After Luo Zhixue concluded his inspection of the Hebei Arms Company, a joint meeting of the defense industry and the military was held that evening.
The main subject of the meeting was how to research, produce and use more modern advanced weapons and equipment.
Luo Zhixue requires all national defense units to integrate production, research and sales, and start from the actual needs of the military to develop better and more cost-effective weapons and equipment.
Especially in the research and production of rifled weapons, whether it is rifled artillery or rifled rifles, the current production cost is still too high. All defense industry units are required to increase investment in manpower and material resources to further improve the performance of rifled weapons, while also It is necessary to significantly reduce the current production costs.
A breech-loading rifle that costs forty or fifty Chu yuan will never become the standard weapon for the next generation of the army and navy of the Chu Empire.
It is too expensive and the military cannot afford to equip it.
The cost must be reduced to at least twenty Chu Yuan before large-scale equipment is feasible.
In addition, regarding the problem of rifled artillery, Luo Zhixue proposed that for small and medium-caliber rifled artillery, can brass shells be used to fix the shells to solve the air leakage problem, so as to realize the production of small and medium-caliber breech-loading rifled artillery?
As for the research on large-caliber breech-loading rifled artillery, due to the weight of the ammunition, the number of propellants needs to be adjusted during design. When fixed-loading shells cannot be used, it is also necessary to continue to conduct in-depth research on the locking structure and strive to solve the problem as soon as possible. Air leakage problem in caliber breech-loading rifled guns.
There is also the situation that the barrel life of the very important rifled artillery is too low, and the raw materials and processing technology must continue to be improved.
"The current production of rifled guns has begun to use steel materials as raw materials. So, can small and medium-caliber artillery be produced from all-steel materials from time to time?"
"Of course, the barrel material model used in the previous front-loading rifled guns, in which the inner layer of steel and the outer layer of wrought iron are combined, is also a promising model and requires continued investment in research."
"No matter what technical route it is, as long as there is a certain possibility of success, then we should not give up!"
“Now I don’t know which technical route will be better and easier to implement in the end, what should I do?”
"Then let's go hand in hand, carry out preliminary technical research, and conduct a series of theoretical verifications and experiments. After all, we have five weapons companies. We don't have to have all five of them break their heads on the same road. They can choose their own. Let’s study it through a different technical route.”
"When the time comes, whose products are better and cheaper, then the military will purchase the products from that company!"
"Nowadays, production, research and marketing are integrated, and many of the original research institutes have been decentralized to various weapons companies. It is no longer the previous kind of tasks assigned by the top, production in arsenals, and then directly assigned to the military."
"Each weapons company needs to be responsible for its own employees and the future of the company."
Luo Zhixue's words were addressed to a group of civilian officials in the national defense industry.
But after finishing speaking, he said to a group of military generals: "The military must also be based on reality. I have heard before that they would rather fight the enemy with a bayonet than use it." Rifled weapons!"
"This argument is not good. Since we have good weapons, why not give them to soldiers?"
"Expensive? Newly developed weapons and equipment are definitely expensive. How can defense companies recover the huge research and development costs if they are not expensive?"
"But you won't sell it because it's expensive? Do you want to wait for more than ten or twenty years for new technologies to continue to improve and then purchase them at cabbage prices?"
"If you don't buy it and he doesn't buy it, how can the national defense industry survive? How can we temporarily launch follow-up research and development? Will we still need to invest huge funds in the research and development of various new technologies in the future?"
"And new products are not always expensive. They are more expensive when purchasing in small batches at the beginning, but as the purchase quantity increases and time gradually passes, the price will naturally gradually decrease!"
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"The military needs to support the healthy development of the defense industry and cannot blindly pursue cost control. You cannot care too much about cost control in many things."
To be honest, Luo Zhixue has some opinions on the army and navy's iron-rooster-like military procurement model!
Especially when the Army conducts various military procurements, they have always been very stingy. Not only do they have to be good, they also have to be cheap... If they can't have both, then they will want to be cheap...
The Type 16 front-loading rifled rifle has been in service with the Guards for several years. However, the Army did not purchase equipment on a large scale. Instead, it continued to toss with smoothbore rifles...
Originally, the Type 21 type flash cap fired musket should have been the last type of musket. As a result, the Army just came up with a Type 23 type flash cap fired musket, and hundreds of thousands of them were produced...according to If this pace continues, in a few years, we may all be aiming for a million-dollar output.
To be honest, this is a bit ridiculous. Obviously, front-loading rifled guns have been in service in the Guards Army for several years, and breech-loading rifled guns have also been produced to prepare for small-batch procurement of equipment for trial use. The Army is still purchasing muskets on a large scale...
You said the price is expensive... Damn, your army doesn't purchase in large quantities, how can other arsenals keep costs down?
If you place an order for one million breech-loading rifles to the arsenal now, the arsenal will immediately dare to give you a price cut in half, and they can get it for you with more than 20 yuan.
Weapons are also industrial products, and when industrial products are mass-produced, their average cost will be lower.
Because production line costs and R&D costs will be diluted.
Because R&D costs and production line costs are constant, you need to invest so much to purchase 10,000 cigarettes, and so much to use 1 million cigarettes.
Not to mention that as production technology continues to improve and mature after mass production, the arsenal will be able to continue to solve many production problems and further reduce production costs, which will ultimately reduce the overall average cost.
The Army is unwilling to place large orders, but at the same time wants other arsenals to lower prices. Isn't this a hooliganism?
Luo Zhixue talked about the defense industry and the military at the same time. After explaining both sides, he calmed down and then said to Dai Yongyan from Hebei Arms Company: "Go back and organize the manpower to continue research on metal bullets. Try to use it on breech-loading rifles as soon as possible.”
"There is also a production line for Type 18 rifles, and then a lance version. First let the Guards purchase 10,000 rifles and lances to equip the Second Guards Division."
"Also, organize manpower to study the breech-loading modification plan of the Type 16 front-loading rifled rifle. You can't just watch them fall behind after spending a lot of money to purchase something."
Dai Yong said: "We have already studied the breech-loading modification plan of the Type 16 rifle before, and the overall problem is not big. After all, we have a complete breech-loading bolt structure, and the cost of modification is not too high. Probably …”
As he spoke, he looked through the small notepad in his hand and continued: "The modification cost should be controlled at around five yuan per unit."
The cost of modifying the bolt action is indeed not too expensive, which is why the Dachu Empire's Type 16 rifles and the new Type 18 rifles are so expensive.
Mainly because of the adoption of brand-new barrel materials and processing techniques, and the processing accuracy far exceeds that of the Type 21/Type 23 smoothbore guns.
To achieve such processing accuracy, it is necessary to purchase a series of the latest high-precision processing equipment and establish a new production line.
Coupled with the huge initial research and development costs.
In the end, the total up-front cost of these is very huge. In addition, the purchase volume is small, and when it is diluted to each Type 16 rifle, the up-front cost is very high.
Therefore, the high cost of Type 16 rifles and Type 18 rifles does not mean how high the costs are in the production process. Simply speaking, in terms of production costs, that is, personnel salaries and material costs, in fact, Hebei Arms Company's subordinates Tianjin Firearms Factory can make it for you even if you grit your teeth and even make it for about ten Chu Yuan...
But again, you don’t need money for research and development? Is it free to build a production line? Is there no money for later research and development and technical improvements?
And there are a dozen other research projects in the Tianjin Firearms Factory that are free of charge? There are also projects that have failed one after another in the past few years, and a large number of R&D funds have been wasted. Are there no money?
All of the above are counting on the profits created by the Type 16 muzzle-loading rifles and now the Type 18 rifles and other products.
Therefore, it is impossible for others to give you the true cost price. They must add their own R&D costs, equipment depreciation fees, tax costs, and various other messy costs, plus their own gross profit.
The final price is the ex-factory price.
This is also a common practice for technology products. This practice is particularly evident in some industries with high R&D risks, such as the military industry.
Why are the fighter jets of later generations so expensive? It can easily cost tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars?
You wouldn't think that the production cost of this crappy aircraft is really that expensive... How is it possible? Various R&D expenses, production line expenses, corporate profits, and the costs of other failed projects have all been added in.
Similar to drug research and development, the production cost of drugs is actually very cheap. The production cost of a drug that sells for hundreds or even thousands of dollars may be only a few dollars or even dozens of cents... There is a gap between the production cost and the selling price. The difference may reach dozens or even hundreds of times.
So the question is, why are the profit margins of many pharmaceutical companies not dozens or even hundreds of times higher than expected when they are so expensive?
Because pharmaceutical companies develop dozens of drugs at the same time, each cost can easily reach tens of millions or even hundreds of millions of dollars, and among these dozens of drugs, only one or two may be successful in the end.
Therefore, when people calculate R&D costs, they not only calculate the R&D costs of this successful drug, but also include the R&D costs of failed projects. In the end, the R&D success of this successful drug will be pushed up to an astonishing level.
Add in corporate profits, tax costs, etc., and then you will see that the prices of new drugs are very high.
If the price is not high enough, they will go bankrupt.
This is a typical feature of capital-intensive, high-risk, high-tech industries.
It is said that the R&D investment of pharmaceutical giants is very large. Not only the international giants, R&D investment generally accounts for more than 20% of revenue, and some can even reach 30%.
Some domestic scientific research-based modern pharmaceutical companies also invest a lot in R&D.
Although it is limited by objective reality that it cannot reach 20 or 30 percentage points, it usually reaches more than 10 percentage points.
There are even some new domestic pharmaceutical companies that are losing money and spending money on research and development, spending hundreds of millions or even billions on it.
But we are talking about some pharmaceutical companies that develop new drugs and new technologies. There are not so many companies that can barely make ends meet with generic drugs, but generally there are five, six or even seven or eight percentage points. After all, generic drugs also need to be researched and developed. .
The above does not include any type of traditional Chinese medicine companies!
Traditional Chinese medicine companies are more interesting. Looking at their financial report structure, you will find that they are not actually pharmaceutical companies, but marketing companies.
Generally speaking, there are high net profits, large sales expenses, and low R&D investment.
Don’t think that traditional Chinese medicine does not require investment in research and development. Artemisinin is the most typical example. This stuff is made from traditional Chinese medicine. This is the correct way for traditional Chinese medicine to evolve towards modern medicine.
However, many listed Chinese medicine companies on the market do not do this. If you let them engage in research and development, you might as well kill them.
The median of their general R&D investment is around two percentage points. This ratio is enough for Indian pharmaceutical companies to remain silent and African pharmaceutical companies to cry...
This is still the median. Quite a few listed Chinese medicine companies invest less than one percentage point in R&D...
A well-known listed Chinese medicine company had revenue of 15.49 billion yuan in the first half of a certain year, and the net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company was 2.45 billion yuan. Their sales expenses were 1.9 billion yuan, and what about R&D expenses?
Keep your eyes open: 83.92 million!
R&D investment accounts for 0.54% of revenue. What can this amount of money be used for?
Even if you play metaphysics, yin and yang, and don’t understand the specific ingredients of drugs or how they work, you still have to do research and do some comparative experiments.
What are the different effects of taking different medicines? Which prescription works well, which prescription has poor effect, which prescription has no effect, and which prescription will cause some side effects!
This way you can compare various results and continuously improve the prescription!
But they didn’t want to do it, and there was no need to do it!
This is how R&D costs are saved.
On the contrary, Chinese medicine companies have invested a lot in marketing. The sales expenditure of a certain pharmaceutical company above was 1.9 billion!
It is a common situation for traditional Chinese medicine companies to have high marketing expenses. A certain traditional Chinese medicine company has a revenue of tens of billions in a certain year, and its sales expenses are about more than 3.4 billion...
This is selling Chinese medicine as beauty products...
Of course, high sales expenses do not prevent people from making a lot of money. The net profit of the second example of a traditional Chinese medicine company attributable to shareholders of the listed company was more than 1.3 billion.
This is talking about net profit, not gross profit, which can be put into the pockets of shareholders.
Looking at the financial reports of these traditional Chinese medicine companies, and thinking about the situation in recent years, the traditional Chinese medicine industry in recent years perfectly fits the six words:
You are stupid, you have a lot of money, come quickly!
Here are the ad breaks:
Friends, I have a secret recipe for oral administration using children's urine as the core ingredient. It is used to treat various diseases such as heat, cold, yin and yang imbalance, madness, mental retardation, etc. It can also be used externally to treat scalds, burns, fractures, knife wounds, brain injuries, etc. It has miraculous effects on various internal and external injuries.
Do you want to invest in me to start a Chinese medicine company, and then we can make a lot of money selling baby urine together?
What, you said that there is already a traditional Chinese medicine with adult urine as the core raw material, and the sales are very prosperous, the supply exceeds the demand, and it has been in the news. Now it is too late to enter the urine medicine market?
I...f
It seems there are more smart people than I thought...
Alas, I'd better just code words honestly!
