is slightly lower wrought iron, which takes into account the plasticity and is easy to process, and can also ensure a certain hardness. It is also called mild steel in the industrial circles of the Dachu Empire.

As for medium-carbon steel or high-carbon steel with higher carbon content, Daye Steel Company can actually produce it directly. However, the problem is that it is difficult to process after production. It can only directly produce iron castings, and the performance of iron castings is often not good.

, too brittle and too hard.

If the carbon content reaches a certain level, it is useless pig iron.
To be continued...