Munitions Empire

Over the years, the Great Tang Empire has always been updating its arms equipment, especially those that have started creating logistical headaches.

The first to be heavily phased out was the Panther Tank; generally, there were two routes for its disposal, one was to sell it to Chu Country, and the other was to sell it to the Poplar Empire.

As the Great Tang Empire phased out the majority of Panther Tanks, their production line had also been sold to the Poplar Empire over a year ago.

Now, the Poplar Empire is the country with the largest number of Panther Tank equipment, and they are quite satisfied with the combat performance of these tanks. The only drawback is the logistical maintenance issue for this type of tank, whose complex design indeed causes a lot of trouble for the Poplar Empire's logistics troops.

It's an unavoidable situation because, in a sense, the Panther Tank is a kind of "specialty weapon" that wants everything and strives for perfection in everything.

Its armor protection is quite high, its mobility is also very good, it has a high ammo capacity, its firepower is formidable, and its targeting system is advanced—is such a perfect weapon really reasonable?

Of course not.

The Panther Tank merely piles all its problems onto the production and maintenance segments; as perfect as it performs on the battlefield, it is as terrible in manufacturing and logistical maintenance.

As the saying goes, the Panther Tank might be a good choice for the Great Tang Empire, which has strong manufacturing capabilities in logistics, but for the Poplar Empire, it's not as good as they had imagined.

Arms equipment will always have their focuses; an all-around weapon hardly exists, which is an unchangeable fact.

Take military vehicles as an example, soldiers all hope for a smooth and comfortable ride, which requires a good suspension system.

At the same time, a good military vehicle should also have adequate protection, including the ability to withstand mines and direct gunfire and shrapnel.

However, mine-proofing requires a sufficient ground clearance for the vehicle, which inevitably raises its center of gravity. An increased center of gravity causes more shaking, affecting the aforementioned ride comfort and stability.

Heavy armor protection, in turn, puts more pressure on the suspension system, compromising the shock absorption efficiency.

Even with the best shock absorbers, installing thicker armor puts into question whether the engine can provide enough power for the added weight to maintain sufficient speed.

Fitting a more powerful, high-horsepower engine then? Choosing a more reliable matching clutch... and there comes the new problem: insufficient fuel for the vehicle, resulting in a shorter range.

Without powerful engines, the vehicles lose their purpose; inadequate horsepower diminishes off-road capabilities, making it harder for soldiers to swiftly traverse dangerous zones, which in turn affects their survival rate.

Excessive fuel consumption, on the other hand, restricts the operating environment of the vehicles and prevents them from meeting the soldiers' usage requirements.

Install a larger fuel tank for thicker armor and more potent horsepower? To protect this tank and carry more fuel, wouldn't the vehicle expend more horsepower on transporting its own fuel?

Heavy weight, thick shell, dull and poorly ventilated—such vehicles have a higher failure rate. The heavy armor becomes a massive hindrance in repairs; an engine hatch that can resist 7.62mm bullets can't even be lifted without hydraulic assistance...

To prevent such heavy vehicles from sinking into the ground, one would need to reduce ground pressure, increasing the contact area of the wheels—either widening the tires or simply using double tires stacked together.

Well, after juggling this array of issues and a series of tough compromises, you have barely managed to resolve the vehicle's own problems.

Bear in mind, for every 100 kilometers, an increase of one liter in fuel consumption for such a vehicle means an army equipped with 300,000 such vehicles will consume an extra 300,000 liters of fuel. Typically, military vehicles are notorious for their high fuel consumption, with increases of two or three liters being quite possible.

This is not just about the entire troop advancing 100 kilometers; calculations must include the round trip consumption of transporting this fuel, as well as the disposed oil from these vehicles, the wear and tear on the tires...

Feeling overwhelmed yet? Don't hurry; the transport capacity now squeezed out to carry the extra fuel and other materials was originally to be used for transporting munitions, ammo, and food supplies. Do these now need extra vehicles arranged for their transport?

Alright, after completing a complex set of calculations and arrangements, you can finally estimate how many additional vehicles are needed, and it's only then that you can begin to see the light at the end of the tunnel.

The whole process started simply with an intention of adding a bit of protective steel plates to a military vehicle—eventually, a country has to reserve over 10,000 tons of gasoline for this additional protection.

Managing these reserves, finding storage places for them, ensuring this gasoline remains usable... a new round of calculations began.

The question is, what sort of advantage can such costs truly garner: War isn't a game of animal chess; whether your truck is sturdier and safer than someone else's does actually mean something.

It's not to say that it's completely meaningless. It is the goal of technicians to enhance the survival capability of every weapon, every soldier in the battlefield, reducing casualties and increasing combat efficiency for each unit.

But in reality, most of the time, the scenarios encountered on the battlefield are complex and unpredictable. If your infantry comes across enemy tanks, do you just not fight and surrender?

Actually, no. In most cases, even infantry without any anti-tank capabilities would do everything they could to delay the enemy's advance and block their progress.

To put it bluntly, even if you only have a dagger and a brick, you still have to go up and try against the enemy's tanks; it's a soldier's duty!

Thus, oftentimes the efforts of technicians don't get rewarded. The things they rack their brains to create are not entirely useless on the battlefield, but it could be said they do little more than scrape by.

Look, after decades of relentless effort, technicians finally enhanced tank frontal armor to the equivalent of over one meter of homogenous steel, only to find top-attack munitions were readily available everywhere.

The heavily armored tanks no longer faced just damnable enemy tanks firing armor-piercing rounds; they had to withstand the challenges of drones, individual patrol missiles, and anti-tank missiles.

Vehicles piled high with armor might not face just enemy assault rifles and light machine gun fire; it could very well be a 40mm caliber anti-aircraft gun leveled to strafe horizontally.

After comprehensive consideration, the relevant decision-makers generally make trade-offs and eventually come up with a relatively balanced choice of plan.

In fact, for a long period after World War II, countries around the world did not plan to add armor to transport vehicles.

However, Lighthouse Country later began playing the role of world police, and the military increasingly emphasized on light-weight capabilities. Soldiers often needed to ride transport vehicles for mobility, and that's when the protection of such vehicles started to be valued.

In plain terms, it basically meant using transport vehicles as armored vehicles, and due to the severe lack of heavy firepower from the opposition, armored vehicles were used in place of tanks.

This is the so-called origin of the Stryker Brigade: bullying kindergarten kids who didn't even have decent anti-tank missiles, so they could brazenly use thinly armored vehicles to bully others.

Unfortunately, as the kindergarten kids have become increasingly fierce due to arms trade in recent years, Lighthouse Country itself has had to start abandoning light forces and picking up the Abrams Main Battle Tank it once looked down upon.

The Tang Army did not have to take this detour since the Tang Army has always built its main combat forces according to continental army standards. The Tang Army has never given up the development and deployment of heavy weapons and equipment, and the army commanders also value the use of armored vehicles.

Yes, the Great Tang Empire never considered replacing the role of armored vehicles with transport vehicles like Humvees. In the eyes of commanders from the Tang Country, a transport vehicle is a transport vehicle, and an armored vehicle is an armored vehicle.

After learning from the experiences and lessons of Germany Three and Maoxiong, and combining the theories of the rabbits, Tang Country developed both tracked and wheeled armored vehicle classes in large quantities, meeting the mobile protection needs of the military.

These weapon equipments are far more practical than welding armor onto jeeps, and they also provide the Great Tang Empire with plenty of chassis options for future self-propelled guns and other functional vehicles.

Another point worth noting is that when the Great Tang Empire produces these Soviet-style weapons and equipment, they adopt more advanced American production standards.

This not only improves the quality of weapons and equipment but also creates favorable conditions for their subsequent improvements and developments.

Maoxiong is indeed too rough in their production processes and standards, which is related to their own industrial development path. Their catch-up mode is completely different from the current situation of the Great Tang Empire leading the world.

The Great Tang Empire uses American production practices to produce Soviet-style weapons and equipment; it's not following the crude Soviet path.

So even though the Great Tang Empire adopts a large number of Soviet-style weapons and equipment, they employ a more streamlined and rational design approach in logistics maintenance. It can be understood that the Great Tang Empire is trying to use the standards and norms of manufacturing F-16s to produce J-7s in the future.

Similarly, Tang Mo is adding safer fire-suppression equipment and more advanced sensors to his "Rabbit Series Tanks," using more precise manufacturing standards, in preparation for evolving into a more comprehensive "Super 99 Main Battle Tank" in the future.

For the Great Tang Empire, the performance of weapons is only the superficial aspect. The real strength lies in the fact that the production manufacturing standards implemented by the group under Tang Mo's command are already on a different level compared to other countries.