"This is the thousand-pound heavy gun we just tried to make, the total weight is 1,300 pounds, it can fire a seven-pound solid shell, the muzzle is three inches and two minutes thick, and the gun is six feet and three inches long, according to our previous calculations, its standard effective range should be able to reach one mile, and if a large elevation angle is used, the maximum range can even reach more than eight miles." Lang Zhong and Zhou Kesong of the Ordnance Department under the Ministry of Industry personally explained to Li Xuan the thousand-pound heavy cannon that had just been trial-produced.

Li Xuan also made a tacit calculation while listening, if this data is converted into units of later generations, it will be about 730 kilograms in weight, a little more than 4 kilograms in the weight of the solid bullets fired, a caliber of 100 millimeters, a gun length of 2 meters, a standard limited range of 460 meters, and a maximum range of about 3,600 meters.

This kind of artillery is the same as the previous 800-pound artillery and even 500-pound artillery, with a barrel length of 20 times the caliber, which is a typical long-barreled cannon in the front-loading artillery era.

Li Xuan is not an expert in modern weapons, and he doesn't know whether this data is advanced or poor among many modern artillery, but he knows that the effective range of 460 meters is enough to make this artillery the longest-effective range and the most powerful artillery in the Datang New Army.

And more importantly, the main enemy of the Datang New Army, the Ming Army, will not have too many of these thousand catties of heavy artillery, if it can produce this kind of 1,300 catties of robes in large quantities, it is enough for the Datang New Army to occupy a great tactical advantage in future wars.

At least the bowl mouth cannon equipped with a large number of Ming troops, and even the Furlong machine gun will not be the opponent of this jack cannon, of course, this does not mean that the army does not have a jack of heavy artillery in their hands, they also have some of the jacks of heavy artillery they call the general cannon, but most of them are deployed in the northern border army, or in the hands of the naval division, deployed in important coastal seaports.

In this ghost place in the southwest, it is unlikely that you will find too many of these big killing weapons.

After Li Xuan heard this, he didn't rub it too far, and soon asked them to prepare for a test launch, no matter how good the data on paper is, it is not as good as seeing it with their own eyes.

And the design on paper data is very good, but there are a lot of things out of the basket during the live ammunition test, who knows if this jack of heavy artillery is in vain.

After Li Xuan's order was issued, a group of craftsmen in the artillery workshop commanded several capable veteran artillerymen temporarily transferred from the artillery battalion to reload and prepare for live firing.

"In order to avoid accidents, our test firing will be from near to far, and slowly increase the range!" Maybe he was afraid to wait for Li Xuan to accuse their artillery of not hitting far at the beginning, so Zhou Kesong explained in advance.

Li Xuan nodded slightly, expressing his understanding of Zhou Kesong's approach.

After all, this cannon is still the first time to test, and no one knows what problems will occur, so naturally it is necessary to be cautious, and it is impossible to say that the maximum charge is tested at the beginning of the test, in that case, if it is blown up, it will not only be a shame, but also there may be casualties.

"This cannon looks so big!" Butcher Chen, who has become the deputy commander of the artillery battalion, muttered in a low voice in the crowd: "If it is really the same as those who strike iron, it can hit such a heavy projectile, and the range is heavier than the 800-pound cannon, you can build a few more, and when the time comes, it will definitely be a dozen and a dozen accurate!" ”

Butcher Chen is now the same as other officers, wearing a standard military uniform, long leather boots, and a new officer command knife that has just been equipped by the Tang New Army recently.

The enlarged version of the pig-killing knife that never left his body was also gone, but like other senior officers, a new-style officer command knife that had just been equipped by the Datang New Army was hung on his waist.

If you don't know about his past, outsiders won't be able to tell that he used to kill pigs.

Butcher Chen's words made Xie Ziwei next to him also think so, and hurriedly nodded: "If this kind of artillery can be made, my artillery battalion has a sharp weapon!" In the future, when the artillery of our artillery battalion is fully staffed, plus the battalion artillery of those infantry regiments, this battle will easily be fired with a hundred cannons, and no matter how many Ming troops come, they will be finished! ”

"That is, in the future, our artillery battalion will definitely become the mainstay of our Tang Dynasty, and my old Chen knows that there is a future for this artillery!" Butcher Chen said while laughing: "When Lao Chen wanted to come to do this artillery, you didn't want to, thinking that I, a big old man, couldn't do artillery, if it wasn't for my old Chen cheeky to beg Your Majesty, this artillery really can't be an artillery!" ”

Xie Ziwei was also a little embarrassed when he heard this, he was really reluctant to let Butcher Chen do this artillery, especially at that time, Butcher Chen's military rank was higher than him, but after he came here, he could only give him a hand, to be honest, at that time, he was really worried that this Butcher Chen was relying on himself to be the founding old man, and his military rank was pointing fingers at him.

But when he got to the back, he found that although this Chen butcher was rough and looked like a rough man with muscles and no brains, but under his rough appearance, he had a delicate heart.

When he first arrived at the artillery team, Butcher Chen completely put away his previous arrogance in the sword and shield team, but put his identity and posture very low, and in many things in the artillery team, he was completely dominated by Xie Ziwei, and at the same time, he was not ashamed to ask, for many questions about the artillery, not only Xie Ziwei, but even those ordinary artillerymen.

At the same time, he shamelessly went to audit the courses of the martial arts hall, and privately gave it to Yang Xiucai, Xie Old Man, and they taught him to read and write.

With the status of Chen Butcher, as long as he is not stubborn and has to be an artilleryman, he will not be able to run away from the position of at least a deputy regiment commander and the commander of an infantry battalion.

But he had to change careers to become an artilleryman, a man in his forties, and went to the martial arts academy with those young people in his teens and twenties, and even pestered Yang Xiucai, Ma Wei, Old Man Xie and others to teach him to read and write.

If he has the talent to read, it doesn't matter, but he hasn't, and after a few months, he still can't even write a complete letter, and he doesn't even know many commonly used words.

But what is surprising is that Butcher Chen relied on rote memorization and learned the professional terms related to artillery, and artillery operations need to calculate range, angle, etc., so the arithmetic requirements for artillery officers are relatively high, and after Butcher Chen has studied for a few months, this arithmetic has been a small success, and it is already able to calculate many parameters required for artillery firing alone.

Some people don't understand and think that Butcher Chen is willing to go far, but some people think that Butcher Chen's attitude is worth learning.

And Li Xuan also saw Butcher Chen's positive attitude, it doesn't matter if he has no talent for reading, it doesn't matter if he has difficulty in learning artillery, the key is that this Butcher Chen is willing to learn, and he has worked hard to learn.

Compared with Butcher Chen's attitude, Fang Dongquan, Huang Xueren, and Wang Danxu are obviously much worse, as senior generals in the army, they are still illiterate so far, although they will also learn, but their blood is only superficial, just for Li Xuan to see.

Therefore, unlike several other people who were faintly suppressed by Li Xuan, Butcher Chen became the deputy commander of the artillery battalion smoothly, and also served as the officer of the Third Artillery Corps.

Moreover, in Li Xuan's heart, when the artillery unit is expanded into two artillery battalions in the future, this Chen Butcher will become the battalion commander of the second artillery battalion.

Maybe in a short period of time, Butcher Chen's authority is not as great as Fang Dongquan's, but in the long run, Butcher Chen can gradually improve with the expansion of the Tang Dynasty's new army and the expansion of the artillery unit, but Fang Dongquan, Huang Xueren and Wang Danxu, Li Xuan does not plan to let them climb to a high position.

With their ability, serving as the commander of an infantry battalion is basically the limit, and becoming the commander of an infantry regiment one step higher is actually incompetent, and continuing to become a brigade commander or even a division commander is harming others and themselves, and handing over four or five thousand or even tens of thousands of troops to Fang Dongquan and Huang Xueren under their command, Li Xuan has to worry every day that they will be wiped out.

Butcher Chen and Xie Ziwei were discussing the large-scale manufacture of this thousand-pound heavy cannon and how to give full play to the power of these heavy cannons after joining the artillery battalion.

The other generals are also happily looking forward to these heavy artillery being able to join the combat sequence of the Datang New Army, although they are all infantry generals, but this artillery is more and stronger, and it can also give them more support, which is a good thing for the infantry.

However, while the generals of the military were waiting with great anticipation for the test firing of this thousand-pound heavy gun, several officials in the cabinet, especially those in the Ministry of Taxation, looked a little helpless.

The more and bigger this artillery builds, the more military spending it represents!

Although it is said that at present, the Datang New Army does not have a model of purchasing ordnance, but the Ministry of Industry directly produces it and delivers it to the military, which is a very typical planned production model.

However, the Ministry of Industry needs raw materials and manpower to produce muskets, artillery and other kinds of ordnance, raw materials need to be purchased, and workers also need to pay wages, even those prisoners of war who do not need to be paid, they also need to be fed.

In addition, at present, many raw materials Xingquanfu itself is not produced, or there is production but the output is too small, resulting in the Tang Dynasty needs a large number of purchased raw materials for production, and the price of purchased raw materials is extremely expensive.

Those merchants who risked the danger of raiding their homes and exterminating their families to transport strategic materials and trade with the Tang Dynasty would not have taken this risk at all if they had not doubled their profits.

The price of raw materials is so expensive, which means that weapons made from these expensive raw materials will not be cheap there.

With the current financial resources of the Tang Dynasty, it is simply impossible to equip too many of these thousand-pound heavy artillery!