Within a month after the "Crown" incident, speculation and anxiety about the resumption of war between the Norman Empire and the Free Commonwealth were infinitely magnified, and although people did not know what the real public opinion of the Norman Empire was, they could sense the anger of the Normans from the emotions of the Norman diplomats - no matter what role the federal government and the military played in this incident, it was a great blasphemy against the Norman royal family. If the Normans wanted to find an excuse to go to war, this was undoubtedly an opportunity to send it to the door. You must know that in the past few decades, in order to start two wars, they have taken great pains to brew and ferment. Now, the perfect opportunity was in front of them, and war against the Free Federation seemed like a drop in the door, but for various reasons, the Normans did not take advantage of this "golden opportunity" to attack the Free Federation, or even threaten war. Soon, news from the Norman Empire revealed that it was their internal enemies who were responsible for the bombing of the "Crown", a group of people who were said to be loyal to the late former crown prince Joseph and presented themselves as defenders of orthodox imperial power. They believe that Empress Sophie and her two sons murdered the former Crown Prince Joseph in an attempt to seize power. As Avengers, they had planned many raids before, but none of them had come so close to success.

Fears of a possible war between the Norman Empire and the Free Commonwealth were then dispelled by the stormy and bloody events within the Norman Empire. In fact, the threat of war has always been speculation, and the two militaries have not been at loggerheads in the beginning and end of the incident, thanks in large part to the timely communication at the Joint Chiefs of Staff. In turn, the high-level leaders of both sides are aware that in-depth cooperation in the military field can play a huge role in dealing with distant and ethereal threats from outer space or real international contradictions that may befall at any time. As a result, the concept of the Joint Defense Force of Orens, which had been shelved indefinitely, was back in the limelight.

A few months later, the turbulent situation in the Norman Empire returned to calm, and the great powers quickly reached a principled agreement on the joint staff of the armed forces, that is, the formation of the Joint Staff. Compared with the previous Joint Chiefs of Staff, this is a substantial big step, which means that the militaries of various countries have truly achieved cooperation and interoperability in terms of organization, construction and training, which is equivalent to a close military alliance in the form, but in the long history, there has never been a military joint agency and joint mechanism covering the entire planet Orens, which is undoubtedly a milestone event.

The aftermath of the Crown faded away, and Weiss, who returned to Mason, continued to devote himself to the construction of Lorraine. This event was a great challenge for him, as he was under heavy fire at a time when war was about to strike, which was unprecedented, and after the crisis was resolved, especially when the Norman royal family mentioned the efforts of the local government of Lorraine in its proclamation, public opinion changed dramatically, and he became one of the mainstays of the tide. Weiss has always paid little attention to these personal comments, and even if they may affect his re-election, he never deliberately explains them. From the perspective of the Free Federation, the dust settled on this incident and defused a potential crisis, but in the eyes of Weiss and his like-minded colleagues, the reconciliation and the subsequent formation of the Joint Staff put a tremendous strain on their efforts in mechanical power, especially aerodynamics. It is foreseeable that after the establishment of the Joint Staff, the military will be more inclined to fly ships in terms of equipment and tactics, and military aircraft will receive less support. The mechanical development of the Free Confederation has completely shifted from the defense strategy led by the government and the military to the self-directed research of the people, and the supporting role of the economy has gradually given way to the enthusiasm of competition, and the flying and motor racing competitions have become the last refuge......

While attention was drawn to the attack on the Norman royal family and its aftermath, excavations of spaceship remains in the north stalled for months, but this had nothing to do with the Crown. The joint exploration and mining team explained that they had encountered new technical difficulties - after collecting a certain amount of surface resources, it was difficult for the drill bit to dig into the wreckage, and it seemed that a special layer of extraordinarily hard armor was blocking their exploration and mining. This explanation sounds very reasonable, but aside from these speculations and analyses, from the macro situation, the amount of Xingyuan stone resources in the north has suddenly decreased after being supplied to various countries for several months, which is somewhat consistent with the speculation of the skeptics.

However, the skeptical view has just risen, and new news has come from the north, and people have established more wells to restore the supply of star source stones, so that the countries that have joined the agreement can continue to use the high-quality natural star source stone resources to move their national defense strategy and economic development direction to a more advanced era.

In the second year after the "Crown" incident, the federal army issued a formal directive on post-war military reform, and carried out the third major adjustment of the army's structure in nearly half a century. In addition to the traditional ground air defense equipment, more emphasis is placed on defensive operations in fortress positions and mobile defensive operations in the field, and among them, relying on urban defense is a new content that has not been emphasized in the original tactical strategy.

In this military reform, the surface forces still play a secondary auxiliary role, and the core of the strategy is solidified in the blue sky. In the middle and late stages of the last war, combat aircraft were significantly elevated to the core position of the air force, while flying ships took a back seat, and this time the two switched positions again, and flying ships regained the core position of air forces, and combat aircraft became auxiliary. With the change of technical concepts, large flying ships are no longer valued as in the early years, but emphasis is placed on multi-purpose combat ships with balanced performance and strong mobility, as well as air carriers that can carry a large number of combat aircraft. Judging from this military reform directive, the Union army seems to have returned to the mode of flying ships as the absolute core before the last war, but the difference is that the imaginary enemy has changed from the Norman Empire to a threat from the vast starry sky. For the first time, the directive mentions the Joint Staff and cross-country military drills, requiring officers and men to adapt to this new form of organizational training.

Although Weiss has retired from the military for many years, not to mention that he still has many classmates and friends in the army, the garrison troops in Lorraine have always been important partners of the local government of Lorraine, and a considerable part of the industries in the Lorraine Industrialists Alliance are oriented to the army or the auxiliary field of the army, and the reform of the army is closely related to the adjustment of their industrial development, so he and his partners are closely watching the progress of this reform. Judging from many details, the starting point of the military top brass is still based on the lessons learned from the previous war, and one of the major goals of the reform is to make the army more organized and disciplined, and the establishment of troops has become more flexible and practical, especially the establishment of formal combat squadrons and squads below the original company level, and the importance of non-commissioned officers in the army has also been further recognized and guaranteed.

However, there has been a fundamental change in the hypothetical enemy based on operations, and there has also been a trend of polarization in emphasis, one of which is resolute defense, especially relying on cities to defend against potentially unprecedentedly powerful enemies, and the other is flexible mobility and the use of the natural environment to disperse and preserve combat forces, and to deal with the enemy through mobile guerrilla warfare. To do this, the alliance forces need to build more underground defenses in major cities, as well as build secret arsenals in the inaccessible mountains and forests, all of which require a lot of manpower, material and financial resources.

On the other hand, the design and construction of flying ships will also be adjusted under the dispatch of the Joint Staff, so that the flying ships produced by various countries will tend to be unified. It is said that in the future, flying ships will be positioned in four to five categories, one is the main fighter, the tonnage is only about half of the original capital ship, but the degree of electrification and firepower output have been improved due to the development of technology, and the second is the flexible light ship, which can not only be competent in air combat, but also able to carry out fast and flexible low-altitude activities under harsh conditions. The third is a flying carrier, which carries a certain number of combat aircraft, and the fourth is a ground assault ship, which is five types if you include all types of transport ships.

Military reforms, whether they have learned from painful experiences or made great progress, usually show a thriving atmosphere at the beginning of reforms.

For the industrial circles of the Federation, the adjustment of the center of gravity of national defense has long been public information, and few vested interests have been affected, take the Star Group, for example, before the outbreak of the last war, they were the leaders of the flying ship manufacturing industry, and in the war they quickly adjusted their production and became the largest producer of combat aircraft. When the strategic direction returned to flying ships again, they quickly adjusted their internal production layout, redirecting most of their productivity and research efforts to flying ships – not much different from the perspective of business operators, and even more profitable to produce flying ships.

The federal army is equally optimistic about such a reform. This is so because the general size of the army has neither expanded nor decreased, the number of officers remains the same, a considerable part of the soldiers can be promoted to the rank of non-commissioned officers, and judging by the prospects for reform, the combat effectiveness of the army should be improving. In the case of the 17th National Defense Division stationed in Lorraine, for example, there was no adjustment of the number or major personnel changes, but they were soon given the rank of troops determined by the Joint Staff, the First Class Army Infantry Division. This should be the first time in the history of the nations on the planet Orense that the hierarchy of troops has been delineated by the same criteria. There is no doubt that the First Class Infantry Division is the highest level among the regular infantry units, but this does not mean that they can be invincible on the ground, because the infantry is still the most basic combat unit, and the ground forces also include artillery divisions, tank divisions and marine divisions, of which the tank division and the marine division are ground units with stronger training intensity and equipment level, especially the marine division is an elite level existence.

The Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCOS) has replaced the original Joint Chiefs of Staff system, lifting the fog of war that has hung over the heads of nations, and the military deployments and defense capabilities of nations have been revealed to this international military institution like never before: the Union Army remains the largest and best-equipped army on the planet, almost as large as the Norman Empire and the Kingdom of Wessex combined. Surprisingly, in non-war times, the Norman Empire maintained only a modest combat force, with only 65 divisional combat units and less than 200 independent regimental combat units on the ground, and a standing force of less than a million, compared to 1.6 times that of the Federal Army, which led to an unprecedented change in the traditional perception that the Norman Empire was the number one threat to peace, and sparked a heated debate about whether the Union army needed to be downsized. Of course, different countries have different national systems and military systems, which means that there are differences in their flexibility to switch between peacetime and wartime. The Norman Empire's reserve system allowed them to mobilize three times the size of the peacetime standing army in just one month, while the Union army could mobilize more than twice as much, but the size of the elite army was much smaller, which was a big reason why the second-line troops composed of various reserve divisions and garrison divisions were swept by the Norman army in the north in one fell swoop at the beginning of the last war. Since this reform did not significantly adjust the size of the army, the controversy remained at the level of controversy and did not affect reality.

After removing the fog of war, the federal military was pleasantly surprised to find that they had little knowledge of the military power of other countries, and suddenly became the biggest beneficiaries of this joint movement, and for the first time they saw the military power of the two major monarchies of the Norman Empire and the Kingdom of Wessex very clearly, and the increase in frontal and lateral communication made it easier and more convenient for them to obtain information, and many puzzles that were difficult to solve in the past have found answers. For example, the Star Group learned the secret of the Normans' transatmospheric flight through the military, and Nikolai brought the news to Weiss: the Normans had indeed achieved a breakthrough through the atmosphere using flying ship technology - on the flying ship that flew out of the atmosphere, the operator wore sealed equipment like a diver and used the reserve of oxygen, stayed in the airless outer space for a while, and then returned to the atmosphere. Theoretically, flying ships can accomplish such tasks, and what is needed from theory to practice is how to maintain sufficient current output in a thin air or even no air at all, so as to ensure the continuous function of the star source stone, which can be solved by batteries and oxidizers. The Normans didn't even use the rocket technology they had speculated before. In fact, rockets, an ancient and modern technology, have so far lacked sufficient controllability. Despite this, Weiss and Nikolai, as well as a small group of extraordinarily active engineers at the Star Group, remained steadfast in their research on rocket weapons, which could be equipped with twin guns on their heavy bombers, but the caliber of which was hardly a real threat to large flying ships, and rocket weapons represented the future.

Weiss and Nikolai and their friends are working on the orbit of reason, and for the sensible, the Normans' feat of flying out of the atmosphere means that the civilization of Orensian has begun a space age that seems to have arrived early. For a long time to come, they will make active efforts for that goal whose symbolic meaning is far greater than the reality, and will invest a lot of human, material and financial resources in this field.