However, this product, which was a relatively failure in Duke's opinion, was a very remarkable breakthrough in the eyes of a submarine captain like Rear Admiral Chen Weihong. First of all, the robot developed by Duke has now proved that it can complete some rescue tasks that originally belonged to divers, and can dive deep into the restricted waters that divers cannot set foot in, which adds a new effective means to the Navy's deep-sea rescue and makes up for the gap in rescue operations in the deep-diving sea area where divers cannot set foot in deep diving.

For the officers and soldiers on the submarine, this is equivalent to an additional life-saving means, and this alone makes Duke's robot have an immeasurable effect.

On the other hand, the high-energy battery used by the Duke robot has a specific mass energy density of more than one order of magnitude more than that of the batteries used in the current Navy submarines, which is even more amazing.

During the rescue process, Major General Chen Weihong was not easy to ask for details, but after completing the rescue mission, Major General Chen Weihong accompanied Duke on the way back to Sanya, and learned in great detail about the technical details of the robot and its high-energy battery. The more Chen Weihong learned, the more he showed a strong interest in these two new things that Duke brought to the table.

To some extent, Rear Admiral Chen Weihong even saw a new revolution in the direction of naval submarines, the lithium-sulfur battery developed by Duke's team, which can drop quickly in a low-temperature environment, which is a great flaw for the robot developed by Duke.

However, if this lithium-sulfur battery is used as a battery for submarines, there are no problems, on submarines, there are many ways to ensure that the ambient temperature of its use is similar to that on land, so the shortcomings of Duke's ultra-low temperature environment can be low in the eyes of Rear Admiral Chen Weihong is nothing important, as long as the safety and stability of the battery passes, there is no problem for the navy.

Although Rear Admiral Chen Weihong understands that the price of this kind of battery is too expensive, and the price is also an order of magnitude gap compared with conventional batteries, it is a bit regrettable, otherwise it is a pity to directly replace all the onboard batteries of conventional submarines in service with this kind of battery, and the submarine can rely on the energy of these batteries to dive under the seabed for a distance of five or six thousand nautical miles under the same weight of the battery pack

That is to say, there is no need for any AIP system at all, this pure electric conventional submarine can be directly submerged on the seabed for more than 10 days and nights, which greatly improves the combat power of conventional submarines, because under the condition of completely relying on battery diving, the submarine can have the maximum concealment, and the submarine silent effect without engine operation can completely make the enemy's sonar detection device fail under the background noise of the ocean, and it cannot be found at all.

It can be said that to a certain extent, this purely electric conventional submarine is more difficult to guard against than a nuclear submarine.

According to the current manufacturing cost of this battery, a 10-kilogram battery is 150,000 yuan, which is converted into up to 15 million yuan per ton, and the battery pack of a submarine is as high as hundreds of tons, so that if all these old batteries are replaced with this new type of battery according to the weight, the replacement price of a submarine is as high as more than one billion yuan, such a high cost, for the current high-speed development is spending money everywhere Fang, obviously, it is unbearable.

You must know that the direct purchase of a Kilo-class submarine is only about 2 or 300 million US dollars, which is a total of more than 1 billion yuan, and if the replacement of the battery pack alone is enough to buy a new Kilo-class submarine, or produce a new 041 submarine, for the navy, this price is not as good as adding a new ship.

What's more, now this battery only has a battery life of about 500 times of charge and discharge, and under high-intensity use, it will fail after five or six years of use and need to be replaced, and the cost of this whole life cycle is almost comparable to that of nuclear submarines, and from the perspective of combat power, conventional submarines only have a displacement of more than 2,000 tons, and the weapons they carry are quite limited, which is much worse than nuclear submarines.

Therefore, the original fantasy of using Duke's new high-energy battery to develop an all-electric submarine was immediately dispelled after Rear Admiral Chen Weihong learned about the cost of the battery. It is not a big problem to build a test boat at this cost, but it cannot be equipped on a large scale, so the significance is not too great.

However, it is not that the high-energy battery of Duke is of little significance, if we put aside the fantasy of developing an all-electric power submarine, and only use this battery for the replacement of existing submarines with equal capacity, Rear Admiral Chen Weihong is still keenly aware of the great advantages, because after using this new high-energy battery, as long as the original battery occupies about one-twentieth of the space and weight, the original effect can be achieved.

That is to say, the original submarine battery pack of more than 100 tons, the replacement of the new high-energy battery only needs a few tons of weight, so that the submarine is left with extremely valuable space and load capacity, conservatively estimated that these remaining space, used to carry 6 to 8 533 mm heavy torpedoes or submarine shè missiles is no problem at all.

That is to say, if the battery transformation of the 039 Song-class and Kilo-class submarines in the existing conventional submarines is carried out, if it is planned well, each submarine will be able to obtain a higher battery capacity than the previous battery under the transformation cost of 3 or 40 million yuan, and further improve the maximum endurance distance of the submarine in underwater diving, and at the same time, it can also use the precious carrying capacity and space of more than 100 tons to increase the carrying capacity of about one-third of the weapons.

Taking the Kilo-class submarine as a calculation, before the transformation, it was generally equipped with 12 533 mm large torpedoes and 6 Needle 1 anti-air missiles or "Club S" submarine anti-ship missiles, but after the battery replacement and transformation, the saved surname can be equipped with at least 8 more 533 mm large torpedoes or submarine shè missiles, which is equivalent to upgrading the submarine attack weapons from 18 to 26.

If so, it is equivalent to increasing the combat effectiveness of the Kilo-class submarines by one-third, and compared with the Corinth-class, which is known as the leader of Australia's fifth-generation diesel-electric attack conventional submarines, the combat power of the modified Kilo-class submarines is much better, because the Corinth-class submarines can carry a total of 22 missiles or 533 mm heavy torpedoes.

Such a transformation is obviously a fast and more economical option for improving the combat power of conventional submarines in service.

Therefore, not long after Duke communicated with Deputy Commander Chen Weihong of the South China Sea Fleet, the general assembly side quickly issued a new task to the DSM, requiring the DSM to develop and provide improved deep-sea operation robots and batteries for submarines for the Navy, and the Navy was preparing to modernize more than 10 039-class conventional submarines and more than 10 Kilo-class conventional submarines in service.

Among them, the core transformation is the replacement of battery packs and the update of new combat systems, especially the extremely old and unique combat system of the Kilo-class conventional submarines, which will be upgraded in a large area this time, so that they can be seamlessly connected to the data link of the navy, and the navy's version of the theater joint combat and tactical system can be used.

The final assembly side requires that the cost of each submarine's renovation cost not exceed 150 million yuan, so that the navy can spend no more than 5 billion yuan from the extremely tight military budget to complete the modernization of this combat capability enhancement, so that these Song-class and Kilo-class submarines, which have become somewhat outdated, can be rejuvenated and supported by the navy for another 5 to 8 years.

By that time, the Navy has basically realized the nuclear powerification of the main submarine, the newly developed new 097 "Qin" class attack nuclear submarine, has begun mass production, installed at a rate of 24 per year, this new attack nuclear submarine equipped with Lotus pile nuclear power, the first phase of production of two "Qin" class attack nuclear submarines are 112 meters long, 10 meters wide, 10 meters in draft, 7200 tons of underwater displacement, and the maximum underwater speed is 35 knots. The ultimate depth is 550 meters.

Thanks to the excellent performance of the Lotus reactor nuclear power, the "Qin" class attack Xìng nuclear submarine can be used for power drive with less space, and at the same time it has been fully replaced with an electronic combat system based on the G2G2E core high-speed computing chip.

In addition, the PLA Navy will have at least 30 attack nuclear submarine battle groups five years from now, and this powerful underwater force will be enough to cope with the maritime challenges in the western Pacific and Indian Ocean waters, and will provide a seabed security guarantee for the two 100,000-ton nuclear-powered aircraft carriers that our military is about to launch.

Of course, these things are not what Duke can know, and now, the urgent needs put forward by the Navy have made Duke a little speechless, he didn't expect that his private work triggered such a big move, but this time the Navy is also very generous, they ordered their various submarine-related research institutes to fully support the research and development of DSM, whether it is technology accumulation or the deployment of scientific research personnel, must fully meet the needs of DSM, and provide technical support for DSM in all aspects of submarines.

There are not many opportunities to hold Duke, a big name in science and technology, and when Duke is fully responsible for the Shenlong project and makes breakthroughs in the aviation industry, the Navy hopes to take a little time from Duke to complete a rapid improvement in the technology and combat power of the Navy's submarines.

Because everyone knows that there is no team in China that can compare with the DSM company with the peerless genius of Duke, Dr. Duke can even develop a robot at will, and Dr. Duke can come up with a world-leading new high-energy battery, and the navy is looking forward to the modernization of the submarine to bring them a new surprise.