In fact, before starting this discussion, Wu Chenxuan and Duan Qirui had a long time of discussion on whether to build an army by quality or by scale. As a traditional soldier, Duan Qirui is actually more inclined to build the army on a large scale, and what he advocates is to establish an army of no less than 2 million, supplemented by an air force with absolute superiority and a considerable number of navy, and at the same time strengthen the management of reservists, and cultivate a large number of military-civilian personnel reserves in the fields of machinery, driving, and communications; once a large-scale war breaks out, it is necessary to quickly carry out national defense mobilization, expand the army to more than 3 million or even 4 million, and civilian industries must also quickly switch to the production of military equipment, plus strategic material reserves. Enough to deal with a world war that lasted for years like World War II. According to Wu Chenxuan's understanding, Lao Duan is actually the kind of army building model adopted by the Soviet Union before World War II.

However, Wu Chenxuan has always believed that large-scale army building is actually a way of building an army with high material input and low output. In terms of the input of a single combat unit, the scale of army building is undoubtedly much lower than the quality of army building; However, in terms of the investment in maintaining the same combat effectiveness, the investment required to build the army on scale is much higher than that for building the army on quality. This is due to the fact that the quality of individual combat units is low, and the combat effectiveness is also poor, and if the overall combat effectiveness is to be equal to or overwhelm the quality army, the size army must retain more combat units, so that the huge number will offset the lower investment of individual combat units to a certain extent. Moreover, because of the low quality, it is inevitable that the degree of synthesis of a single combat unit of a large-scale army is low, and the function is single, and in order to complete the combat mission that can be completed by a single combat unit or a small number of combat units in a mass-oriented army, it is necessary to use a large number of combat units to cooperate with each other, and the waste of resources caused by repeated investment is much more serious than that of a quality-type army. This is a stressful logistical one, and poor logistics not only affects combat effectiveness, but also has a negative impact on the morale of the combatants.

In wartime, because of the low quality of soldiers and weapons, the battle losses of a large-scale army are much higher than that of a medium-sized army, and therefore the investment in supplementing losses is also much higher than that of a medium-sized army. In peacetime, however, because of the low technical content and simple structure, the weapons and equipment of large-scale armies often lack the value and space for gradual improvement and long-term use; in addition, because the general quality of soldiers is poor and the training is insufficient, the quality army is unable to meet the requirements of long-term service, and generally adopts a combination of conscription and conscription, with compulsory conscripted soldiers as the mainstay, and the service period of conscripts is also relatively short. In this way, the frequency of replacing weapons and equipment and soldiers in a large-scale army is much more frequent than that of a quality-type army, and it will have to pay more material costs than a quality-type army in terms of decommissioning old weapons, replacing new weapons and equipment, retiring veterans, and recruiting new soldiers. In this way, the investment in large-scale army building is much higher than that in quality army building. It can be said that the most disintegration of the Soviet Union in later generations is related to the fact that it has always insisted on building up its army on scale during the arms race between the Cold War and the West, and when its economic foundation is weaker than that of the Western world, it has used higher material input than the West to create a military scale advantage, which has caused an excessive burden on the national economy.

The advantage of large-scale army building is that due to the low quality requirements, the starting point is low, it is easy to get started, and it is easy to achieve results. In addition to various harsh conditions, the quality of army building often requires a long process of forming combat effectiveness, but the scale of army building can be exchanged for a larger output with a smaller material input. In other words, in countries with relatively poor conditions but abundant human resources, such as China before the Anti-Japanese War, the only choice to build up the army on a large scale is the last resort, otherwise it will be defeated by the Japanese army, which is far superior to China in terms of military quality.

Duan Qirui's view was partly influenced by what he learned from history that the Soviet army of size defeated the German army of quality. However, this history does not actually show that the scale army is superior to the quality army, just because the quality army also needs a certain scale to support, once the gap in scale is difficult to make up for with the quality advantage, the hungry tiger is difficult to defeat the wolves; Conversely, the size of the army must not lag too far behind in terms of quality, otherwise it will rely on superstition and ignorance to fight against the armies of the modern powers like the Boxers, and no matter how numerically superior it is, it will only be a one-sided slaughter (unless your numerical superiority is against the sky).

Of course, Wu Chenxuan and Duan Qirui both understand that in fact, it is difficult to say who is superior and who is inferior in simple quality and scale construction, but generally speaking, scale army building is suitable as a route for army building in response to the threat of a single large-scale all-out war, or as a temporary measure to expand the army in a relatively short period of time during wartime; In contrast, the more flexible mass army is more suitable for dealing with local and low-intensity military conflicts in complex situations, and the route of quality army building is suitable as a long-term plan for army building in a long period of time in peacetime. The most important thing is to choose a route for army building that suits the country's basic national conditions and can maximize its strengths and avoid its weaknesses according to the actual conditions of the country, and find a suitable balance between army building by quality and army building by scale. Therefore, Wu Chenxuan finally persuaded General Staff Duan to accept his plan of building an army by quality, because he did not ignore quantity while pursuing quality army building, on the contrary, he used large-scale reserves, various civilian clubs, and dual-use talent reserves to solve the problem of quantity, and China's current developed military industry is enough to support the needs of large-scale military expansion if it is not greatly reduced.

In this case, with Wu Chenxuan, the chief seat, and Duan Qirui, the counselor, the work of the high-level generals is much easier. The plan for expanding the armed forces drawn up at the end of World War I has now been basically completed, and because a large number of soldiers with a low level of education have been discharged from the army, soldiers with a level of education at or above the junior high school level have been added to the army, and in addition to the training of military academies and universities at all levels, the level of knowledge in the army has undergone great changes. Nearly half of the noncommissioned officers and more than 90 percent of the officers and officers come from or have participated in training in military academies. Pilots and naval vessels are more than high school education as a starting point, and there is no shortage of graduates from colleges and universities serving in the Air Force and Navy, which also makes the overall quality of personnel in the military be improved.

On the basis of the original five major group armies, a number of shelf divisions have been expanded, that is, outstanding soldiers who are about to retire have been promoted to sergeants, and from adjutant officers in the original units to full-time posts, and a division has been erected, which is responsible for the training of first-class reserve forces in peacetime, and is no longer the responsibility of the local internal security units. Moreover, in terms of weapons and equipment, it is not the use of strategic reserve materials, but the same active equipment as the field troops. However, because these units did not have their own establishment, they adopted the method of adding a 1 in front of the number of the original unit, and in peacetime they used the name of the supplementary regiment of the division to deal with them. The size of these rack divisions is actually about a regiment, but because most of the officers (no deputies) and non-commissioned officers are retained, and the soldiers are composed of first-class reserve soldiers who have not been retired for a long time, once the war starts, they can go into battle after a short period of adaptive training, and their combat effectiveness is not necessarily much worse than that of the front-line field troops, that is, the Wehrmacht has the scale to double to more than 1.5 million in a month, and the combat effectiveness will not be in danger of a significant decline.

On the Air Force, there are still nearly 4,000 civil aviation pilots above the junior level or holders of private pilot licenses, and retired pilots are also in the category of first-class reserve within five years, so the maximum scale that the Air Force can mobilize now has reached more than 10,000 people, and the vast majority of them have gone through more than 20 hours of junior instructor courses, and they can be qualified for most of the flight positions after no more than three months of intensive training, and China's aviation industry production capacity provides enough "young eagles" for these pilots"There are no problems at all with the B fighter and the "wild goose" or" ballistic "bomber. Not many countries attach as much importance to air power as China, so the Chinese Air Force is not comparable to the Britain, France and the United States in terms of quality and quantity in terms of quality and quantity.

The navy may be regarded as China's weak underbelly, but under Wu Chenxuan's hard work, the submarine force capable of fighting has reached 36 SEAL-class and improved SEAL-class submarines in six detachments, more than 400 S06-type torpedo attack planes in four wings, and 128 Swordfish-class torpedo boats in 16 squadrons. There are also 32 Anlan-class destroyers that have been launched. However, in the eyes of the naval powers of Britain, the United States and Japan, China's navy has always been a bathtub navy at the kindergarten level. Even the eyes of the Japanese were focused on the four behemoths. The British were teased by the Japanese, posing as the world boss and asked about the purpose of these four warships, and China replied with an experimental ship on a vehicle platform, which made the British laugh and cry, who was arrogant enough to use a 30,000-ton armored hull as an experimental ship, but the Chinese Navy promised not to load more than 300 mm of main guns, the British reluctantly accepted this explanation. As a result, General Tochiuchi Sojiro, who got this answer, also had an expression that you owe a beating. But Japan has no way to challenge the empire on which the sun never sets, and he Sojiro Tochiuchi can only pinch his nose and admit this conclusion. Since then, the 30,000-ton dockyards of the four major shipyards have become a group of Japanese spies, and as for those Anlan-class destroyers, China can build as many as it wants, anyway, they are all small things that can be put up with one shot.