Fengyang Steam Engine Company, with the smooth start of a test machine, won a lucrative contract from the Navy, the Navy commissioned the company to develop steam turbines, and advanced funds to purchase two shipborne steam turbines for testing, but the performance must meet the requirements.

Judging from the current progress of the steam turbine, it is not known when it will be able to meet the needs of the ship, so this advance procurement is to put it bluntly, it is to send money first......

When Fengyang Steam Engine Company was happy, Luohai Electric Company was also very happy, and they also won the research and development contract for the Navy's steam turbine project.

Whether it is a naval project or an army project, when the Daheng military is engaged in the research and development of new equipment, it has always taken double or even triple insurance measures, and has never put its eggs in one basket.

The same is true for this steam turbine project, in addition to Fengyang Steam Engine Company, another company that is currently engaged in steam turbines is also included in the list of key support manufacturers by the Navy.

As for why Luohai Electric Company, as an electric company, wanted to engage in steam turbines, it was not for the Navy's ship-based steam turbine orders at the beginning, but for their own thermal high-speed generator project.

Luohai Electric Company is mainly engaged in power generation equipment, recently they came up with a high-speed generator equipment, but the current steam engine speed is too low, it is difficult to drive this high-speed generator, but the application prospect of high-speed generator is very large, in the case of the existing steam engine is not reliable, they aim at the steam turbine that can obtain higher speed.

As a result, a manufacturer of high-speed generators began to engage in steam turbines, not to mention, they did not do it badly, and the progress was not much worse than that of Fengyang Steam Engine Company.

However, the steam turbine is just beginning to be researched, and it is not expected to be put into practical use in a short period of time, or even several years.

This is similar to many R&D projects in the empire, all of which have theories and ideas in advance and carry out research in advance.

Just when the Daheng Empire entered a new round of hard training after the talks between the two countries in Hengke, and once again clarified the future development direction of the navy, the naval development of several countries next door naturally did not stop.

Based on the experience of the Ian naval battle, countries around the world have successively built and put into service their own new warships.

Because of the impact of the Battle of Ian, it directly led to the abandonment of low-freeboard warships by major naval powers, and the construction of high-freeboard warships began one after another.

Traditional naval powers need to follow up in time to maintain their traditional maritime superiority.

Small and medium-sized countries, as well as some backward countries, also want to take advantage of this opportunity to turn the situation around.

The traditional naval power is naturally the Krull Kingdom, and they are also the first country to build high-freeboard battleships on a large scale since the Daheng Empire's navy secretly built high-freeboard battleships, and it is a big vote to build it, just over two years, the high-freeboard battleships in service have reached as many as three, and there are more warships that will serve in the next year.

In the field of pure ocean-going high-freeboard warships, they are already behind by virtue of their strong shipbuilding strength, and it is expected that by the middle of next year, they will be able to start planning a year ahead of schedule, and the Daheng Imperial Navy will once again be left behind.

In addition, the Keel Empire and the Valya Empire are also considered traditional naval powers, and their industrial strength is also very strong, so they can also keep up with the pace of naval warship innovation this time.

The backward countries are naturally represented by the Great Heng Empire and the Gafia Empire, well, the Orissa Empire is also counted, these three countries are actually similar, and they all see the outdated and backward large number of low-freeboard warships of naval powers such as the Krull Kingdom, and have the opportunity to catch up and overtake them again.

But the only one that really has the strength to challenge the three major naval powers is actually the Daheng Empire, which is determined by the economic base, and everyone's basic industries are similar, but the Daheng Empire has a larger population, a larger economic aggregate and a larger industrial scale, so it can support a larger naval expansion.

The Jingzhou-class battleships of the Daheng Empire have been built six in one go, plus four Fengyang-class armored cruisers, the scale of these ten capital ships is looking at the world, and only the Krull Kingdom can overwhelm it, not to mention that the Daheng Empire has several Klan-class armored cruisers under construction.

It's just that due to the influence of the future naval strategic development, the empire has not been able to finalize the development plan of the new generation of warships, so that this year's capital ship construction is carried out around the test, and at the same time, the construction of two completely different warships Gaoqing and Jinghe has been started.

However, with the Gozen Naval Development Conference, the direction of development towards all-heavy artillery warships has been clarified, and the development ideas of the next generation of warships have been clarified within the navy.

It is impossible to unify the all-heavy artillery battleships now, the technical restrictions in all aspects are too great, and if you do it reluctantly, the construction period will be delayed too much, and now the cruiser Hetai is still lying on the slipway, and there is no way to outfit it......

Considering that the Empire will still need some new warships to serve in the next few years to maintain the size of the Empire's navy, deter hostile countries such as the Krull Kingdom and the Olisa Empire, and protect the Empire's overseas interests, the shipbuilding operation cannot be stopped.

Therefore, after careful consideration, the navy decided to adopt a compromise plan, that is, to build a batch of transitional warships first, which should meet the existing technical conditions and be able to be smoothly and quickly constructed for service.

At the same time, it is also necessary for this batch of new warships to have the ability to upgrade and refit in the future and install unified fire control for salvo fire, so as not to wait for the all-heavy gun battleships to come out, these battleships are completely outdated and outdated like the Jingzhou-class battleships, and they can't even be retrofitted.

At this time, the intelligence department of the empire came with a news, that is, the armor used on the new generation of warships on the side of the Krull Kingdom is clearly the composite armor after surface hardening, and the intelligence department also learned the news that the Krull Kingdom is developing research on the surface hardening of homogeneous steel, and is concentrating on the process of surface hardening of large areas of steel plates.

Although there is no clear news of success for the time being, with the scientific research strength of the Krull Kingdom, once they are allowed to go the right way, then success will not be far away, maybe a year, two years, but it will not be too long.

This news is important to the Empire, which means that the new generation of warships built by the Krull Kingdom today has widely used case-hardened composite armor, although this hardened composite armor has great drawbacks, such as being easily shattered and falling when hit by large-caliber naval guns.

But there is no doubt that this kind of armor can still allow the warships of the Krull Kingdom to greatly improve their protective performance, and thus save more weight for firepower and power, no wonder they can equip the new warship with 350 mm 35 times the caliber of naval guns, and ensure a speed of 18 knots, and can also control the tonnage at about 15,000 tons.

And after they have completed the performance hardening technology of large-area homogeneous steel, then they will be able to obtain the same surface hardened armor as the Great Heng Empire, and the protective performance of the Krull Kingdom Navy warships will be further improved at that time, and the armor performance advantage of the Great Heng Empire will be neutralized.

In addition, the intelligence department also learned that the research of the rapid-fire cannon in the Krull Kingdom is progressing very quickly, although the technical details are different, but from a variety of sources, their new artillery has a very fast rate of fire, there is no doubt that it should also be a tube retreat rapid-fire gun, otherwise it would not be possible to have such a fast rate of fire.

It is said that the research of rapid-fire guns in the navy of the Krull Kingdom was directly affected by the Orr War, and the huge threat brought by torpedo boats made the Krull Kingdom attach great importance to the research and development of rapid-fire guns, and it is not surprising that they concentrated on research and development for two or three years with their technical strength.

This means that in a few years, the warships of the Krull Kingdom Navy will be generally equipped with hardened armor and rapid-fire guns.

Although the top brass of the Imperial Navy has always known that even if they keep their hardened armor and rapid-fire guns highly secret and have never allowed their secrets to be leaked, they can't stop others from researching them on their own.

There are many smart people, and when the basic technology is reached, it is natural for these things to be studied.

After all, the technical experts of the naval powers of various countries are thinking about improving armor protection capabilities, improving power, and increasing firepower all day long!

It is already rare for the Empire to be able to complete the research and development and equip it several years ahead of schedule.

But now knowing that the Krull Kingdom is also about to complete the research on hardened armor and rapid-fire guns, it still makes the Imperial Navy feel a little helpless!

And these two pieces of information also make the Daheng Imperial Navy more cautious in the selection of future warships!

After all, once the Krull Kingdom is equipped with a large number of hardened armor and rapid-fire guns, it will be enough to offset some of the performance advantages of the current Imperial Navy, and then the two will be on the same starting line again.

In this case, the Imperial Navy also paid more attention to the development of unified all-heavy artillery warships.

Therefore, it was quickly determined that the new warship must retain the potential for upgrading and refitting, and after the successful development of the unified fire control system, it will be able to obtain the ability to engage at ultra-long distances through upgrading and modification

If the new warship is to continue to play a role in long-range engagements in the future, the number of main guns must not be too small, and the caliber must not be too small.

Four main guns like the Gaoqing are definitely not enough.

However, it is not possible to pile twelve second-class guns on top of the Mirror River, because the Imperial Navy's imagination of future naval warfare is to assume that the distance of naval warfare is more than 10,000 meters or even 15,000 meters.

At such an ultra-long distance, even if the existing 250 mm naval guns with secondary main guns increase their range by expanding the elevation angle, they are limited by the caliber problem, and the threat to enemy warships equipped with large-thickness hardened armor will be very limited.