Now everyone in the Blue Star knows that these Orrs and Daheng are almost good enough to wear the same pair of pants.

In the past ten years, the relationship between the Orr Kingdom and the Daheng Empire has continued to warm, and the cooperation between the two sides is basically no different from that of an ally, except for the fact that they have not signed a formal military alliance treaty.

Needless to say, the cooperation between the two sides in the field of ordnance and weapons, the army and navy equipment of the Ords, together with the equipment of the two younger brothers, are all Hengzao, and the Great Heng people dare to buy even the latest cutting-edge battleships in order to arm the Orns, and are the first to sell them rapid-fire guns and hardened armor.

The Great Heng Empire also helped the Orers to establish their only medium-sized arsenal that could produce light weapons and ammunition, and this arsenal played a significant role during the Orr War, supplying a large amount of ammunition during the war.

After the end of the war, the Orr people spent a lot of money and asked the people of Daheng to help expand and upgrade the scale of the arsenal, so that the arsenal has the ability to mass-produce small and medium-caliber artillery, and at the same time expand the production capacity of ammunition.

If it weren't for the fact that the population of the Orrs was really small, and there were no steel and coal resources that were not suitable for the development of heavy industry, Daheng would have been able to support them to build a large arsenal.

Last year, the Orr Kingdom even reached a military port exchange agreement with the Daheng Empire.

Each side leases a port to the other to use as a military base.

This kind of military-port swap agreement is not a colonial lease, but a purely equal military cooperation, which generally only appears in military alliances.

What the Daheng and Orr people say is that this is just to make it more convenient to conduct ocean-going training and the like, but anyone can see that it is not only a deeper cooperation in the military cooperation between Heng and Austria, but also an attempt by the Daheng Empire to strengthen its overseas military power projection capabilities.

The two countries are now virtually no different from a military alliance, except that they have not signed a formal military alliance agreement.

Under these circumstances, the continuous expansion of the Orr's maritime power made it even more difficult for the Ausley Empire to sleep.

In order to resist the southern invasion ambitions of the Great Heng Empire, they were already struggling, and now that there is an Orr Kingdom that is also on the side of the Great Heng people, once a war breaks out, it is unknown whether the naval power of their Orissa Empire will still be able to hold the Endless Strait.

In the court of the Orissa Empire, in the top-secret high-level meeting they held, their admiral minister was worried: "As far as we know, two battleships and two armored cruisers of the Orrs have officially returned to China for service, and they have more warships being built by the Heng Barbarians, and when these warships are also completed and returned to China in three or four years, I am afraid that it will pose a certain threat to our maritime superiority!" ”

"If they really join forces with the Heng Barbarians, then our fleet will be at a great disadvantage in ocean warfare!"

"According to our intelligence, the Heng Barbarian has already served at least six high-freeboard battleships, at least six high-freeboard second-class battleships or armored cruisers, in addition to an unknown number of capital ships in outfitting or hull construction!"

"Plus these two high freeboard battleships and two armored cruisers that the Orrs are now in service!"

"These two sides add up to eight battleships and eight armored cruisers, a total of sixteen cutting-edge capital ships!"

"And the new ocean-going high freeboard capital ships of our Imperial Navy currently have only four battleships and four armored cruisers in service, which is only half of the other side in number."

"And counting the warships under construction, we have a greater disadvantage, there is clear intelligence that the Navy of the Hengbarian is under construction with at least six battleships under construction, at least eight armored cruisers under construction, several of which are close to service."

"The Orns also ordered two new battleships and four armored cruisers from the Heng Barbarians!"

"The sum of the two is eight battleships under construction and twelve armored cruisers under construction!"

"And we have only three battleships and two armored cruisers under construction!"

"If now we can still rely on a large number of old warships to maintain the current balance of power and ensure the superiority of the Endless Sea Strait, then in a few years, as our old warships become unusable, our navy will be absolutely passive!"

"If we don't expand our naval investment, in less than five years, we may only be trapped in the port, and if we wait a few more years, I am afraid we can only watch them swagger and control the endless strait."

The words of the Minister of the Navy of the Olisa Empire made the civil and military ministers of the Olisa Empire worried!

They are not unaware that the navy is at a disadvantage, and the need to further expand the navy is also a realistic demand, but it is too expensive to expand the navy.

Since the unification of the Great Heng Empire, in order to deal with the threat of the Great Heng Empire, in just ten years or so, the Orissa Empire has launched three naval shipbuilding plans and built a large number of new warships.

I thought that these new warships would be enough to cope with the situation, but I didn't expect that the technology has developed too quickly in recent years.

A naval battle of Ian made them start construction eight years before Qiansheng, and even a few battleships that were not built became outdated and backward warships.

These ships are not one or two, but a lot!

Since the first year of the Qiansheng Dynasty, they have started construction one after another, and there are eight first-class battleships and eight second-class battleships equipped with 300-millimeter naval guns as the main guns (their second-class battleships are all coastal battleships), a total of 16 capital ships.

There are a total of 16 capital ships, and several of them are still in service.

Because of a naval battle of Ian, all of them were reduced to outdated warships, which almost did not make the high-ranking generals of the Olisa Imperial Navy vomit blood in anger.

In fact, there are not many of their obsolete warships.

After the Battle of Ian, more than twenty first-class battleships and a dozen second-class battleships/armored cruisers of the Krull Kingdom Navy, adding up to more than forty capital ships, also fell behind overnight.

But the Kyle Empire also has more than 20 capital ships that are outdated and backward, and the Valia Empire also has more than 20 ships.

The Gafia Empire also had a dozen ships.

In fact, even the Daheng Empire itself had seven first-class low-freeboard battleships (two Yonglin-class, five Endless Sea-class), four low-freeboard armored cruisers, and a total of twelve capital ships were forced to take a back seat.

This is still before the Orr War, when three second-class battleships were urgently sold to the Orr Kingdom, and after the Orr War, an Endless Sea-class battleship was sold to the Orr Kingdom Navy for emergencies, otherwise with these four, it would be sixteen.

In fact, if it weren't for the fact that the Daheng Imperial Navy had taken the initiative to abandon the construction of a low freeboard ship in the summer of the seventh year of Qiansheng a year ahead of schedule and instead to construct a new generation of battleships represented by the Jingzhou-class battleships, according to the shipbuilding speed of the Daheng Imperial Navy in those years, I am afraid that it would have to start construction of at least two or three battleships and several armored cruisers in just one year, in that case, five or six more outdated and backward warships would have to be added.

The Battle of Ian in the Orr War and the recent Battle of the Eastern Continent of the Western Continent, the shock brought to the navies of the Blue Star countries by the three naval battles before and after was huge, and the impact was profound and long-term.

There are only two naval battles in the history of the Blue Star Naval Battle, which can make the active and even the capital ships under construction of the world's navies obsolete overnight and reduced to waste.

The Battle of Ian completely declared the defeat of the idea of a close blockade of the Navy.

The navies of various countries started to build high-freeboard warships after the Battle of Ian, which is not only a change in warships, but also a change in the thinking of naval warfare.

The naval battle in the eastern part of the Western Continent announced the advent of the era of rapid-fire artillery, and directly bankrupted the key protection concept that had been popular for more than ten years.

These two major changes have directly led to a great change in the navy.

However, this kind of change is a good thing for some countries, but not a good thing for others.

For the Daheng Empire, this is naturally a great thing, in the two naval changes, the Daheng Empire's navy layout several years ahead of schedule and gained a leading edge.

For the navy of the Krull Kingdom, it is not a good thing.

After successive naval changes, a large number of their old capital ships were quickly reduced to the second line, which was a huge loss.

However, they are the world's number one power, and the hard power is there, and in just over three years, they have already commissioned at least nine cutting-edge battleships.

At least five of these nine cutting-edge warships were low-freeboard warships that were originally under construction, but after the Orr War, the design was directly modified and repurposed into high-freeboard warships by relying on their strong industrial design capabilities.

Moreover, more cutting-edge high-freeboard warships are still under construction, even if they enter the field of high-freeboard, they are still the first navy, and they are rapidly widening the gap with other countries.

Even the navy of the Great Heng Empire, which had the first strike, could only watch the navy of the Krull Kingdom enter the era of high broadside, and it only took more than three years for it to catch up and throw itself away, not to mention other countries.

However, the Krull Kingdom, like other navies, has built capital ships in the last two or three years, limited by the limitations of hardened armor and rapid-fire gun technology, or simply does not know this threat, so most of their warships are still the key protection concept used, although they all have armor belts, but the protective area of the armor belt is generally not large enough, especially the lack of protection for the upper secondary gun gallery, front and rear positions, bridges and other parts.

This so-called high-freeboard battleship would also end badly if it was hit by intensive fire from rapid-fire guns.

At this point, there is still a great difference between their high-broadboard battleships and the new generation of high-dryboard battleships built by the Daheng Empire since the seventh year of Qiansheng, and the capital ships of the Daheng Empire began to build for their own use in the seventh year of the Qiansheng Empire, but they are all equipped with hardened armor and rapid-fire guns, and adopt the idea of comprehensive protection, even the auxiliary warships of the second-class cruisers are equipped with hardened armor on the side armor belt, although it is only a thin layer, but it is still enough to resist the relatively weak firepower, and it has not been hit by small and medium-caliber naval guns with armor-piercing shells.

With the exception of the Great Heng Empire, the concept of comprehensive protection of the navies of various countries did not gradually emerge until the eleventh year of the Qiansheng Dynasty, that is, after the large-scale popularization of rapid-fire guns and hardened armor.

No one played like this before, and even if they wanted to, they couldn't achieve full protection without hardening armor to reduce the weight of the armor.

This means that among the warships they built before, except for a very few special-purpose warships, most of the other capital ships have insufficient protection capabilities in the face of rapid-fire artillery strikes because the protection area is not large enough.

To turn the tide, they had to build new warships with hardened armor to expand the protective area, adopt a comprehensive protection concept, and be equipped with a large number of rapid-fire guns.

And that means a huge investment.

After a short period of continuous huge investment, even the Krull Kingdom, the world's number one power, gradually felt struggling.

In the past ten years, the Krull Kingdom has maintained a high intensity of shipbuilding every year, more than 40 capital ships of various types were built before the Battle of Ian, and more than a dozen ships were built or modified in one go after the Battle of Ian, and there are more under construction on the slipway!

This does not include the huge number of first-class, second-class, and third-class cruisers, in fact, they have more cruisers of all types, and some of the more built cruiser models are more than ten or twenty ships, and they are built by a dozen or dozen.

The Krull Kingdom wants to maintain its status as the number one power and ensure that its navy can cope with three-front operations at the same time, and the resources invested in the past are incomparable to other countries, as evidenced by the more than fifty active capital ships.

Now, however, almost all of the above-mentioned active ships are not effective against rapid-fire guns!

Almost all the active warships became obsolete overnight, and Rao is the Krull Kingdom would also feel heartache, but fortunately, although they are outdated and backward, the active warships of other countries will also be outdated.

In addition to the series of warships that the Great Heng Empire has started to build since the seventh year of the Qiansheng Dynasty!

And this is enough for the Great Heng Imperial Navy to take a part of the opportunity!