Iron Dynasty

It had been ten days since Xiao Ming received the war report about Manila.

After carefully studying the details of the battle report, he frowned deeply. First of all, in this landing operation, the Dutch dug deep trenches, which even required the Dutch to stand on a bench to stick their heads out of the trenches. .

The trenches reminded him of contemporary trenches during World War I, which were used by both sides to confront each other.

The node where such deep trenches appear is also the emergence of machine guns and the increase in the power of artillery. Now all this seems to be repeating itself. The only thing that is fortunate is that even if there are trenches in the West, there is no such thing as machine guns and guard artillery. Weapons, otherwise war will really become a meat grinder.

He was not surprised that the Dutch used fire hedgehogs to fight back against the imperial soldiers, causing the number of wounded to increase, because a normal commander would think of this method.

However, if the deep trenches are combined with this kind of shooting method, it will still be a headache when attacking the fortress. Of course, he believes that the imperial soldiers will win the final victory, but the casualties will be relatively increased, which he does not want to see. , because now any soldier is extremely precious.

After all, the empire’s stalls are huge now, the occupied Korea and the country need garrison troops, and the colonies also need soldiers to maintain. The indigenous people there are all civilizations that are still in the barbaric era, and they won’t reason with you at the negotiating table, tribal leader. War can be declared against you at any time by your liking.

In addition, the war between the Empire and Tsarist Russia on land has not really begun, and the regional situation there is more complicated after crossing the Tianshan Mountains, whether it is still called Persian Iran, or Afghanistan known as the Durrani Dynasty and huge The Ottoman Empire is not easy to deal with, plus a Tsarist Russia, this place will become a powder keg at any time, and it will explode at one point.

So when he was chatting with Yue Yun, he mentioned his own idea, that is, to slow down the speed of expansion. Compared with the colonial system established by the Europeans for more than 200 years, he did it in just a few years.

As the so-called greed can't chew more, he is now facing this problem. A lot of territory has been taken down, but the construction on it is almost zero. In this way, these lands cannot provide any help for the economy of the empire, and this is the unhappy to see.

Nowadays, every war is a huge consumption of bullets and ammunition. It is true that large-scale mining of domestic copper mines can meet the current use, but it is a fool not to dig for resources in the hard-earned sites.

Moreover, the empire now has mature ironclad construction technology, and the next step is the construction of large steam merchant ships. In this way, the empire's maritime transportation capacity will explode, which will make it easier for overseas resources to be transported to the country.

More importantly, even after defeating the Western armies in Southeast Asia, it is impossible for him to land operations in Europe to attack Europe.

If it really reaches the level of landing operations, the potential for war in Europe is still terrible, and trench warfare will turn the war into a protracted war, which he cannot afford.

Therefore, the next battle is still the battle for colonies and the maritime war in the process of establishing maritime hegemony.

Thinking of this, he gave Yue Yun an order to destroy the Western warships in the Indian Ocean after capturing Yagda.

This time, along with the Yue Yun Battle Report, there is also information provided by Wang Xuan. He has already learned that Western troops are gathering in India to start a war to recapture Xinjiapo, and at the same time prevent the empire from occupying India.

It's just that in Xiao Ming's opinion, the Westerners guessed wrong again about the actions he might take.

With the ironclad fleet, he would not foolishly run to confront them. If they want to attack Singapore, at least their warships must be able to reach Xinjiapo. Under the ocean hegemony of the empire, it is a fool's dream to attack the empire's colonies. , and the soldiers in India are also waiting indefinitely for a ship to take them back.

Just thinking evilly, a footstep sounded suddenly at this time.

After a while, Qian Dafu watched Chen Qi arrive at the imperial study and bowed. Chen Qi said, Your Majesty, the improvement of the mortar has been completed, and the lower officials came here to report to the Emperor.

So fast. Xiao Ming was slightly surprised, then smiled, Yes, yes, the soldiers fighting in the South China Sea today really need this artillery.

After that, he got up and walked out, Go, I'll go see the effect.

Chen Qi followed with a smile, and when he arrived at the military workshop, he asked the technicians of the military factory to take out a short artillery piece.

Your Majesty, this is an improved mortar. Now this mortar no longer needs two people to carry it, and one soldier can carry it and run. Chen Qi pointed to the green-painted short-barreled gun in front of him.

Xiao Ming nodded with satisfaction. In fact, mortars are the predecessors of mortars, and they are all curved guns.

After the appearance of the guard artillery, he asked Chen Qi to improve the mortar, and the current mortar finally has the appearance of a mortar.

Your Majesty, this mortar now weighs 9.4 kilograms, the mount weighs 5.8 kilograms, the shell weighs 2.18 kilograms, the effective killing radius is 17.8 meters, the maximum range is 2 kilometers, and the caliber is 82 mm. Use it to attack the enemy hidden behind obstacles. The effect is good. Chen Qi said with a smile.

In fact, he wanted to improve the mortar before, but the quality of the alloy steel at that time was not good. Now with the advent of electricity, the College of Chemistry has used the pressurized condensation technology to produce pure oxygen, which greatly improves the quality of the oxygen blowing in the electric furnace. As a result, the quality of the refined steel has also improved a lot.

The most important thing about mortars is shells. Are these shells qualified? Xiao Ming did not immediately praise Chen Qi, but continued to ask.

Chen Qi said to the technician at this time, and then a box of mortar shells was moved in front of him.

Xiao Ming picked up an artillery shell and observed it. The firing of mortars was different from that of the guards' artillery.

To put it simply, the firing of the mortar relies on the quality of the shell itself to let the primer hit the firing pin at the bottom of the barrel. When the primer is fired, the basic powder tube at the tail of the shell is ignited. In this way, the shell can explode with smokeless gunpowder. The power shoots out very far, and then uses the fuze on the head of the shell to bottom out to ignite the explosive, which eventually explodes.

Because of this principle, the difficulty of mortars is higher than that of ordinary shells. It is mainly composed of four parts: projectile body, tail fin, basic medicine tube at the bottom and fuze. It completely fits the barrel, and now the shells Xiao Ming takes are in line with the standard of mortar shells.

Clicking his tongue, Xiao Ming sighed that the industrial capacity of the empire has really improved by leaps and bounds, and now many technological bottlenecks in the technology spar are disappearing.

PS: Three changes to tomorrow, sorry.