With the widespread armament of heavy machine guns, whether it is the Feng army under Zhao Dongyun or other Beiyang warlord troops, the defense capability has been greatly strengthened, and even the southern federal forces are now equipped with heavy machine guns on a large scale, and the battles on the southern front line tend to be defensive battles.

At a time when the defensive capability of the troops is greatly improved, in order to be able to overcome the enemy's defensive line dominated by heavy machine guns, then the attacking troops are required to have more powerful firepower.

The main firepower composition is naturally artillery, but artillery is expensive, and a division equipped with 45 guns is already the limit, not to mention that the domestic warlords, including the Feng army under the jurisdiction of Zhao Dongyun, have limited military expenditures, and the number of artillery is scarce, it is difficult to ensure that every army has large-scale artillery, and there are only a handful of troops in China that have a full division of artillery regiments, and the major warlords, especially the warlords in Beiyang, vigorously engage in the so-called 'mixed brigade' is a helpless move under the lack of artillery.

You see, a division has four infantry regiments and a three-battalion artillery regiment, but when the mixed association has two infantry regiments, there is only one artillery battalion or so, and the three mixed brigades under Zhao Dongyun are quite good, with 16 mountain guns, and these guns can still be maintained as mountain guns with a 75-mm retreat.

However, with the progress of the war and the continuous expansion of the army, there are more and more domestic warlord troops, but the number of artillery equipment has not been increased much in time, for example, Duan Qirui's main force, the Fourth Division, had a full complement of 56 artillery pieces before the war, and now after deployment, there are more than 40 guns left in the battle damage, and for example, the Second Mixed Brigade has only 12 artillery pieces, and the Fourth Division Supplementary Brigade has only 9 artillery pieces.

The number of artillery pieces of Duan Qirui and others has become more and more difficult to meet the expansion of the troops, and Zhao Dongyun is actually no better; in the plan for the reorganization of the three divisions and five brigades that he came up with, it took a great deal of effort to make the artillery of each unit fully equipped, and it took half a year to complete the artillery units of these units from October last year to the present.

Under the circumstance that traditional body-barreled artillery is expensive and scarce, but the troops need to greatly increase the firepower of existing artillery, the only thing Zhao Dongyun can do is to increase the number of mortars.

For example, in order to supplement the shortage of heavy artillery, Zhao Dongyun not only equipped his three divisions with a 120-mm mortar battalion of 16 guns, but also assigned a 120-mm mortar battalion of 9 guns to the three mixed infantry brigades. In addition to the divisional mortar battalion, Zhao Dongyun also prepared to set up three heavy mortar battalions, which were temporarily reinforced to a certain front to strengthen firepower.

If a heavy mortar of one hundred and twenty mm was intended to supplement the lack of firepower of artillery units and was used to strengthen the ability to shell enemy lines, then sixty mm mortars were strengthened simply to increase the infantry firepower of the front-line troops.

In the Feng army, 120 mm mortars are under the jurisdiction of artillery units, but 80 mm and 60 mm mortars are under the command of large-scale infantry officers, especially 60 mm mortars are the main support firepower of company-level troops.

"Although the firepower of two 60-millimeter mortars in a company is not weak, it is still insufficient to provide fire support for an entire infantry company in actual combat, and the opinion of our staff is that it is better for an infantry company to have three 60-millimeter mortars under its jurisdiction, so that it can provide fire support for the three infantry platoons under its jurisdiction in wartime."

"In terms of light machine guns, many current exercises have proved the role of the gun in offensive operations, and even become the core support firepower of the infantry platoon under certain circumstances, and according to the opinions of many colleagues in the establishment department and the combat department, it is believed that we must further strengthen the number of light machine gun equipment, and it is best to reach one per infantry squad, so that we can smoothly implement the existing offensive tactics of our army's infantry squad!" Fang Biyong, as always, persuaded Zhao Dongyun to increase the number of light machine gun equipment.

"It is unrealistic for an infantry squad to be armed with a heavy machine gun!" Zhao Dongyun said to Fang Biyong: "The production of light machine guns over there in Fuchang is still insufficient, and the price is expensive!" ”

Zhao Dongyun knows the role of light machine guns better than Fang Biyong, and he also knows that it is the trend of the future for an infantry squad to be equipped with a light machine gun, but the problem is that he doesn't have so much money to equip so many light machine guns.

"As for the armament of light machine guns, at present, it is still carried out in accordance with the existing establishment, and the light machine guns of the existing departments are fully equipped first!" Zhao Dongyun continued: "After the second half of the year is a little relaxed, I will try to equip the infantry company with a two-gun light machine gun squad. ”

"As for the 60mm mortar, the output of the Fuchang is quite a lot, and the price has been reduced, and the configuration of a three-door system can be tried out in the three main divisions!"

In recent years, light machine guns are much more expensive than 60 mm mortars, and the light machine gun production line on the Fu factory side has only begun mass production in the past few months due to the new construction, and the output is small, and because the structure of the Madsen light machine gun is complex and the technical content is high, the price of the light machine gun in the Fu factory is still on the high side at present.

As for the 60mm mortar, the Fuchang side has been producing for several years, at the beginning of the use of imported seamless steel pipes, the price is relatively expensive, but later in order to reduce costs, the Fuchang side boldly used the barrels produced by the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant, although the mortar made out of the weight is a lot more, and the range is slightly reduced, but the cost is reduced a lot.

At the same time, the shells of the 60-mm mortar still insist on using the steel of the Tangshan Iron and Steel Plant as the shell, and the self-produced black powder as the charge, and the price of this shell is also relatively low.

The only high cost is the mortar sight imported from Germany!

Since the output is high and the price has been reduced a lot, Zhao Dongyun will not hesitate to continue to increase the number of equipment for 60 mm mortars in order to make the troops full.

"This mortar and light machine gun matter was decided in this way!" Zhao Dongyun waved his hand and motioned to Fang Biyong to say goodbye and continue, because without Fang Biyong opening his mouth, he knew that the next step would definitely be to increase the number of equipment for eighty mm or even one hundred and twenty mm mortars and heavy machine guns.

Don't talk about this, if you want to say that Zhao Dongyun is more urgent than him, but it is so easy to expand the army with empty pockets, if you open your mouth and say a few words, you can add hundreds of artillery, he would have said it ten thousand times a long time ago.

"How's the new editor?" Zhao Dongyun changed the topic and asked about the new brigade.

According to the private agreement reached between the military and the Government Council, that is, civil and military officials, the Government Council will provide an additional 2 million taels of military expenses for military expansion within half a year.

Although it is unlikely that an infantry division will be expanded by relying only on these two million taels of silver, the military also has its own small abacus, and after this has a foundation of two million, it is estimated that the military will be able to free up hundreds of thousands of taels of silver, and then the large-scale crackdown on bandits in the northeast is still in progress, and it is expected that the spoils obtained by the bandits can also be made up of hundreds of thousands, so that more than three million taels of silver can barely be scraped together.

With more than 3 million taels, then it is barely possible to train a division, as for how to maintain it after training, it is not a matter for these military generals to worry about, Zhao Dongyun can never dismantle a newly expanded division.

Since Zhao Dongyun has not officially asked the central government for the number, nor has he given the same number as the patrol police force, the army number of the three eastern provinces can only be used as a temporary name.

"Now the new division has accepted 3,000 recruits from the Ministry of Education, and has set up a preliminary shelf, and it is expected that it will be able to be fully staffed by May, and the relevant weapons will be in place, and it is expected that it will be able to initially form an army in July, and have preliminary combat effectiveness in the second half of the year!" Fangbi Coopers.

Zhao Dongyun nodded: "Well, the progress is not bad, since this new division has already set up a shelf, then it can't be without a number, but the number of the Central Army is also troublesome, so that the number of the patrol police will be used first, and it will be set as the first patrol division of the army of the three eastern provinces." ”