In the field of naval artillery, there are large-caliber main guns, and there are also integrated turrets, which can not only effectively increase protection, but also effectively increase the loading speed, and then increase the rate of fire of the main guns.

As for the unified fire control technology, it is even more important, the concept of a unified all-heavy artillery battleship is based on unified fire control, and other more advanced naval guns, armor protection power systems, etc., are just incidental.

Because even if there is no nine-year-old 300-millimeter and 40-fold caliber advanced naval gun, it can still be used with a seven-year 300-millimeter and 35-fold caliber naval gun.

It's nothing more than the speed of fire, the difference between the power and the magnitude, but it is still possible to fire a unified salvo.

And a long-range salvo is the core element of a unified all-heavy gunboat!

In order to promote the development of unified fire control, the Ministry of Defense Industry under the Supreme Command of the Daheng Empire has integrated and established the 'Fire Control Office' to integrate the research and development projects of many institutions designed by the fire control system, and also to develop the fire control system for the army.

It is worth noting that the executive deputy director of the fire control office is Yue Hongwei, the secretary of technology of the Navy, but the head of the office is Gao Hongan, the secretary of the navy.

Gao Hongan is not an ordinary admiral, he served as captain of ships and commander of the detachment during the War of Reunification, and after reunification, he successively served as commander of the Second Fleet, commander of the Third Fleet, and deputy commander of the Navy.

He is currently the executive deputy commander of the Navy Command and the number two person in the naval military and political system, and his daily work is responsible for the development of the Navy and equipment.

He personally took charge of this fire control office, and it can be seen that the Imperial Navy attaches great importance to the fire control system.

The success of the research and development of the unified fire control system is directly related to the development of unified all-heavy artillery warships, and it is normal for the Imperial Navy to attach great importance to it, but this thing is indeed not very easy to do.

In fact, in the early years, no one cared about this thing, because in the early days, the combat distance was short, and there was no need for any mechanical equipment to assist, and highly skilled and experienced gunners could get hits.

However, there is too much difference between simple human aiming, and it is clear that the range of naval guns can reach several thousand meters or even more than 10,000 meters, but the combat distance is still limited to less than 1,500 meters.

At this time, the Daheng Empire came up with an optical rangefinder, began to use mechanical equipment to assist in ranging, aiming, and successfully increased the engagement distance to about five thousand meters, and in the past few years after being known to the navies of various countries, it was widely spread that the navies of various countries were formalized, and in the two Ian naval battles, the battle distance of the capital ships of the two sides reached more than six thousand meters at most, and most of the time the battle distance of the capital ships was maintained between three thousand meters and five thousand meters.

And this distance is also the mainstream engagement distance of the warships of the navies of various countries at present.

However, with the further improvement of naval artillery technology, the Daheng Imperial Navy has tried large-caliber naval guns of more than 10,000 meters in many tests in the past two years, trying to further widen the combat distance.

At the same time, the shells of naval guns are relatively dispersed, and it is difficult to carry out comparative fire, and even sometimes the shooting of multiple guns will make the observer unable to distinguish which shell is the impact point of his own artillery......

At this time, Lin Ziran put forward the concept of multiple large-caliber naval guns firing in a unified salvo, and further extended it to the concept of a unified all-heavy artillery battleship.

Subsequently, the Imperial Navy also carried out two live-fire tests according to this concept, and the live-fire tests of these two showed that the use of unified observation and shooting elements at the same time to control multiple main guns to shoot at the same time, and unified observation of the projectile impact point, and finally unified calculation of shooting elements, and then unified shooting after the comparative firing, can successfully avoid the problem of dispersion when firing a single gun, and the problem of not being able to obtain a comparative shot.

Volley, which became the only solution for long-range shelling!

But the problem now is that during the experiment, it can take a lot of time to set the elements in advance and so on, so as to achieve unified shooting of the elements and simultaneous shooting.

However, this method cannot be used in real combat.

How to unify the design in battle?

The technicians of the Daheng Imperial Navy came up with the method of 'centralized observation, calculation, and distribution of shooting elements' to solve the problem, which is the source of unified fire control.

Use a large optical rangefinder to observe the distance, speed and other data of long-distance targets and transmit the relevant data to the fire control department, the fire control department immediately calculates, obtains the firing elements and transmits them to each turret, and each turret adjusts the design parameters according to the firing elements transmitted by the fire control type, and finally shoots uniformly according to the order.

Subsequently, the observer observes the impact point in a unified manner, and feeds back the data to the fire control room, which adjusts it according to the data of the unified impact point, and then distributes the adjusted data to each turret for salvo.

This results in a complete comparison process until a span is formed!

After the formation of straddle firing, then it also means that the enemy ship has entered its own aiming crosshair, because the ship's guns are still relatively large in this distance, so whether they can hit the enemy ship after the formation of straddle firing depends on luck, if you are lucky, you can hit the enemy ship in the first round of straddle shooting, and if you are unlucky, you will not be able to hit a few rounds.

This whole process requires the coordination and cooperation of multiple departments, and the unified fire control system developed by the Navy is intended to integrate the scattered systems.

In addition, there is another problem that with the further expansion of the combat distance, it is more difficult to rely on the original equipment and manpower to calculate the shooting elements, so the navy also hopes to come up with more sophisticated automatic calculation equipment to automatically calculate the shooting elements.

This is also the 'mechanical calculation plan' in the unified fire control plan

However, even if this mechanical computing equipment can't be made for a while, the unified fire control can still be barely used, after all, the existing auxiliary equipment plus manpower for drawing operations can still calculate the shooting elements.

Unified fire control is more of a technical improvement, in fact, it is not a technical improvement, but a change in concept, is to integrate the current fire control system of each gun into a unified fire control, if there is any technical difficulty, then it is how to transmit all kinds of data in a timely manner, the fire control system is very scattered, the observation and sighting equipment, the turrets, and the fire control room are almost divided in different locations of the entire warship, and how to transmit information in a timely manner has become the top priority.

Now the Unified Fire Control Office has tried microphones and wired telephones, and now it has basically finalized the development direction of wired telephones, supplemented by traditional metal microphones, and the two are combined.

The unified fire control system is more about integration, and in the process of integration, there is a higher demand for some new technologies, such as telephones.

That's right, the telephone research of the Daheng Empire, at least for now, is not for any civilian communication or anything like that, it is purely for the military field, the navy needs it to be used as an internal communication system for warships, and the army also wants to use it as a battlefield communication system.

The Navy has engaged in a lot of research and development of new technologies for the sake of future warships, but it is not so easy to get them.

Preliminary testing is also required before integrating them.

At the beginning of October of the tenth year of the Qiansheng Dynasty, the Daheng Imperial Navy made a mid-course design change to a destroyer under construction in a very low-key manner, and the changes were mainly in the power system.

More precisely, the coal-fired boiler was changed and an oil injection system was added to get more power!

The all-oil boiler is also under development in the Imperial Navy, but the technology is not too mature, at this time the personnel of the Imperial Navy's Ship Administration Department proposed to inject fuel into coal to obtain more heat to improve power, this idea quickly gained support and carried out many tests.

In the end, after many tests of this technology, it was officially tested on ships, and it was impossible to use capital ships, and it was possible to test it with destroyers, and the navy had already taken a relatively big risk.

Oil-injected coal-fired boilers are just a small dish in the research and development of power systems for the Navy, and the main dishes are all-oil-fired boilers and steam turbines!

While the Navy was testing an oil-injected coal-fired boiler with a warship, a group of technicians were fiddling with a machine that was completely different from the traditional steam engine and different from the internal combustion engine.

Fengyang Steam Engine Company is the first manufacturer in China to produce a test prototype after the steam turbine project team of the Daheng Imperial Navy was officially established.

Although the power of this test prototype is still too small, there are many other problems, and even for many years to come, this kind of steam turbine will not be of practical value.

However, when the Fengyang Steam Engine Company conducted the first test, the Navy Bureau of the Ministry of Defense Industry also sent a number of heavyweight officials to participate!

The Navy doesn't expect this thing to be ready for use right away, what the Navy needs to know is whether the steam turbines at their Fengyang plant are really reliable and can really be used on warships.

As long as this thing can be launched smoothly and shows enough potential, then the Navy will not hesitate to spend a lot of money on research and development!

Since the Fengyang Steam Engine Company dared to invite the navy to watch, it was naturally completely prepared, and they had already done many tests on their own before this, and the test results were very good.

Sure enough, not long after, the steam turbine test prototype of Fengyang Steam Engine Company was successfully launched, and all the tests were very normal.

Three days later, a lucrative contract was smashed into the Fengyang Steam Engine Company!