When the time came in late December of the third year of Chengshun, the Army of the Dachu Empire successively completed the reduction of the garrison, and established a number of regular military divisions, expanding the army's division-level troops to twenty-two hours.
At the same time, as a large number of garrison soldiers were gradually transferred to farming, construction, transportation, and work, the local garrison strength declined to a certain extent.
In order to solve this problem, the Army proposed the method of forming a low-cost regular army to garrison various places and suppress local areas.
When Xu Zhixian, the Army Chief of Staff, approached Luo Zhixue to report the matter, his definition of this low-cost regular army was quite interesting.
"Nowadays, the main forces of our army spend a lot of money. However, among the many costs, in addition to personnel salaries, there are also the costs of a large number of mules and horses, and then there are the costs of guns, armor, and more importantly, ammunition."
"To maintain the mobility of each department, it must be equipped with a large number of mules and horses. For example, the artillery unit. A four-door nine-pound artillery sentry requires nearly a hundred mules and horses, and the cost of these mules and horses is as much as four or five Hundreds of soldiers."
"Not only the artillery troops use mules and horses a lot, but the baggage troops also use mules and horses. In order to ensure mobility and not excessively consume the soldiers' physical fitness during the march, the infantry troops will also be equipped with carriages to transport armor, spears and food with the army. , tents, etc.”
While Xu Zhixian was talking, he also handed Luo Zhixue a report drafted by the Army on all aspects of the army's expenditures.
The report includes three units: the Sixth Division, which participated in the Fujian-Zhejiang battle this year and was used as the main force to fight all the way from Ningbo, Zhejiang to Quanzhou, Fujian.
The Fourth Division was stationed at the front of Jiangbei and had several operations and small-scale battles, but there was no large-scale battle with the enemy.
Stationed in Jinling City, there has been no action and has been training. At the same time, it has been equipped with flintlock guns, adopted new tactics, and the newly organized 10th Division.
The Army listed and compared the costs of these three units in different states and types.
Xu Zhixian said: "Your Majesty, please see that the personnel consumption in the three armies is basically the same, because the personnel salaries and food subsidies of each main force of our army are at the same standard. Although the total amount of the 10th Division is higher, this is because the 10th Division has a higher total. The Tenth Division has more troops, while the Sixth Division costs more. However, due to long-term operations, a certain amount of combat subsidies and rewards are issued. In addition, long-distance operations require more trouble in transporting supplies, so they cost more. ."
"Generally speaking, the personnel salary expenses of various departments of our army are similar. If they are deployed on a fixed basis, they are highly consistent. Even the personnel salary expenses of the previous garrison are not much less than those of the regular army."
"The gap in personnel attrition occurs during operations, especially at long range."
"Then there is the cost of mules and horses. The cost of mules and horses is very huge. In order to maintain the mobility of the troops, we generally assign a large number of mules and horses to each main force, and the cost of each mule and horse is approximately equivalent to four A soldier."
"The last thing is equipment consumption. The initial fixed cost of equipment is not too high. It is mainly the price of purchasing guns, armor and various cold weapons. But whether it is guns, cold weapons or armor, if they are not used intensively, If so, its service life is relatively long.”
"Ammunition consumption, the daily training quantity is less, the bulk is still during combat, especially the consumption of artillery shells is extremely huge."
"After many comparative studies, our army colleagues have found that the main expenditures of the army can be roughly divided into three parts. One part is fixed expenditures on personnel and equipment, including equipment costs, training costs and personnel expenditures."
"Another part is the cost of maintaining mobility, especially the cost of maintaining artillery mobility."
"The last part is the cost of marching operations, including supply costs, ammunition costs consumed during combat, etc."
"And the latter two are the big ones, accounting for more than 70% together!"
When Xu Zhixian said this, he paused for a moment, and then continued: "So we thought about whether we could build a less mobile force, which would be mainly used to garrison places, suppress places on weekdays, and perform defense locally during wartime. Combat missions, and when necessary, the mobility capability will be strengthened to cooperate with the main force in mobile operations."
"In this way, we can save a lot of mules and horses, and if we suppress local forces, we don't have to maintain full strength. Especially in logistics, we can only keep the backbone and wait until wartime to replenish a large number of logistics troops."
"In the end, we can reduce the cost of garrisoning troops by at least half, and we can also maintain the training and equipment levels that these troops should have!"
"In this case, we can set up several regiments in each province to garrison the local area, maintain suppressive pressure in various places at a lower cost, and also free up the main forces of various ministries to participate in front-line battles."
"In addition, if we are a new type of army that uses flintlocks as its main weapon, then after the infantry unit saves armor, spears and carriages to transport these weapons, the overall cost will be further reduced!"
After hearing Xu Zhixian's words, Luo Zhixue basically understood the thoughts of Xu Zhixian and other army generals.
They despised the garrison's combat effectiveness as being too poor, so they strongly supported its elimination before. However, using the current main force to suppress local areas felt wasteful. Well, more importantly, the Army did not have enough money and food to prepare too many main forces.
Therefore, they plan to adopt a compromise solution and create some units that lack mobility, logistics and other auxiliary forces, but at the same time maintain the training level of combat soldiers.
Luo Zhixue thought about it carefully and thought it was okay.
Anyway, the Chu Empire currently only has a main force of more than 200,000 troops, which is not enough. Even if the number of troops increases to more than 300,000 by next spring, this is still very reluctant for the huge China region.
After all, when the time comes, China will not only suppress internal pressure, but also deploy external defenses and even launch wars. The total number of troops will be too small to arrange at all.
After careful consideration, Luo Zhixue said: "It sounds okay. The Army can try out a batch first. If the effect is good, it can be promoted and used."
After that, Luo Zhixue thought for a while and said: "This kind of army can be downsized in terms of organization. While retaining the command system, backbone system and some combat soldiers, the number of non-combat soldiers can be reduced as much as possible."
"In addition, since this kind of troops is prepared to be directly transferred to the front line after being replenished during the necessary period of the war, a corresponding replenishment system must also be established to replenish this kind of troops as soon as possible to ensure that the troops can be replenished as quickly as possible. The speed of returning to regular combat arrangements."
After Luo Zhixue read the plan again, he pointed to the words "low-cost regular army" on it: "Change the name of the subsequent plan. Don't use the words "low-cost". When it is subsequently organized, continue to use the designation of the army regular army. , Well, the numbers are listed directly from one hundred to the back."
Low-cost regular army, if such words were known to the outside world, they would think that the Dachu Empire was going to create some rubbish.
But in fact, this plan developed by the Army only reduces the auxiliary forces and mobility capabilities of the troops. Needless to say, these auxiliary forces are of little use during non-combat periods. They can be recruited again during combat periods. .
As for mobility, it mainly reduces the mobility of artillery.
Among these reductions, one very important point is to control and reduce the number of mules and horses as much as possible.
After all, the cost of mules and horses is too high. If the number of mules and horses cannot be reduced, cost control will become a joke.
"My Healing Game"
As for the subsequent maneuvers of these troops after the mules and horses are cancelled, what will happen.
During the internal bombardment, it is estimated that the landowners' armed forces cannot pull out any red barbarian cannons or the like, so they do not need heavy weapons and can just rely on light infantry to get it done.
At the same time, these troops are stationed locally and are responsible for local defense, and there will be no long-distance raids.
Therefore, canceling a large number of mules and horses will not actually affect the local suppression tasks of these troops.
As for a large number of enemies coming over, they don't need too many mules and horses for defensive operations. Just like many of the new standard troops in the Ming court, except for the New Qin Army and a few Jiangbei New Standard Army, most of them are actually Some of the new standard-setting troops also don’t have many mules and horses.
Because most of the time they are engaged in defensive operations and don't need mules and horses...
And when the need arises, mules and horses can be recruited on the spot for emergency replenishment, and then the artillery can be directly dragged around.
In the following days, many personnel from the Army worked overtime and quickly worked out a preliminary organization plan.
After reading the plan, Luo Zhixue thought it was okay, and approved it on the spot, allowing the Army to build two new divisions for pilot testing, namely the 100th Division and the 101st Division.
The 100th Division is expected to be deployed in Jiangxi, and the 101st Division is expected to be deployed in the southern Anhui area of Anlu Province.
These two divisions have two organizations, one is a wartime organization, which completely imitates the existing main force, um, specifically refers to the troops equipped with matchlock guns.
There is also a peace establishment. This peace establishment has greatly reduced non-combatants such as logistics personnel, and the establishment has also been reduced.
In the end, this kind of division only had a size of 8,000 people in a peaceful organization, which was a full 6,000 fewer than the more than 14,000 people in a combat organization.
In terms of weapons and equipment, the individual weapons are still the same, and the artillery is also equipped with two and a half kilograms, five kilograms, and nine kilograms field cannons, as well as some eighteen kilograms mortars and twenty-four kilograms mortars, but the number is much less, one The division's artillery regiment had only twenty-four guns.
However, most of these artillery are fixedly deployed in permanent fortifications and are not equipped with too many mules and horses. In addition, the artillery unit does not have many auxiliary personnel. If it needs to maneuver on weekdays, they have to be seconded from the private sector. Or requisition mules and horses...
