What Arthur didn't expect was that not long after the arms trade with the Philippines went on, the Australasian military factory welcomed new customers.

These guests come from East Asia, and they are not far from the island nation. The purpose of their visit is very simple, that is, to buy Australasian arms and weapons, and the corresponding production technology.

East Asia is an extremely large market, with a lot of cooperation with Australasian grain, meat, and even arms.

Moreover, the arms trade is beneficial to Australasia, and Arthur is naturally unlikely to refuse this order sent to his door.

In the end, the customer signed an order with Australasia for up to 300,000 rifles, 100 million rounds of ammunition, 200 heavy machine guns, 150 M1897-75mm guns, 120 CA-1-37mm machine guns and 15 Krupp 105mm howitzers, as well as corresponding machine gun ammunition and shells.

The other party wanted to buy the rifle and the production line of the bullets, and Arthur thought about it for a long time and sold the production line of the Gew-98 rifle to them at a price slightly higher than the cost price, as well as the corresponding bullet production line.

In addition, the production line of the AS-1898 semi-rifle is also very backward, and it is an obsolete product in Australasia, and it is also regarded as a favor by Arthur and sold to the other party at cost price.

This large arms trade brought the Royal Arsenal $2 million in revenue, which was a win-win for both parties.

In addition to these arms trades, the other side even offered to buy Australasian tanks and planes, and use these weapons and equipment to rearm Australian mechanics.

The concept of the Australian mechanic actually appeared more than ten years ago, when the so-called Qing Dynasty had not yet fallen.

It's just that the army is only holding the weapons and equipment of Australasia, and the soul is still the backward army.

When the other party proposed to rebuild the Australian Mechanic Division, it was obvious that they wanted to invite Australasian military experts as a guide to learn the combat capabilities of the Australasian Army.

Arthur was not surprised by this, and was even happy to have a good relationship with the country.

First, it can avoid the sanctions of the river crab god, and secondly, it can also find a reliable market for future economic crises.

Moreover, the expansion plans of the island countries will also be severely limited, and a more powerful adversary will be able to drag the island countries in Asia.

Besides, Australasia does not suffer at all in this trade, and everything that should be earned is also earned, and who would refuse a large business?

The tanks and planes sold by Australasia to the outside world are all products of the first generation, and they are already backward for I don't know how many generations, and how much they sell is not for Australasia itself, and there are only endless financial gains.

Amid the laughter, a large number of orders for the arms trade were confirmed, which also made the experts of the military factories smile, because they had a large amount of research funds to improve the weapons in Australasia.

Test site on the outskirts of the Royal Military Factory, March 1922.

It was a carefully prepared munitions test at the Royal Arsenal, which was attended not only by important officials from the military and the Ministry of Defence, but also by Arthur himself.

The reason for this is that the Royal Military Factory has made a lot of progress in military technology, and the corresponding military weapons have also been improved to a certain extent.

The first is the machine-gun aspect.

Before World War I, the more famous was the Maxim heavy machine gun, which also played quite well in World War I.

However, the Maxim heavy machine gun needs to be operated by several people, and it is also a burden for transportation when it is transferred, and the overall performance is good but not convenient.

This also gave the experts of the military factory an idea, if the firepower of the machine gun could be preserved as much as possible, and at the same time the weight of the machine gun could be reduced, and the machine gun could be turned into a weapon that one or two people could handle and transport, wouldn't it be possible to greatly reduce the pressure on logistics?

Even the improved machine gun can be equipped with troops on a large scale, and the machine gun can be equipped with a single-level combat unit with a squad, and it can also greatly strengthen the firepower of the Australasian army.

Under such conjecture, military experts began to vigorously develop light machine guns.

Light machine guns are more flexible and portable than heavy machine guns, so the concept of the entire machine gun needs to be changed.

The first is the ammunition feeding method, compared to the bag magazine used in heavy machine guns, designing a portable, effective, and easily replaceable magazine is the best choice for light machine guns.

As a well-known expert in small arms shooting, Browning conducted a lot of experiments with Arthur's support, and finally designed a disc magazine specifically for small machine guns, which was successfully exchanged for a full 36 rounds at the cost of slightly affecting the machine gunner's vision.

This improved and redesigned light machine gun was named the Browning-1 gas-guided light machine gun by the military factory, referred to simply as the BLN-1 machine gun.

Although the ammunition reserve is much larger than that of a rifle, it has only 36 rounds compared to a heavy machine gun that uses a chain, which undoubtedly greatly reduces the firepower of the machine gun.

Although it was easy to carry, it lagged far behind the role of heavy machine guns in positional warfare, and did not meet Browning's expectations of taking into account the firepower of heavy machine guns.

Therefore, on this basis, Browning improved the ammunition feeding method, developed a light machine gun that used bullet chain feeding, and named it BLN-2 machine gun.

In terms of appearance, there is not much difference, but the disc magazine has been canceled and the bullet chain has been used instead.

Chain feeding can revolutionize the firepower of the BLN-2 machine gun, which can far surpass the firepower of the BLN-1 machine gun.

The only drawback is that, because in general it is still the design of a light machine gun, if fired for a long time, the barrel will become too hot, and even the entire machine gun will blow up.

However, it is the task of heavy machine guns to deal with the enemy's strafing fire in a large area for a long time and to suppress the fire of the entire group army, and the light machine gun is mainly responsible for the output of fire to small armies, and there is generally no situation of long-term strafing.

It is simply impossible to completely replace heavy machine guns with light machine guns, and both machine gun designs have their own application scenarios, but there is no doubt that both can greatly enrich Australasia's weapons system.

Today's first test was for the two new machine guns.

In fact, it is more a test than a demonstration of Arthur and the senior officers of the army.

Because as early as the test period of the military factory, a large-scale experiment was carried out on the performance of these two machine guns, and it was able to ensure that there would be basically no problems, so senior military officials and Arthur were officially invited to watch.

Otherwise, Arthur would not have been able to come and watch an unnecessary test for a machine gun that had not yet been tested.

After watching the entire machine gun test, the advantages and disadvantages of the two new machine guns, including Arthur, are already clear.

The overall design of the BLN-1 machine gun is very lightweight, and the weight is even maintained under 10 kilograms, which can be easily handled by a soldier.

But the disadvantage is also obvious, because there is only 36 rounds of ammunition, which leads to a rapid burst of fire, and the magazine must be replaced.

In combat, machine guns are a very powerful and reliable source of firepower. Because the interruption of machine gun fire caused by the replacement of magazines is a serious problem in combat.

Minister Raul also gave his own advice, that is, try to match magazines with different reloads, so as to avoid the enemy's prediction of changing magazines for machine guns after experience.

Of course, this also requires the machine gunner to make certain changes according to the actual situation. In some cases, it's not the best case to change the magazine after the bullet has been fired.

While this will reduce the logistical pressure, it will make it easier for the enemy to predict when to change magazines for war.

By making the timing of the magazine change uncertain, the enemy will not be able to easily predict the time to change the magazine, and the presence of the machine gun will also make the enemy feel jealous.

After all, as long as it is not clear whether there are bullets or not, then the enemy has bullets. In addition to fire suppression, the deterrent power of the machine gun is also very important.

And the BLN-2 machine gun significantly improved this shortcoming. The chain feeding method greatly reduces the need for the BLN-2 machine gun to replace magazines, and the firepower is not easy to interrupt.

However, long strafing was a burden for the design of the light machine gun. Although it has a chain-feed design, the Heavy who uses this machine gun should be reminded not to strafe for long periods of time, and to use burst-fire as much as possible.

Although the chain feed increased the firepower of the light machine gun, the portability of the entire machine gun was also greatly reduced.

In general, these two types of machine guns and heavy machine guns can be regarded as light machine guns, medium machine guns and heavy machine guns, respectively.

The designs of these three machine guns vary in their areas of application, but they all play a vital role.

Ministers Arthur and Raul, including many senior members of the military, were pleased with the performance of the two new machine guns.

In particular, the portability of the light machine gun means that the machine gun can be equipped with a squad combat unit, which greatly strengthens the firepower of the Australasian army.

In particular, when some heavy machine guns are not easy to carry, equipping them with a large number of light machine guns can ensure that the army's firepower will not be greatly reduced, and in some cases can completely affect the situation of the war.

If some of the raids in World War I were able to carry a large number of light machine guns, it would also be possible to minimize the casualties of the army.

And light machine guns are easier to equip on airplanes, tanks and cars as a secondary weapon option for these weapons.

After confirming that both machine guns could be mass-produced, Minister Raul immediately decided to equip the Australasian army with light weapons in squads, and immediately began large-scale light machine gun procurement, striving to strengthen the firepower of the Australasian army in the shortest possible time.

Fortunately, the Ministry of Defence has just secured a funding of up to $47 million from Arthur, and there is no problem in placing this order for light machine guns, and Minister Raul has no distress.

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(End of chapter)