Whether it is the Ministry of Industry or the Army, they have conducted special research and testing on the plate armor, and after detailed testing, they found that although the plate armor has excellent protection ability, it is too heavy, far heavier than the existing iron armor of the Tang Army.

At the same time, there is no precedent for equipping this kind of plate armor in East Asia, and the Tang Dynasty has not produced it, so many of them know about plate armor, but they have not thought about equipping plate armor on a large scale for a while.

However, although they have not thought of large-scale equipment plate armor, they are still familiar with the plate armor of the Franc Robot, after all, it has been specially tested and studied.

During the test, they found that the plate armor has an excellent defensive ability against cold weapons, and the defensive effect against muskets is also stronger than the cotton iron armor commonly equipped by the Datang Army.

With the current 14 mm arquebus of the Tang Dynasty, it needs to be able to penetrate the plate armor captured from the Franc machine man within 20 meters, of course, this is because the plate armor of the Franc machine man is not the common early plate armor of only about two millimeters, but is influenced by the popularity of contemporary Western heavy muskets, the plate armor of the Franc machine man is particularly thick, and the thickness of the front of the purchased plate armor has reached four millimeters, and some key parts are even six millimeters.

And such a thick thickness also brings a heavy weight!

Despite its heavy weight, it is unrealistic for many officers to wear this heavy armor, but they praise the excellent defensive capabilities of the plate armor.

Li Xuan didn't know what the officials of the army and the Ministry of Industry thought, but Li Xuan knew that the main enemy of the Tang Dynasty, that is, the Ming Dynasty, still had a large number of cold weapons troops, and the muskets used by their firearms troops were not as powerful as the muskets of the Tang Army.

According to the captured Ming army muskets, the caliber of the Ming army's muskets is generally smaller than that of the Tang Army, but the overall is between 11 mm and 13 mm.

Basically every workshop, even every craftsman, makes muskets of different calibers, and you can't blame them yet, because they don't have the concept of a uniform standard at all!

The Ming army had a large number of cold weapons and musket units of uneven quality, so armor was still one of the important equipment of the Tang Dynasty in a short period of time.

This is also the main reason why the Tang Dynasty continued to manufacture and equip cotton iron armor in large quantities, and even traditional iron armor such as chain mail is still manufactured and equipped in large quantities.

However, compared with traditional iron armor and cotton iron armor and plate armor, there is a relatively large gap in terms of cost, defense ability, and even the flexibility brought to soldiers.

In the past, it was impossible to mass-produce plate armor due to industrial processing and material capabilities, but now that Li Xuan saw these machinery and equipment, he thought that the time was ripe for large-scale production of plate armor and equipment for the troops!

Therefore, on the way to inspect the Zhaoqing Arsenal, Li Xuan directly found the officials of the Ministry of Industry and some engineers of the Zhaoqing Arsenal on the side, and directly asked them about the feasibility of large-scale production of plate armor now.

Hearing Li Xuan's sudden question, they still couldn't react, because everyone knew that Li Xuan came here today to watch the test firing of the nine-pound artillery, and inspecting other things in the arsenal was just a stopover.

But since Li Xuan asked, they naturally needed to answer!

Naturally, they know about plate armor, and they have tested it!

Now the Ministry of Industry is basically a combination of military production in the Tang Dynasty, and they will study all kinds of weapons that can be found!

So someone immediately replied: "Your Majesty, with our current technical capabilities, there are still certain difficulties in large-scale mass production of plate armor, but small-scale production is possible, if you want to mass production, you need to establish a special production line, and manufacture more professional machinery, if there is no pressure on funds, you can achieve small-scale mass production of plate armor within three months, and it should be able to mass produce within half a year!" ”

At this time, Zeng Ziwen, who was a representative of the army, suddenly heard talking about plate armor, and immediately said: "Plate armor, is it those plate armor captured from the Francophone people?" This plate armor has also been tested by our army, and the parts of several plate armor captured from the Francophone man have a thickness of five millimeters on the front, and if it is a full-body armor, the weight is too heavy, and only a very small number of strong soldiers can wear it, and most soldiers still can't wear it! ”

Li Xuan said disapprerovingly: "Any kind of equipment must be good and bad, as for the problem of heavy plate armor, it takes a strong soldier to be able to wear it, this is not a problem at all."

Equipped with armor, it will inevitably be heavy armor sword and shield soldiers and heavy armor spearmen, they are originally physically better, and the follow-up physical training is enough to wear this kind of plate armor, and the plate armor does not have to cause full body armor, half body armor, and even a cuirass is okay! ”

"You should be more open-minded and look farther!"

"And after equipping the plate armor, all the cold weapons of the puppet Ming thief army will be eclipsed in front of the plate armor in the future, and at the same time, the plate armor of this thickness also has good bulletproof ability!"

"And most importantly, the cost of this plate armor will be lower, so that the army can get a large number of equipment!"

Plate armor, this is a country's initial industrialization, in the face of the development of military technology made a natural choice!

Now the enemy faced by the Tang Dynasty is mainly the Pseudo-Ming, the Pseudo-Ming has a large number of cold weapon troops, even if it is a firearms army, the power of its musket is relatively small, and the plate armor on the battlefield will make the soldiers have a stronger survivability, at least much better than the current cotton iron armor and chain mail, scale armor, etc.

However, Li Xuan thought again, what if the Ming Dynasty also did the same and began to equip plate armor?

The Ming Dynasty is not stupid, in a short period of time it has already begun to imitate arquebuses and artillery, although the requirements for materials and processing are relatively high, but it can't stand the Ming Dynasty There are many people, what if people just come out?

Also, even if it is not the Ming Dynasty, the Tang Dynasty still has the enemy of the Franco, who is not allowed to fight with the Spaniards in the future, and these two European countries are all people with plate armor.

How did the Europeans deal with plate armor, the method was simple and crude: increase the caliber of muskets!

And this led to the popularity of heavy muskets on the battlefields of contemporary Europe!

In order to take precautions, Li Xuan felt that the Tang Dynasty must also have its own heavy musket, at the beginning, for the sake of mobility, the first generation of muskets of the Tang Dynasty had a caliber of only 14 mm, but now it seems that a heavy musket with a caliber of at least 17 mm or even 20 mm is needed.

Then follow the example of their European counterparts and use heavy muskets with light muskets!

As for when the heavy musket will not be used, and when the enemy of the Tang Dynasty will no longer be equipped with plate armor, then the heavy musket can be thrown back into the garbage heap.

What weapons the army is equipped with all the time does not depend on whether it is good or not, whether it is technologically advanced or not, but on what weapons the enemy is equipped with!

If the Ming army did not have plate armor or similar heavy individual defense equipment, then the Tang Army would naturally not be equipped with bulky heavy muskets on a large scale.

If the Spaniards and Franc Robot are no longer equipped with plate armor, the Tang Army will also not use it.

The fourteen mm caliber arquebus is already quite easy to use, and the weight and power are taken into account, which is the best balance that the Tang Dynasty can do at present.

Therefore, he still did not forget to mention the officials of the Ministry of Industry, so that they could develop a heavy musket based on the existing muskets, and as for mass production, there was no hurry, first make technical reserves, and then produce them on a large scale when needed.

But the faster the better, the more the better!

If it was possible, Li Xuan still wanted to flood the Ming army with the heavy infantry piled up in plate armor!

After returning from the Zhaoqing Arsenal, Li Xuan still remembered the issue of the military's weapons and equipment, and now the Tang Dynasty Division could not continue to expand its scale, and it was already the best way for Li Xuan to think of to improve the training and equipment level of the troops as much as possible.

In the face of Li Xuan's personal instructions, the Ministry of Industry naturally did not dare to slack off, and soon dispatched special personnel to carry out the research and development and design of plate armor. The plate armor needed by the Tang Army naturally cannot be a comprehensive copy of the plate armor captured from the Franco Jiren, and it must be adjusted according to the actual situation faced by the Tang Dynasty Royal Division.

One of the most important is thickness, because thickness is directly related to weight!

Considering that there are no heavy muskets on the Ming army's side, and even the number of light muskets is not large, and the quality is not good, after discussing with the officers of the army, it was decided to preliminarily determine the thickness of the plate armor to be between two millimeters and four millimeters.

The plate armor on the frontal chest was the thickest, reaching four millimeters, while the rest of the armor was two millimeters!

The purpose is very simple, as long as you can defend against a large number of bows and arrows of the Ming army and prevent muskets at medium and long distances!

Then there is the detailed design of the individual parts, which is easy to wear, which is important, because it is impossible to give soldiers enough time to put on armor in every war!

So the design has to be easy to wear, cheap, and easy to mass-manufacture, even if it means some defense and comfort.

This is also Li Xuan's key requirements for these designers, although the protection of armor is very important, but the convenience of wearing and the cost are equally important.

The cost is even more important.

And Li Xuan's requirements also made the plate armor of the Tang Dynasty not yet born, and it was already divided into several types, namely full-body armor, half-body armor, and breastplate!