"Sixty first-class battleships, your navy has a great appetite."

At the meeting of the Military Aircraft Department, Liu Jun couldn't help but breathe in the face of the naval warship expansion plan submitted by the commander of the Navy of the Ministry of War.

After continuous adjustments, the navy now has four major fleets, the southeast, northwest, and oceans, while the former Yangtze River Fleet is subordinate to the army and is a marine and naval division.

The Four Oceans Fleet has a total of 18 sub-fleets, each of which is basically equipped with three main warships, and at least 30 warships of the first to sixth ranks, not counting other transport ships.

Basically, each squadron has a first-class battleship, according to the warship standard divided by the Han Empire's military department, all warships are divided into one to six classes, and the first, second and third class battleships have at least sixty-four heavy guns on them, so these third-class battleships are also called battleships and are the main ships of the navy. During the battle, it was mainly organized into naval battle columns and carried out large-scale fleet artillery battles, which can be said to be the real king of the sea in this era, the era of giant ships and cannons.

The cost of such a battleship is high, and the time to build it is not short.

In the past few years, in order to complete the main warships of the 18 sub-fleets and the army sailors, Liu Jun has not lost money. In addition to Liu Jun's emperor's flagship, the Poseidon with a total value of one million silver dollars. The cost of other first-class standard battleships starts at least 600,000 silver dollars.

The imperial court spent no less than 10 million just for those first-class warships. Not to mention that each fleet also has second- and third-class warships, as well as more than thirty warships of other classes.

Even the lowest rank 6 battleship costs 60,000 silver dollars each.

Now the appetite of the navy is really getting bigger and bigger, when the Yangtze River Fleet was crossed by the army in every possible way, the navy immediately made many advances, and finally succeeded in letting Liu Jun loosen his mouth and build a new Western fleet. The Beiyang Fleet, the old main fleet of the Imperial Navy, has six subfleets, far exceeding the size of the other three fleets.

The cost of a warship of a detachment is no less than three million yuan, not to mention the large amount of artillery, gunpowder, etc. needed for a battleship. One fleet had a total of two thousand guns.

But the Navy is not satisfied now.

They proposed a larger plan for the expansion of the fleet. Every large fleet should have 13 to 150 large warships, that is, capital warships of the first to third ranks, and each large fleet should have at least 10,000 cannons.

According to his meaning, the navy of the Han Empire, the four major fleets must have at least 600 capital warships and at least 40,000 to 50,000 cannons.

This does not include those warships with less than 64 guns in the fourth to sixth ranks, not to mention transports, landing ships, and other ships.

This plan is simply heartbreaking, and even Liu Jun can't help but want to roll his eyes when he sees it.

And as far as Liu Jun knows. Although the new European maritime hegemons of the same era, Britain and the Netherlands, were engaged in an arms race at sea, their fleets only had about 150 main warships, and their fleets had no more than 10,000 cannons.

Liu Jun didn't think about the shipyard along the coast for the time being, whether it had the ability to build four or five hundred capital warships at the same time, even if it had this ability, the amount of silver needed was quite scary. Liu Jun estimates that they should follow their expansion method. A large fleet will cost at least 50 million silver dollars, which is still a conservative estimate.

The four major fleets, then more than 200 million.

And that's just the cost of minting battleships and guns. After building so many ships, there must have been crew sailors. Even if you don't count the Marine Forces of the Navy, a standard first-class battleship will save more personnel. The capacity also reached nearly 1,000 people.

If each detachment had three first-class warships, it would be more than a hundred, and the number of first-class warships alone would be more than 100,000 people.

And then there are those second and third capital ships. And those fourth, fifth and sixth class ships, and some auxiliary ships.

How many soldiers does the Navy intend to have? Plus the Marine Corps, do they plan to do the same as the Army, to make a million?

"Your Majesty, it's not that we have a big appetite, but we have fully considered the situation in the sea and frontier of the Han Empire. Today, Spain, Portugal, England, the Netherlands, and even Sweden are all riding the wind and waves. In the Ming Dynasty, they also forcibly seized our entrenchment, Taiwan and other places, not to mention that the Japanese rebelled in those years, and the coastal areas suffered poison. ”

"Now that the new dynasty is being built, of course, there can no longer be no more seas and borders. Even if the maritime trade was so prosperous, and countless ships sailed on the sea, as far as Japan, Korea, and even the South Seas, it was necessary to have the imperial navy to escort it. ”

The current naval commander is Zheng Cai, Zheng Zhilong's nephew, a member of the Zheng Maritime Group, and now he has been transferred to the DPRK as the commander of the navy by Liu Jun.

After he arrived at the Beijing Division, he was not willing to be lonely, and actually concocted such a naval expansion plan.

"The imperial court's financial budget for this year has been formulated, all the funds have been allocated, and the budget for the army is 200 million. However, it includes the suppression of bandits and quelling the chaos, the conquest of Manchu and Mongolia in the north, and the use of troops in the southwest and northwest, as well as the food and salary and rewards of the soldiers, as well as the costs of building military stations and setting up forts in Guanwai, southwest, and northwest. ”

"These two hundred million, waiting to be used sparingly and planned, can barely be enough, and the imperial court has no money to support this big expansion plan of the navy."

Zheng Cai was anxious, "Your Majesty, the imperial court has assigned the Yangtze River Fleet to the Army, which is unfair to the Navy."

"Didn't I give special permission to build a new Western fleet?"

"But now there are eighteen detachments, but each fleet is only about thirty warships, and the main warships are only three, one of the first class, and one of the second and third ranks, which is not even as good as the Spaniards in Luzon, nor as good as the Dutch in Jakarta, or even as good as the Portuguese in Malacca."

"Your Majesty, in the South Seas, now all the countries of Xiyi are strengthening their armaments, and new warships are constantly coming. Especially now that the Portuguese power is weakening, the Spaniards are also trapped in the European theater, and can only hold Luzon in the South Seas, while the British and Dutch are also strengthening their forces in the South Seas because of their successive victories in the European theater. ”

"Your Majesty, now the Nanyang Zhuyige and the indigenous sultanates are brewing a **** war conflict, which may start at any time. The treaty we signed with the Yi people back then could also be broken at any time. In the event of chaos in the South Seas, we must have enough sea power to deter the Zhuyi. The minister even thought that the imperial court should seize this opportunity of change and intervene our maritime power in the South Seas. ”

"If only our navy could be expanded. Then it is extremely important for the minister to think that it is completely possible to replace the Portuguese in Malacca, or even to drive out the Spaniards in Luzon and occupy them, that is, to retreat to the second place, and to fight for the Golden Island in the hands of the natives of our dynasty opposite the trading port of Singapore in Malacca. ”

Zheng Cai was also quite familiar with the South Seas with Zheng Zhilong and others in the East China Sea, and pointed out the entire pattern of the South Seas in one bite.

Most of the indigenous people of the Nanyang Islands are sultanates, who believe in green religion, and there are many island countries. But then the Portuguese were the first to come to the East, and they established trading posts and colonies in Goa, Malacca and other places in India. and went all the way east to the coast of the Ming Dynasty, and after occupying Penghu failed, he finally leased Macau.

The Portuguese were followed by the Spaniards, who were the first to colonize and the first to get the sweetness of the Great Voyage. Spain later became so powerful that it even annexed Portugal.

But now, both Portugal and Spain have declined, and even Spain, the invincible armada at sea, has been caught in the European battlefield. Also exhausted. In particular, after the Dutch became independent from Spain, they came from behind, surpassing Spain in maritime power, and the British island nation also became a new maritime power.

Now in the South Seas. The Portuguese also occupied Malacca and Goa, the Spanish occupied the Philippine Islands of Luzon, and the Dutch occupied Java.

The British and Swedes also began to join the region.

Liu Jun's intervention led to the signing of a friendship treaty between several countries. But such treaties are also limited. As the Spanish Portuguese continued to weaken, the Dutch and British, who were getting stronger and stronger, would certainly not be able to sit still.

Zheng Cai had been a pirate before, so he naturally supported the first strike.

Nanyang is a golden land. How can the good things at the doorstep be cheaper. What's more, there are a large number of Han people in the land of the South Seas, and it can be said that there is a good foundation, as long as the navy of the imperial court is strengthened, it is not impossible to take up the South Seas and collect these island countries as the territory of the Han Dynasty.

Liu Jun looked at Zheng Cai and praised his ambition in his heart. Since the Song Dynasty, there have been countless coastal merchants and people who went to Nanyang, they did business in Nanyang, and even immigrated to live, and there are indeed countless Han people in Nanyang Islands. The Spaniards slaughtered tens of thousands of Han Chinese in two massacres on Luzon that year.

That's a good idea, though, but it's not available yet.

The imperial court doesn't have that kind of strength, and in a short period of time, everywhere wants to intervene and take a foot, and it has to come a little bit.

"I can't get this plan right." Liu Jun's words poured a basin of cold water on Zheng Cai's head.

However, he immediately added, "But the navy can be appropriately expanded, and I see that each fleet can have two first-class ships, four second-class ships, six third-class ships, and forty-eight fourth, five, and sixth-class ships, and a sub-fleet can have sixty warships of all classes." Each detachment is fully manned with 20,000 men, and each large fleet is equipped with a 5,000-man marine. ”

One large fleet has 85,000 men, the four major fleets have 340,000 men, and the two additional sub-fleets of the Beiyang Fleet have been separated to form a task force fleet with a capacity of 30,000.

The entire navy has 18 sub-fleets and a total of 370,000 personnel on land and water.

However, this number is still a lot, so Liu Jun told Zheng Cai that the 18th Fleet of 370,000 people could not be expanded at one time, and it was divided into several batches, and finally Liu Jun set it to be completed in four batches in eight years. Every two years, one batch, divided into four batches to complete all expansions.

New warships, new guns, and new naval soldiers were all completed in four batches.

The current navy is 100,000 people, and the remaining four batches are about 70,000 people in each batch, and the warships are also expanded and equipped in batches.

This result was greatly beyond Zheng Cai's expectations, and the commanders and chiefs of staff of the other arms attending the meeting were also shocked. In advance, they all thought that Zheng Cai's plan would not be approved by the emperor at all. After all, now the navy has four fleets of 100,000 people, and it is not a dream to want to expand to tens of thousands of guns at once.

But no one could have imagined that although the emperor did not agree, he did not completely refuse.

Even if the navy of 370,000 people is to be expanded in four batches within eight years, it is scary enough. 370,000 people, 270,000 at once, nearly four times the existing 100,000.

And the size of the sixty warships of each detachment, of which twelve is the main warship, is enough to shock many officers, especially the army officers, who can't understand when the navy actually attaches so much importance to it.

As a result, a detachment would have at least 3,000 guns, and its ships would have three times as many guns.

Although the 18 detachments have only more than 200 capital ships, which is not as impressive as 600, the number of artillery guns will still reach more than 50,000.

50,000 cannons, the generals of the army were speechless, the army has a association, 5,000 people only have a field artillery battalion and a heavy artillery company, adding up to only about 100 guns.

Now the army generals are actively pushing the imperial court to expand the Han army to a scale of one million, which is actually only about 200 associations, about 200 field artillery battalions plus more than 200 heavy artillery companies, plus the heavy artillery standards and heavy artillery battalions under the jurisdiction of each town and division, all add up, there may not be 30,000 guns.

A navy should have more than 50,000 cannons, is there any reason for this?

The army generals looked at Zheng Cai, and they were both jealous and amazed, this guy actually succeeded. No, how can our Continental Army be crushed by the Navy.

His navy can expand by hundreds of thousands and has more than 200 main warships, so our Continental Army must have at least four or five hundred associations.

Many army generals began to brew, and when they returned, they had to concoct a plan for the expansion of the army, otherwise, when the news reached below, they, the commanders and chiefs of staff in the DPRK, would not have to be scolded to death by the people below one by one.

At this time, Liu Jun was still calculating in his heart the cost of the expansion of the navy, the navy would expand more than 200 main warships, even if it was divided into four batches in eight years, then each batch would have to build forty or fifty new ships, and the main warships would have to start with hundreds of thousands of silver dollars, and if they were divided into eight years, the cost of building new warships in a year would be at least about 20 million.

Not to mention the need to build a new naval school to train more naval non-commissioned officers, technical arms, etc.

He even regretted a little in his heart, whether he was too eager and took too big a step. Although he has also been staring at that part of the South Seas, there are still Manchus in the northeast that have not been destroyed, and there are still barbarians in the south, not to mention that there are still unsurrendered Mongolians in the desert, as for the north of the desert and the Western Regions, Tubo and other places are beyond the reach of the whip.

I don't want to turn my head and think about it, if I take out twenty or thirty million a year, the court will not be unable to take it out. And eight years later, it is estimated that a new and powerful imperial navy has also been built, and by that time, the imperial court should have conquered the north and south, and it is just in time to go to the South Seas. (To be continued.) )

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