Chapter 1309: 1226 Qin Country’s War Preparations

On February 21st, the Poplar Empire and the Ice Cold Empire officially signed a treaty, halting a war that lasted more than a year and restoring their borders to the original state.

With mutual understanding achieved, the two countries can finally breathe a sigh of relief and start recovering their nearly collapsed economies.

Militarily, the two countries fell behind due to the war; meanwhile, nations worldwide are constructing aircraft carriers and purchasing a large number of planes that can be used on carriers.

Piston engine technology is no longer something worth keeping secret, so the Great Tang Empire can freely sell it, and the Shireck Consortium has a lot of “self-developed” new technologies.

Everyone knows who’s making money behind Shireck, but many people still dislike the Great Tang Empire and choose Shireck Consortium’s technology.

After all, Shireck is still cheaper. Although it’s sometimes not very reliable, affordability is often the most important measure.

Even the already proven unreliable Zero Fighter still finds buyers: after all, it’s cheap enough with a long enough range.

Apart from the Navy and Air Force, Army development is also underway, with countries worldwide researching their own light machine guns and starting to equip more semi-automatic rifles to enhance individual firepower.

Although most troops in various countries still use single-shot bolt-action rifles, their automatic weapons are increasing their equipment proportion.

Moreover, better steel helmets and better hand grenades have become basic equipment for infantry worldwide. Due to the Great Tang Empire’s gun grenade shining in the war against Mirage Country, other countries have also started widely equipping gun grenades.

However, their gun grenades are World War II technology, a “hand grenade” launched with a bullet, installed at the rifle’s muzzle.

Equipping so many weapons, including submarines, carriers, new aircraft, and individual equipment, takes time, so the overall world situation tends to be stable.

The Great Tang Empire is also actively sharpening its military, equipping with a large number of new tanks while using its Navy development strategies to build its Army.

Tang Mo’s Navy first crafted warship shapes like future designs using experience, then filled these futuristic new warships with existing weapons and equipment until fully equipped.

The Army side is the same; the Great Tang Empire started producing two kinds of infantry fighting vehicles, both using standard design shapes for future infantry fighting vehicles: one tracked, one wheeled.

The tracked one referred to the Rabbits’ 04A infantry fighting vehicle, but the fire control system is not that advanced at all.

It’s equipped with a 30-millimeter caliber autocannon, beside which is a 100-millimeter caliber low-pressure cannon, entirely copied, and due to technical reasons, the 100-millimeter low-pressure cannon’s ballistic is actually not very good.

This approach actually comes entirely from the former Soviet Union’s self-propelled artillery tactics in World War II, probably initially learned from San Dezi’s experiences.

During the whole World War II, the Maoxiong manufactured many turretless self-propelled artillery, including the famous SU-76 and SU-122, and the renowned SU-152.

In the war, the Maoxiong used such self-propelled artillery to accompany infantry, destroy enemy fortified positions, cover assault tasks, achieving fruitful outcomes.

Therefore, in post-war infantry fighting vehicle designs, the Maoxiong emphasized assault firepower, transferring the “assault gun” tasks during WWII to infantry fighting vehicles carrying infantry.

No way around it; during WWII, the Maoxiong transported infantry by having infantry lie on self-propelled artillery and tanks. After the war, infantry were placed inside the vehicle body, and artillery couldn’t be abandoned.

Tang Mo admired the Rabbits’ weapons and equipment, so when he had the ability to copy the Rabbits, he resolutely chose to copy the Rabbits’ weapon designs.

Regardless of whether it’s reasonable or not, squeezing a 100-millimeter low-pressure cannon into an infantry fighting vehicle, along with a coaxial 30-millimeter caliber autocannon, is a pretty good choice.

In fact, the Tang Army doesn’t seem to lack infantry assault firepower, and Great Tang Empire’s armored vehicles don’t undertake anti-tank tasks during attacks; their firepower only needs to suppress bunkers on enemy positions.

However, Tang Mo didn’t abandon the low-pressure cannon on the vehicle, nor did he follow the old road of European and American infantry fighting vehicles.

In fact, the Tang Army’s widely equipped 113 type armored vehicle was so lightly regarded for firepower that it was called “taxi” by the Great Tang Empire’s soldiers.

Therefore, on the new tracked infantry fighting vehicles, Tang Mo reclaimed the low-pressure cannon and auto cannon, giving infantry their own means to solve problems.

The other kind of infantry fighting vehicle is a brand new family of vehicles replacing the Lion type armored reconnaissance vehicles: the new generation of big eight-wheelers! In fact, it’s just the Rabbits’ big eight-wheeler. The square vehicle body looks better than the three Dezi’s eight-wheeled vehicles from the WWII era, with larger internal space.

This thing has got one advantage of being able to be variously modified, and aside from serving as a troop carrier and wheeled infantry vehicle, it can also be converted into a command vehicle, reconnaissance vehicle, and tank destroyer.

It can be equipped with a 105-millimeter caliber anti-tank gun, replacing the previously equipped Lion type armored reconnaissance vehicles by Great Tang Empire, achieving a modernization of army weaponry.

Similarly, the Great Tang Empire also started producing brand new tracked chassis for mass production of the 109 type self-propelled artillery.

This artillery is to replace the open-top Wild Bee Automatic Cannon, so the Great Tang Empire can completely cease production of the No. 4 tank chassis, liberating valuable production capacity to manufacture more advanced equipment.

The original No. 4 assault gun was replaced due to overlapping functions, replaced by new-style infantry fighting vehicles and wheeled tank destroyers, and was completely phased out.

The troops originally equipped with No. 4 assault guns will fully re-equip with new wheeled tank destroyers, or simply equip field anti-aircraft guns, or anti-tank missiles…

No choice, the tank destroyer’s functions have been crowded out by Tang Army’s new weapons, leaving no space for existence, so assault guns have become totally dispensable for Tang Army.

Anti-tank tasks have been transferred to single soldier rocket launchers, new vehicle-mounted anti-tank missiles, and newly emerged armed helicopters and ground attack aircraft.

Assault tasks have been taken over by new infantry fighting vehicles, and Tang Army itself doesn’t lack heavy equipment like tanks, so only installing a long-barrel 75-millimeter caliber cannon on four turrets could just go home and retire.

But never mind, many are still willing to buy these heavy tank vehicles unwanted by Great Tang Empire. For example, Poplar Empire, like Chu Country, like the Orc, like Great Qin Empire.

Yes, that’s right, Great Qin Empire is also one of the buyers! Ying Duo is genuinely willing to spend real silver to quickly enhance his troops’ mechanization level.