"The delegation has arrived in Beijing, a qiēshun lì."

As the members of the delegation settled in Beijing, the telegram was quickly sent to the various bases of the Qiong Navy. For this meeting, not only the Ming Dynasty attaches great importance to it, but also the Qiong Navy is also very concerned.

However, in the past few days, the focus of the Hainan Island headquarters has not been in Beijing, but on an upcoming industrial meeting within it. The meeting was convened at the request of several bigwigs in the industrial sector, but the scope of the meeting was not limited to the industrial group, but several military leaders in Luzon and Taiwan were summoned, including Tang Jian, Wang Haiyang, Beiwei, Ling Ning, and others. If it weren't for Xiao Lang being trapped in Lushun due to injury, and the director Xie Xi Wende's heir Pang Yu and others would not dare to leave, they would definitely have been called back to attend the meeting.

Such a clear sign that various gossip about the meeting began to spread within the Travelers very early. It has to do with industry, it has to do with the military - there is no doubt that this is a technical upgrade of the armament of the Joan Navy!

This is indeed the case, just after the New Year's Day of 1634, in the conference hall of the main base of Baiyantan in Lingao, Hainan, a discussion related to the future development of the Qiong Navy was held here.

Among the members of the committee, as long as everyone was present in Hainan, including Julie, who was already pot-bellied, as the head of the Qiong Navy's trading department, this meeting may involve the arms trade, and the renewal of weapons and equipment will inevitably require a large demand for funds and raw materials, which will require the assistance of trading companies.

However, due to confidentiality requirements. Xu Chunlan, who has always been her personal assistant, was blocked out of the venue, so she had to ask Su Wuxiang and Feng Yufei to help take care of her. Fortunately, in this meeting, the trading company only sat in on the meeting, and did not speak in itself. It doesn't take much effort to just sit and listen.

Because it was a more formal meeting, it was usually opened by Aunt Song, the chairman of the committee. But Aunt Song obviously didn't quite understand the purpose and purpose of this meeting - mainly because there was too much professional content in the introductions submitted by several conference conveners, which made the old lady a little confused, so she could only say a few words briefly, and then handed over the microphone to those who mentioned it to play by herself.

Wu Kun of the chemistry group who spoke first reported the good news about the heavy progress made in the manufacturing process of fire wool -- the absorption of nitroglycerin by fibrous fabrics to form colloidal explosives, which are used as gun propellants and explosives. Although the traversal knew the theory from the beginning. However, it still takes a lot of time and effort to transform it into the large industrial production capacity of the Qiong Navy in this time and space - after all, there are some basic principles in addition to the Baidu data brought by the traversal. It is impossible to write down the complete preparation of this high explosive. In particular, it is necessary to ensure the safety and ease of use of explosives, which is not something that can be done sloppily.

Now that this problem has finally been solved, Wu Kun has prepared many charts and numbers for this purpose, and has also used projector equipment. In front of the screen, he gave a speech for about an hour. However, because he told it too professionally. Most of the observers were confused.

In the end, Feng Yufei stood up and made a simple and clear summary statement for Wu Kun's report: After three years of unremitting efforts, the comrades of the chemistry group finally completed the great achievement that Mr. Nobel, the founder of the explosives award in the original time and space, took 30 years to establish: they have developed a series of military explosives production processes that are sufficient to ensure safety and can be produced steadily.

"At present, the factory that has been built can provide the military with military explosives and propellants equivalent to the level of about 1900 in history, which has laid a solid foundation for us to improve the level of weapons and equip them with corresponding ammunition."

-- Feng Yufei deserves to be a high-level doctor. In two sentences, it made clear what Wu Kun hadn't explained clearly for an hour.

After Wu Kun, Huang Jiancheng, the head of the steel group, made a report, absorbing the lessons of the previous one. He didn't say so many technical terms, but Huang Jiancheng's work is really unclear if he doesn't use particularly professional terms - when he mentioned that "medium carbon-nickel-chromium alloy steel" has been able to be produced, most people still don't understand, and Feng Yufei still came out to explain:

"It is the alloy steel for artillery or barrels, of course, the performance parameters are worse than those of modern society, but it is certainly enough to meet the design needs of various guns before World War I."

The third speaker was Xu Hui, who mainly introduced the progress made by the industrial group in machining technology, such as the melting and casting of metals, and the preparation of various hardware. It also focused on a series of topics such as self-tightening of the body tube, inner bore grinding, chamber machining, rifling machining, outer wall finishing, as well as the production of bolted bolts and the drawing of copper shells. The crowd was also dizzy, but they could finally realize from those nouns that it was still about guns.

And after the introduction of these three people, even the most dull people can understand that the theme of this meeting is to discuss the great upgrade of the weapons technology of the Joan Navy.

After the three industrial group leaders all made technical speeches, it was Feng Yufei's turn, and she was the main speaker and speaker of this technology upgrade meeting.

However, Feng Yufei did not immediately cut to the chase at the beginning of her speech, but first mentioned a person who was not present:

"First of all, I would like to express my gratitude to a comrade who was not present - Xiao Lang, and it was precisely because he and his mechanical group created a practical steam engine that made a breakthrough in all aspects of our entire industrial sector. Many of our previous plans, which had no advanced design drawings, were ultimately too much to be implemented without sufficient power – too few electric equipment, and too primitive wind and water power. The advent of the homemade steam engine changed this qiē, and since the steam engine was given priority to our industrial group, it was only showing its power in the industrial scope at present. But I believe that it will not be long before its advantages will be used in all walks of life - friends, we are about to usher in a real industrial revolution! ”

After expressing his gratitude to Xiao Lang, as one of the members of the management committee, Feng Yufei put forward another motion:

"Therefore, I would like to suggest to the committee: When Xiao Lang's injury is healed, it is better to transfer him back to Hainan. We do not lack excellent military commanders, and there are several commander-type talents who can take charge of the outside world, but when it comes to mechanical ability, no one in the team can replace Xiao Lang's position. It would be a pity if he unfortunately died on the battlefield of foreign conquest. ”

These words caused a small wave in the venue, and most people were indifferent to it, but Ye Mengyan said with some nervousness:

"It depends on each person's own wishes, right? Doesn't it seem appropriate for the committee to impose a mandate? ”

Feng Yufei looked at him and smiled:

"Of course, it must be up to him to volunteer. However, since the Committee is the governing body of our group, it is not wrong to come forward to talk to him, so that he can better understand the dependence of our group on his mechanical talents, and hope that he can return to the most suitable position. ”

Ye Mengyan stopped talking, and Aunt Song, the chairman of the committee, nodded:

"Okay, when Xiao Lang's injuries stabilize a little and he comes back to recuperate, Xiao Feng, you can go and talk to him on behalf of the committee."

Feng Yufei nodded and smiled, like an old lady expressing his gratitude for her support. Afterwards, she opened the text of the speech in her hand and brought the atmosphere back to the main topic -- about the weapons of the Joan Navy:

"Ladies and gentlemen, the current armament of our army is mainly based on the gun technology of the American Civil War - the artillery is an imitation of the M1857 twelve-pounder infantry gun, that is, the so-called 'Napoleonic gun', and the Qionghai I rifle is based on the Sharps M1859 single-shot rifle - of course, some adaptations have been made, but the overall technical level is still roughly in the middle of the nineteenth century."

"In addition, we also have cross-era rocket artillery technology, as well as grenade technology that has been vigorously developed according to the actual combat experience of the People's Liberation Army -- the combination of these four forms the most important land combat weapon system of our Qiong Navy."

When he said this, Feng Yufei smiled at Tang Jian, Wang Haiyang and other military people present:

"Our armament is undoubtedly so advanced in relation to our enemies that the military has never complained to our technical department about the inadequacy of its weapons - unlike any of the normally developed nations in history. It is not the enemy's pressure or even research and development that restricts the development of our military's weapons, but only our own level of technological development and production and processing capabilities. ”

"It's just that this is the case at this stage, and I'm afraid it may not be in the future."

Zhao Lide, the head of the intelligence team who was also attending the meeting, suddenly interjected:

"There are not a few Qionghai rifles that have been lost in previous operations. As far as I know, Spanish, Portuguese, British, and Dutch merchants are secretly buying Qionghai rifles and ammunition at high prices, and even Vietnamese, Siamese, Ottoman, Turkish, and Japanese merchants are playing this idea...... Not to mention the Ming Empire: since we opened the mouth of selling warships, Zhou Sheng is now in my office almost every day, wanting to continue to expand the scope of military purchases. And although Zhang Ling and his chengguan team are still theoretically still established by the Ming Army and can only be equipped with arquebuses, they have already been familiar with Qionghai rifles. ”

In addition, during the defense of Qiongzhou, the 3rd Regiment briefly abandoned the beachhead and allowed the enemy to capture some weapon wreckage. Later interrogation of the prisoners also confirmed that a British ship had managed to escape with damaged infantry guns and rifles - of course it was likely to sink halfway through, but if it hadn't, and the British Empire government was sharp enough......" (to be continued......