Liu Fangwu, the new defense minister, and Xu Daorun, commander-in-chief of the West Coast Theater, traveled in a military vehicle to the weapons test site of the North Industries Group in Fu'an City. Pen @ fun @ pavilion wWw. ｂｉｑUｇE。 InfoFuan is an industrial city located southeast of Los Angeles, not part of the Capital District, in a semi-desert area east of Coast Hills. In the process of development, Lodo has become more and more political, cultural and commercial, and many of the heavy industries that were first built around Lodo have slowly moved out of the capital area, because in addition to convenient transportation, the Lodo area is not particularly suitable for the development of heavy industry. Long Beach and some of the surrounding areas became the main factory areas, while weapons giants such as NORINCO relocated some factories and test sites to Fu'an.

Xu Daorun chatted with Liu Fangwu in the car and said: "The Navy's heart is still very big, the No. 1 and No. 2 ships of the Dare Fight class are expected to be launched in the middle of this year, if there is no big problem in the verification, then there will be four or even six or eight ships at the same time, the Navy has identified two shipyards in Jiazhou, a shipyard in British Columbia, a shipyard in Florida, as well as a shipyard in Shanghai and a shipyard in Nanguwei, a total of four shipyards at the same time to manufacture Dare to fight class light cruisers and Thunderbolt class frigates. Although the Navy will not start building new battleships in the near future, it has already begun to design and demonstrate the next generation of battleships. This is waiting for our competitors to appear, if Britain builds more than 10,000 tons of large warships, then the navy will almost certainly immediately launch a new generation of battleships. ”

Datang has made rapid progress in the level of shipbuilding, and in more than ten years, it has developed from the earliest Changtan shipyard to six shipbuilding enterprises capable of manufacturing large and complex military ships. And it is distributed on the east and west coasts. At the same time, it also has shipbuilding capabilities in the Far East.

Under the demand for a large number of orders from the Navy. A number of shipyards have been able to burst out with very strong shipbuilding power. At this time, the technical level of Datang Shipbuilding was already quite high. is even higher than the shipbuilding speed of the United States in World War II, which is of course related to Datang's mastery of shipbuilding technology that only appeared in the later period, such as segmented shipbuilding, coupled with the technical level of the ships built by the Datang Navy, in addition to electronic equipment, it is roughly equivalent to the warships in the early stage of World War II or even World War II, which is not complicated, plus Datang's strong mobilization of resources and manpower, so even if it is non-wartime. The speed at which ships are built is also very impressive.

According to data from the Ministry of National Defense, Datang's six major military shipyards can now complete 3-4 heavy cruisers, 8 light cruisers, and 12-16 frigates per year. That is to say, Datang's shipbuilding plan, under such high shipbuilding strength, can basically be completed in three to four years.

Of course, Datang has strong shipbuilding strength, but the demand is also relatively strong, and now Datang lacks enough ships to maintain self-sufficient sea control in various routes and theaters. When the second generation of warships was built, the construction speed was not fast. The scale of construction also felt relatively large, but it didn't take long for the number of warships to be seriously insufficient. So no one knows if four years later, Datang will have a gap in the use of warships somewhere.

As for the second-generation battleship planned by the Navy, although it was still on paper at this time, no one doubted that she would one day really jump out of the drawing board and become a battleship that really floated on the water. The first-generation Datang Navy battleship Zhuolu-class has a full load displacement of 15,600 tons and four 305-mm guns. Although for the time being, the Datang Navy has not yet seen an enemy who can obviously challenge itself, but it is also important to be one step ahead of the potential enemy, so the Datang Navy decided to have a stronger warship than the Zhuolu class in the near future, with a displacement of more than 24,000 tons, and at the same time increase the caliber of the ship's guns to 330 mm, and further improve the speed and armor of the warship.

However, even if such a type of battleship comes out, in the absence of opponents and big wars, the navy should still build only 2 of the Zhuolu class as before, after all, at the level of the capital ship, a heavy cruiser of less than 10,000 tons and several 203 mm heavy guns is very sufficient.

The Navy's intentions are far more than just speeding up the construction of ships and designing new battleships, and the Navy is also beginning to think about actually building an underwater fleet for itself.

Submarines have been around for a long time, as early as the 15th century, there were attempts to build underwater ships, and during the American Revolution, there were diving ships that were used for military purposes. David of Yale University in the United States? Bushnell built the Turtle, which was filled with water through a foot valve, allowing the boat to dive to a depth of 6 meters and stay underwater for about 30 minutes. The boat is equipped with two hand-crank propellers, which allow the boat to achieve a speed of about 3 knots and control the lifting and lowering of the boat. There is a manual pressure water pump in the boat to discharge the water in the water tank and make the boat float. Carry an explosive bag that can be detonated with a timed fuse on the outside of the boat, which can be manipulated and tethered to the bottom of the enemy ship. Only one person is accommodated inside to operate the rudder and propeller. In 1776, the Turtle attempted to attack the HMS Eagle of the Royal Navy, which was unsuccessful, but pioneered the first attempt by a submarine to attack a warship.

By the end of the 19th century, Britain, France, the United States and other countries had gradually developed submarines that used gasoline engines for propulsion on the surface and electric motors for underwater propulsion, and had relatively strong combat value. The French Navy even embarked on a crooked path of "submarine victory" at one point, neglecting the construction of capital ships. Although this proved to be stupid, it also proved that submarines have gradually become more powerful. By the 20 th century, submarines had become a type of ship that could not be ignored in the navies of various powers, and nuclear submarines carrying ballistic missiles after the Cold War were even more important weapons for a country.

In the face of the warships of some European countries getting bigger and bigger, and the artillery is getting stronger and stronger, it is obvious that even if the heavy cruisers and battleships of the Tang Dynasty still have a great chance of winning against these warships, they will inevitably suffer more losses. The Navy thought of submarines that lurked under the surface and were difficult to be attacked by the enemy.

Datang has little technical experience in building submarines, but fortunately, after all, the traversers have also brought a lot of information for reference, such as building the shell of the submarine, as well as the propulsion system and the like, Datang has this technical strength, so it is not impossible to build a type of attack submarine that can be used in actual combat and has reliability.

With sufficient funds, the Navy has also set up a team to tackle this project. (To be continued.) )