General, this is the report you want on the production of armored vehicles this month, and I have already reviewed the above figures. "In the office building of the Army Armament Bureau on the west side of the Imperial War Department building opposite the Luoyang Imperial Palace, Colonel Li Guohao, director of the Armored Vehicle Equipment Division, is reporting to the director of the bureau, Lieutenant General Ren Jun, on the completion of the production tasks of each manufacturer this month.

Before the war, these tasks should have been the business of the production planning department, but at the beginning of the war, the empire was transferred to the wartime economic system, and most of the production plants related to the military industry were brought under the unified management of the imperial industrial production planning committee, and even the equipment production planning departments of the various branches of the armed forces were also placed under the leadership of this powerful industrial committee, and the various production reports of the equipment bureau were only completed by the equipment departments themselves.

"Sit down, Colonel." Lieutenant General Ren Jun pointed to the chair opposite him and greeted his relatives who were a generation younger than him, a veteran of the last war who had worked in the logistics department of the Imperial War Office for more than twenty years. Lieutenant General Ren Jun was able to stay in the important position of director of the Army Armament Bureau, who was in charge of almost all army equipment review, production planning, and procurement in the country, for more than a decade, not entirely because of his qualifications and work experience, but in large part because he had served as an adjutant to the late Field Marshal Zhang Tianling.

Sometimes, the old boss's favor and face are still very effective.

"General Fu Gengnian, the director of the armored forces, needs a deputy who is proficient in armored equipment, and I recommended you to him." Ren Jun raised his head and said to Li Guohao, "The Supreme Command has decided to expand the size of the army from the current 8.6 million to 12.2 million, and the armored forces also need to be expanded accordingly. "General Fu Gengnian succeeded the retired Marshal An Yunyi as the second commander of the armored forces of the Imperial Army in March, and of course he was eager to expand the scale of the armored forces in the army.

After the East Frankish Kingdom declared war on the Empire, the situation on the battlefield in Eastern Europe of the Empire was tense and uncertainties increased, which was one of the main reasons for the High Command's decision to expand the size of the army. However, at present, the strategic focus of the empire is to give priority to the navy, and the resources allocated by the army are only seventy percent of those of the navy, and the scale of production of domestic factories cannot meet the huge demand of the army for equipment, especially tanks, armored vehicles, self-propelled guns, and transport vehicles.

"When are you going to report for duty?" Li Guohao asked.

"It's not too anxious, General Fu Gengnian is inspecting several tank factories in Saar District, and it is estimated that he will be back in three days. You should first familiarize yourself with the situation in the armored forces, and then report to the armored forces headquarters after the official transfer order from the War Department comes. Ren Jun said, "The Supreme Command attaches great importance to the construction of armored forces, and if you go there, you will be promoted to general within a time period." ”

"Thank you for your attention, and I hope you don't make any mistakes." Li Guohao said, "I heard that the general's temper is not very easy-going. ”

"Haha, it's not easy to make you make some mistakes, you're an expert in armor and equipment, and you have a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering, they don't have your education." Ren Jun quipped, "However, I heard that you are always opposed to using some new technology in equipment, which is not very popular. ”

Li Guohao shrugged his shoulders and spread his hands: "I'm just against over-equipping some technologies that are too expensive to manufacture and not too mature and reliable. ”

After coming out of General Ren Jun's office, Li Guohao went to the archives to borrow some information on the establishment and equipment of the Imperial Army's armored forces, and spent most of the next few days studying these files. In fact, he has been dealing with various armored equipment since the Republic of 301, and has always been familiar with the situation of the imperial armored forces.

Overall, the total annual production of automobiles in the Empire before the war reached 3.6 million, but compared with the rapidly expanding size of the Imperial Army, there was still a considerable gap in equipment production.

In the establishment of armored and mechanized units, the number of cars is much greater than the number of tanks and armor. In the latest armored division of the empire, the number of tanks equipped is 216 and the number of armored vehicles is 128, but the number of vehicles equipped is more than 1,600.

Of all the army equipment, transport vehicles are in the greatest demand.

Almost two percent of the industrial production capacity of automobiles can be converted into tracked armored vehicles if quantified in terms of quantity, that is, with the annual production capacity of 3.6 million vehicles in the empire, about 70,000 tanks and tracked armored vehicles can be produced per year.

In fact, due to the supply of raw materials and other factors, the empire produced only more than 16,000 tanks a year, half of which were Shepherd or Hound tanks equipped with 75mm anti-tank guns, while the latest Cheetah tanks produced only about 350 per month.

This was what made General Fu Gengnian and most of the commanders of the Imperial Armored Forces the most dissatisfied.

The problem is that if you want to increase the number of Tiger and Cheetah tanks, you will have to adjust the existing tank production line, which will inevitably affect the production of Shepherd or Hound tanks to a large extent, which the commanders of the armored forces do not want. After the Eastern European campaign, the Middle East campaign, and the North African campaign, almost all army commanders wanted to have as many tanks as possible, even the Type 92 tanks, which were already outdated.

This is a very paradoxical place.

Although the Imperial Industrial Production and Planning Commission began to build new production lines of tanks and armored vehicles at major automobile production bases after the start of the war, the production of tanks and armored vehicles could not be carried out, and these new assembly lines could not be fully put into operation until at least after the middle of Republic 308.

On the one hand, the war brought with it a huge demand for armaments that could never be satisfied, and on the other hand, due to the large number of young male laborers conscripted into the army, most of the factories within the empire lacked labor and skilled workers, which greatly affected the production of the military industry.

In order to solve the problem of labor shortage, the Imperial Cabinet also set up a special "National Women's Mobilization Committee" to break with the original tradition of the empire and vigorously promote and encourage women to work in factories. To this end, the emperor also wrote a propaganda slogan to the National Women's Mobilization Committee: Women can hold up half the sky!

Under the propaganda and encouragement of the empire, more and more women entered the institutions and factories, and the proportion was also increasing, and they were even voluntarily conscripted into the military to perform service in the rear.