When General Crook proposed that Fang Lang send the Rio de Janeiro aircraft carrier battle group south, Fang Lang also said that he would only send destroyers south. This is a taboo in the workplace, let alone in the military.
Although General Crook said this at a private gathering, Fang Lang's words still made General Crook frown slightly. But he was not angry. Although Fang Lang was his subordinate, Fang Lang was not an ordinary subordinate.
In his opinion, with Fang Lang's strength and status, he was qualified to raise objections to his opinions. More importantly, he has never been a self-righteous general, nor can he do anything without listening to other people's suggestions.
As a general with outstanding records under him, Fang Lang can put forward his ideas, which will also be more conducive to him formulating future naval strategies and filling in his possible omissions.
Therefore, his frown soon relaxed, his face turned solemn, and he said with a slightly sincere tone:
"Oh! Are you worried that when they see our aircraft carrier fleet, they will devote more energy to the navy and pose a threat to our navy in the future?"
Fang Lang, who noticed General Crook's frown, thought General Crook would be angry, but he didn't expect him to adjust so quickly. He couldn't help but raise General Crook's evaluation to another level in his heart. .
But from General Crook's words, Fang Lang could also see that as Minister of the Navy, although he knew that Argentina was taking action, he did not know much about their real situation.
We don’t even know the information that Argentina is inspecting the British Giant-class aircraft carrier. At this time, Argentina had already made it clear that it wanted to enhance its military strength and intended to seize dominance in South America.
However, domestic military personnel also have conflicts between the navy and the army. After all, the military expenditure for a year is only so much. The price of a warship in your navy can allow the army to support a division.
What's more, you also want to build an aircraft carrier. Wouldn't this drive the Army crazy? Therefore, although the Argentine Navy has begun to actively seek to purchase aircraft carriers, it is not so easy to obtain approval in Argentina.
If the Brazilian Navy sends its aircraft carrier battle group to the South Pacific to show off its power at this time, the Argentine aircraft carrier plan that should have been repeatedly verified may be brought forward.
This is not what Fang Lang wants to see. It's not that Fang Lang is afraid of a strong opponent. He knew very well that the competition between Argentina and Brazil was at best a small-scale arms race.
It will not trigger a large-scale war between the two countries. After all, Argentina is not stupid. Their initial strategy was to wait until the war between the United States and the Soviet Union involved Brazil and make Brazil injured before starting to attack.
If there had not been a war between the United States and the Soviet Union, or Brazil had not been involved, Juan Veron would never have allowed the armies of the two countries to misfire.
A normal arms race is what Fang Lang is looking forward to, but if this arms race is forcibly accelerated from the beginning, it will not be what Fang Lang wants.
Because of the situation at Fangyuan Shipyard, although the imitation work of the Fletcher-class destroyer has been completed, the new guided missile destroyer has not yet been released!
At this time, if the arms race between Brazil and Argentina suddenly escalates, the Brazilian Navy's equipment updates may miss its shipyard.
Although the funds for the Brazilian Navy to update its equipment will most likely flow into Shatta Company's pockets, this is not what he wants.
When purchasing from Shata Company, he can at best act as a middleman and earn a little bit of the price difference. How can any navy entrust Fangyuan Shipyard to independently develop and manufacture it?
Of course, he couldn't tell General Crook directly what he really thought. Fortunately, he was already prepared when he made this suggestion.
"Of course not, our navy is never afraid of any threats. If the Argentine Navy really wants to try our skills, I will let them understand why the Atlantic Ocean is so salty.
The first reason why I only let the Fletcher-class destroyers go to the South Atlantic is that our waters are not bordering theirs. If we let the aircraft carrier fleet go south, the first person who will be nervous is not Argentina, but Uruguay. .
This may push Uruguay to the side of Argentina, which is a taboo in diplomacy and obviously inappropriate. But a Fletcher-class destroyer has no problems at all.
Neither Uruguay nor Argentina feel it is a threat. But at the same time, the Fletcher-class destroyer can be regarded as one of the most advanced destroyers of this era.
Far from being comparable to their country's warships that were still in the First World War, this way we can achieve the purpose of warning the other party while not leaving any provocation to the international community. "
Crook was stunned by Fang Lang's words. He did not expect that Fang Lang's perspective had jumped out of the military level and began to consider issues from the diplomatic level. This situation was higher than him.
But I have to say that Fang Lang's words are very reasonable. Brazil and Argentina have a direct border on land, but there is really no border on coastal defense. If he takes over, because of Argentina's frequent actions on land, he will send The navy provokes the other side.
It may really have some bad effects on the international community, especially when there is Uruguay in the middle.
While Fang Lang was talking, he was observing General Crook's expression. When he saw his slight nod, he couldn't help but breathed a sigh of relief and continued:
"The second reason is that our Brazilian economy is now in a period of rapid development due to the European Renaissance Plan. The country is also in a critical period of transition from a traditional agricultural economy to an industrial economy.
At this important time point, fully developing the economy is the focus of our work in Brazil, rather than shifting the focus of work because of the provocation of a clown.
When Brazil takes advantage of this rare opportunity to completely complete its industrial transformation, it will not be too late to turn around and deal with Argentina.
Finally, another reason is that I feel that the current policies of the new Argentine government are simply a joke.
Like us, they are agricultural countries. They reluctantly started industrialization transformation by receiving a large number of Nazi remnants from Germany.
Before completing basic industrialization, they are eager to expand their influence by improving their armaments.
As everyone knows, from the very beginning when they actively accepted the remnants of the Nazis in large numbers, they were already on the opposite side of most countries in the world.
There is a saying in our hometown: If you are in good ways, you will get many help, but if you are in bad ways, there will be little help.
Now everyone is too lazy to pay attention to him. Once he takes an extra step and does something excessive, his good days will come to an end. "
Now General Crook really looked at Fang Lang differently. In Brazil, most soldiers are relatively simple, and many of them do not have a wide range of academic qualifications and knowledge.
After a long period of hard work in the army, after being promoted, I mostly use the knowledge I learned from the army to look at problems.
There is no problem in looking at the problem from this perspective, but considering the problem purely from a military perspective will often lead to people doing things more simply and crudely, only knowing what is happening but not knowing why.
But when Fang Lang thought about the problem, he was different from all the soldiers Crook knew. His overall view and strategic vision even surpassed his own. This shocked General Crook.
You must know that the Brazilian army during this period was actually very backward, if it were not for participating in World War II and being exposed to some of the latest strategic and tactical theories.
In the eyes of European and American countries, they are actually not much worse than the African countries in everyone's eyes now. Of course, the navy is a high-tech branch, and many officers still have certain academic qualifications and knowledge levels.
But in Brazil during this period, their naval officers mainly studied relevant military theories and knowledge in Portuguese military academies.
However, Portugal has not participated in a large-scale war for many years, and has long been in a backward position in military theoretical research.
In this case, it is even more conceivable what Brazil can learn from Portugal.
Brazilians also fail to realize that an army without culture is a stupid army. In the entire Brazilian army, only Fang Lang now conducts cultural learning courses in his fleet.
Let soldiers participate in basic knowledge learning organized by the army in their free time, so that even if they retire, they can take the exam and join the Brazilian police force.
No one has ever told soldiers that they should have faith and know why they are soldiers. Everyone joins the army to get paid as soldiers, which is why military coups often occur in Brazil.
To sum up, the current Brazilian army is in the same situation as the Kuomintang army in the early days of the Anti-Japanese War.
That's why General Crook was so surprised after hearing what Fang Lang said.
"So, your judgment is that Argentina is nothing to worry about, and we don't need to pay too much attention to their actions?"
Seeing that General Crook seemed to have been deceived by him, Fang Lang quickly denied:
"Of course not. Although Argentina has many problems, they are still one of the powerful countries in South America. We certainly cannot turn a blind eye to their small actions. This may make them mistakenly think that we are weak and can be bullied.
What I mean is that we just need to respond to them reciprocally. There is no need to directly show our trump cards to the other party just because of their little actions.
Aren't they increasing troops on the border now? We only need to increase the number of troops slightly higher than theirs, and we can steadily overwhelm the opponent.
As for the navy, we will first send a Fletcher-class destroyer to the South Atlantic to declare our strength, and then we can see the movements of their navy.
If they also send destroyers, we will send cruisers next time, and if they send cruisers, it will not be too late for us to send the aircraft carrier battle group south. "
Hearing this, General Crook frowned again and said with some dissatisfaction:
"Isn't this a refueling tactic? According to what you said, if we directly send an aircraft carrier battle group to their doorstep, will they consider equipping their navy with an aircraft carrier?
If this is the case, maybe we can bring down the economy they have finally developed with just one blow. "
Hearing General Crook's words, Fang Lang couldn't help but frown. What happened? Wasn't this old boy already deceived by him just now? Why don't you seem to have listened to what you said before?
It seems that in his heart, he is still more inclined to directly send the aircraft carrier battle group south! After thinking for a while, Fang Lang gave General Crook another cup of tea, then looked at General Crook with a searching face and said:
"Then what? Are you really prepared to fight Argentina, General?"
Now it was General Crook's turn to hesitate. It was absolutely impossible for him to deliberately start a war with Argentina. Brazil, which had just experienced a world war, also wanted to have a peaceful environment and would not do anything until it was forced. , no one wants to ignite the war again.
At this time, he also thought of what Fang Lang had just said. Brazil was in an important period of transformation from an agricultural society to an industrial society. At this time, he did not want to really go to war with Argentina.
So, he quickly shook his head and said:
"No, I don't really want to go to war with Argentina."
Hearing this, Fang Lang smiled slightly, refilled the tea in front of him, and then said calmly:
"So, the conflict between us and Argentina is, at best, just border friction. If they don't take the initiative to go to war with us, we actually don't want to take the initiative to go to war with each other. Right?"
Hearing Fang Lang's question, General Crook said nothing and just nodded slowly. Seeing this, Fang Lang didn't take it seriously. He smiled, picked up the teacup and took a sip before saying:
"If this is the case, why should we directly send the aircraft carrier battle group there and let things develop in an often uncontrollable direction?
It is better to follow my method and slowly drag Argentina into the quagmire of an arms race. With their current industrial base, they simply do not have the ability to produce their own arms and can only rely on external procurement.
This will greatly deplete their foreign exchange reserves and slow down their industrialization process.
But we are completely different. Now we have the ability to produce our own Fletcher-class destroyers, and a new type of guided-missile destroyer is about to be finalized.
If necessary, we can produce our own cruisers or even aircraft carriers. In this case, how can they compete with us?
When the time comes, we don't need to fight, we can drag them to death. "
At this time, General Crook finally understood Fang Lang's plan. He wanted to take this opportunity to support his family's shipyard!
However, I have to say that what he said is very reasonable. With Argentina's current industrial base, it cannot even produce ships on its own, let alone warships.
If we want to engage in an arms race with Brazil, we will really be dragged into the quagmire by Brazil. At that time, the foreign exchange reserves that could have been used to develop the economy were replaced by warships, tanks, rifles and artillery.
In the end, what does Argentina gain? Maybe, before their equipment is fully equipped, their country's economy has been dragged into the abyss. Don't talk about going to war with Brazil by then, or the people in the country may rebel.
In this case, wouldn't Brazil win easily? At the same time, the Fang family's shipyard and military industry enterprises also received full support from the Brazilian government due to the arms race with Argentina, and truly became Brazil's military industry giant.
This is really killing two birds with one stone! How could this young man have such a superb strategic vision?
(End of chapter)
