After finishing the tax law and instructing the Justice Court to speed up the formulation of various laws such as civil law and criminal law, Luo Zhixue quickly focused on industrial affairs.
To be precise, it is not considered ordinary industrial and people's livelihood affairs, but the national defense industry that is closely related to the military.
On November 11, Luo Zhixue convened military generals and civil and military officials from the Ministry of Industry, the Ministry of Commerce, and the Ministry of Finance to discuss the issue of military expansion and combat readiness.
At the meeting, Xu Zhixian ghost-written the military proposal. With the continuous recruitment of the main force and the reorganization of various garrison forces, the military's demand gap for various weapons and equipment is still very large, and the Ministry of Industry is urgently needed to provide more weapons and equipment.
Especially hot weapons such as guns and ammunition, and cold weapons also have very large gaps in their armor.
Judging from the current output of weapons supplied by the Ministry of Industry, it is still unable to meet the needs of the military, and the gap is relatively large.
Major General Hu Hongzhuo, Minister of Ordnance Department, also emphasized: "Now we have seven main divisions. According to the current main division preparation plan, each division needs eighteen nine-pound field guns and thirty-six five-pound field guns. Three-pound field cannon, thirty-six two-and-a-half-pound field cannon, and eighteen eighteen-pound mortars!"
"As for the garrison division, according to the plan, one garrison division will be equipped with at least twelve five-pound field cannons, twenty-four two-and-a-half-pound field cannons, and corresponding mortars!"
"But now, even the first division's artillery range is far from full strength, let alone the other divisions!"
When Yuan Gaofeng of the Ministry of Industry heard this, he laughed in his heart: Who made you fool your brains into formulating such a huge artillery equipment plan?
Yuan Gaofeng is very critical of the new establishment of the military, especially the new establishment of the artillery unit.
Previously, the First Division only had a total of more than twenty two-and-a-half-pound field guns. However, after the Wuchang Battle, the military decided to create a new organization to expand the proportion of artillery equipment.
According to the so-called plan of the military people, the divisional artillery regiment of a main division has three field artillery battalions and one mortar artillery battalion.
The field artillery battalion consists of one nine-pound field artillery post and two five-pound field artillery post, each with six artillery pieces, for a total of eighteen guns.
The three field artillery battalions add up to eighteen nine-pound field guns and thirty-six five-pound field guns, bringing the total to fifty-four field guns.
But the problem is that there are only a few nine-pound field guns in the Dachu Empire now, and they are still prototype guns used for live ammunition testing, and none of them are actually equipped.
Only a dozen five-pound field guns were produced in total, and only twelve were officially equipped.
But when these armies opened their mouth, they asked for fifty-four five-pound and nine-pound field guns for one division.
That’s not all…
The division's artillery regiment also plans to equip a mortar battalion with eighteen 18-pound mortars.
At the same time, the two-and-a-half-pound field guns were directly assigned to each regiment. Each regiment was assigned an artillery post with six two-and-a-half-pound field guns. In this way, four infantry regiments, plus the baggage regiment, would need thirty two-and-a-half-pound field guns. , the cavalry regiment also has to add a four-gun two-and-a-half-pound cavalry artillery post, and the engineer battalion will also be accompanied by two two-and-a-half-pound field guns, so there are thirty-six.
After calculating this, according to them, a division would need a total of ninety field guns of two and a half kilograms, five kilograms, and nine kilograms, and eighteen eighteen kilograms of mortars.
The Da Chu Empire now has seven main divisions that have been officially assigned designations, that is, 630 field guns and 126 18-pound mortars.
Not to mention that there is a garrison that also plans to equip field artillery and mortar artillery, as well as several independent mortar artillery regiments. It has also established an independent field artillery regiment, and is preparing to equip all nine-pound or even larger-caliber long-range artillery. Pipe artillery.
This is just crazy...
If you throw the entire Ministry of Industry into an iron furnace, you won't be able to produce so many artillery pieces in a short period of time.
Therefore, in the face of the military's lion's open mouth, Yuan Gaofeng expressed very calmly: "Currently, the Xiangyang Arsenal is working overtime day and night and operating at full capacity. Even if the production capacity can be increased a little in the future, the proportion will not be too large!"
"If you want to increase production capacity, you need to expand the Xiangyang Arsenal or build several new arsenals!"
To increase production capacity, it is very simple, just give people money and raw materials.
As long as it dares to provide sufficient resource support, the Ministry of Industry will dare to launch one or even several arsenal projects to train more skilled workers and build more machinery and equipment for the production of weapons and equipment.
But as soon as these words came out, Huang Chengxuan, the Minister of Finance next to him, laughed and said: "It costs a lot to prepare for the construction of a new factory. Although our Dachu finance now has a surplus, it was all captured from the previous immediate war." The real tax is not that much for a one-time income!”
"There is only so much money and food. Whether it is used to build an arsenal, expand the military, or use it for administrative disaster relief, you must be cautious. This is a waste of money. Our Finance Department cannot conjure new money and food for you out of thin air."
Luo Zhixue listened to the words of the humble ministers and secretly thought about this. Although the Chu Empire currently has some money and food in stock, these money and food are basically prepared for next year's war expenses.
Don’t spend it indiscriminately!
Just like what Huang Chengxuan said, if you spend money indiscriminately now, you will be blind when there is no new large-scale investment when the war starts next year.
But the army's artillery is also urgently needed, and the expansion or construction of arsenals is also necessary.
What Luo Zhixue has to do now is to make a compromise, such as the artillery equipment plan formulated by the military. This is too nonsense...
Not to mention fully equipped according to the new plan, even half of the equipment is impossible, because there are simply not so many artillery.
To say the least, even with so many artillery, the Chu Empire could not find enough mules and horses to use.
A nine-pound field artillery post is conservatively estimated to require more than 150 horses. This is still talking about high-quality draft horses. If it is inferior mules and horses, it will need more.
With so many artillery pieces, thousands of draft horses were needed.
Even if there are so many mules and horses, Luo Zhixue has to consider the cost-effectiveness of so many mules and horses.
The cost of 10,000 mules and horses is enough for him to raise at least 30,000 to 40,000 infantry, and this is the high-standard infantry supplied by the main division.
If it were the Ming army, it would probably be able to support an army of 100,000...
For such a huge expenditure, we have to consider whether it is worth it.
Cost-effectiveness is very important for the army. It is impossible to just pile up something good when you see it.
However, even if the military lowers the artillery equipment standards, the current arsenal production capacity of the Ministry of Industry cannot meet the requirements.
According to the plan, after next spring, the Baoxiang Army will launch a new round of offensive in the Chunan area.
This means that the Baoxiang Army needs to gather as many main troops and artillery as possible in the next three or four months to launch the Chunan offensive, and at the same time deal with wars in other directions.
Considering the equipment needs next year, the year after, or even beyond, the existing Xiangyang arsenal is absolutely not enough.
Therefore, it is very necessary to expand or build new munitions factories, especially arsenals.
As for expansion, we can only rely on the Xiangyang Arsenal for expansion, but taking into account the future direction of war, transportation, and raw material supply issues.
Luo Zhixue felt that instead of expanding the Xiangyang Arsenal, it would be better to build a new large-scale arsenal somewhere along the Yangtze River in the south, such as Wuchang or Hanyang.
This new arsenal can even be used as an important arsenal for the Chu Empire to strive for world hegemony and even expand in the future.
After many ministers argued for a long time, Luo Zhixue finally made the decision to allocate money and food personnel to build another arsenal in Hanyang.
Then he asked the military to stop messing around. One division has ninety field artillery pieces, but you guys can figure it out...
I feel like I have to build a more serious artillery organization. Now the five-pound field gun has been mass-produced, and the nine-pound field gun will also start mass production this month, which will delay the formation time and combat effectiveness of the artillery unit.
Under such circumstances, the military reluctantly reduced its establishment. The division artillery regiment still had four artillery battalions, but the size of the artillery battalions and the size of the artillery posts were much smaller.
They reduced the original six guns per artillery post to four guns per post.
According to a field artillery battalion, there is one nine-pound field artillery and two five-pound field artillery posts, each equipped with four guns.
Such a battalion is twelve artillery pieces, and three field artillery battalions are thirty-six field artillery pieces.
Plus a mortar battalion of twelve 18-pound mortars.
Such a divisional artillery regiment has four artillery battalions, with twelve nine-pound field guns, twenty-four five-pound field guns, and twelve eighteen-pound mortar guns, for a total of forty-eight.
In addition, the two-and-a-half-pound field artillery posts belonging to each infantry regiment and baggage regiment were also reduced from six to four.
The cavalry regiment still has four mounted artillery posts and the engineer battalion still has two.
In this way, the entire main division will have twelve nine-pound field guns, twenty-four five-pound field guns, and twenty-six two-and-a-half-pound field guns.
Although this number is still relatively large compared to the current military output, it is still barely acceptable. After all, even if the establishment is established, it does not mean that all the main forces must be fully staffed.
It would be good to be able to fully equip a few big-headed absolute main forces. As for the other main forces, they should be organized first, with a small number of artillery pieces to support them first, and then slowly replenish them later.
In addition, the garrison division has also officially finalized the allocation of field artillery. The divisional artillery regiment of the garrison division will have four five-pound field cannons and eight two-and-a-half-pound field cannons, for a total of twelve field cannons.
There will be no more, after all, this is just a garrison.
After Luo Zhixue made these decisions, the Ministry of Industry and other departments also acted very quickly. As soon as the meeting ended, they sent people to the surrounding areas the next day to check the terrain and prepare for site selection.
