Munitions Empire

The office, though not spacious, had actually begun to exude a sense of life. Tang Mo, having worked in Anpu for a long time, had even started to get used to everything in this cramped office.

He tossed a stack of reports onto the desk and complained to the few confidants in front of him, "If it weren't for these things, I wouldn't be in such a hurry to throw out airplane technology after this war."

Mathews, who had come from afar, picked up a report and only saw "Ethylene Project Construction Plan" written on it.

He knew about the ethylene project, knew that many engineers had been transferred to it recently. Tang Mo planned to construct an ethylene production plant in Linshui with an annual output of more than 200,000 tons, to supply raw materials for the entire empire.

And this was only an insignificant part of Tang Mo's chemical plant; what he was going to build was a massive modern chemical production base.

He desperately needed organic glass, he desperately needed plastics, he desperately needed various synthetic fibers, he desperately needed all kinds of chemical derivatives.

A person from the 21st century really understood too well the importance of material science. Chemistry could provide humanity with almost unlimited new materials of all sorts, enabling people to turn past dreams into reality.

This was no joke; with this large chemical plant, Tang Mo could replace all the forends on the mass-produced MP5 submachine guns with plastic material, making the MP5 closer to the real MP5 submachine gun!

With these chemical materials, Tang Mo could improve the cockpits of various airplanes he produced, no longer needing to piece together flat glass with iron strips into airplane cockpit covers!

Not joking at all, various plastics were the foundation of modern industrial development, just like steel, they upheld the modernization of the entire nation.

Without these chemical plants producing plastics, the world could only remain in a steampunk state, looking up at countless new technologies above their heads but unable to grasp them.

Parker picked up the second report, which was about the construction plans for the second phase of the docks at Linshui Port. The entire side of Linshui, originally a desolate cliff, was to be flattened and transformed, and then designed to become the world's largest shipbuilding factory.

The gantry cranes there would be taller than Brunas's buildings and could lift a mountain range in one go! With such cranes, super ships weighing over 50,000 tons could be built!

Parker, who had seen the Dongwan-class battleships, knew that building Dongwan-class battleships did not require such large gantry cranes, so the monsters planned for the new shipbuilding project were much more terrifying than the Dongwan-class battleships, with a total displacement of 20,000 tons!

He had heard that the navy's designers had already come up with 406mm caliber naval guns, which although the number seemed a bit odd, were technically mature.

Parker also heard that Mathews was experimenting with making these guns, which theoretically could attack targets over 30 kilometers away, and a single shell could create a crater as large as a soccer field!

Increasing the production scale of the Linshui shipyard was only part of the Great Tang Kingdom's dockyard construction plan. Tang Country also planned to build another dockyard in Dongwan, dedicated to producing special warships with a higher level of secrecy.

As for what these special warships were exactly, neither Parker nor Mathews were quite clear; one only knew that those special warships had hardly any cannons, while the other only knew that the new warships generally were not large in tonnage.

The third document was also a large project plan, prepared to expand the oil fields in Qi Country to ten times their original scale.

The entire plan involved laying a long oil pipeline, connecting Linshui with the oil fields in the eastern part of Qi Country. All the oil produced from this oil field in the future could be quickly transported to Linshui for processing via the pipeline, with an expected capacity increase of more than thirty times!

Just the pipeline alone would consume endless amounts of steel and other metals, along with pressure equipment and other assorted technologies, and the entire construction plan was expected to take two years to complete. Find exclusive stories on My Virtual Library Empire

In Tongcheng, Tang Mo was going to transform and expand the existing steel factory, turning it into the largest steel smelting base in the world.

Once complete, the size of this steel base would surpass the current entire Tongcheng, and by then, Tongcheng would be able to process fifty percent of the Great Tang Kingdom's total metal mining output!

Another steel manufacturing base would be established on the old lands of Qi Country, which would undertake another thirty percent of the metallurgical capacity; once both bases were operational, the entire Great Tang Kingdom could almost double the current world's steel production capacity!

This was no joke; it was, in effect, reversing and challenging the world's ore mining technology anew.

Reliance on manual labor for mining and transportation was already utterly inadequate to meet the production demands of Tang Country's steel factories. Therefore, Tang Mo had to improve mining technology and increase the ore mining speed of the entire world.

The plan below discusses the national highway construction. Tang Mo felt somewhat superstitious about undertaking large-scale, high-standard highway construction before a war, but for the sake of infrastructure, he still signed his name on the document.

According to the plan, Tang Mo intended to build more than 20,000 kilometers of highways across the Great Tang Kingdom, establishing fuel stations and maintenance points at regular intervals.

At the same time, the new highways could act as emergency runways for airplanes, and if necessary, could be closed off for military use, enabling troops to rapidly mobilize at speeds exceeding 250 kilometers per day using vehicles!

In other words, with this highway system, Tang Mo's main force would only need a month to be deployed to any border area where they were needed.

To build these highways faster and better, Tang Mo needed to produce enough asphalt, a sufficient number of construction machines, and perhaps even build a series of manufacturing plants.

Beyond the highways, Tang Mo also planned to lay more railways: He aimed to connect Beiyuan, Pingning, Nanye, Luo Town, Anpu, Chang'an, Tongcheng, and Linshui, and to construct new and improved railway lines between Dongwan and Fengshun and between Dragon City and Weigang.

Simultaneously, he was looking for locations near these cities to construct brand new civilian airports to establish a more efficient transportation network.

With air transportation, the deployment of personnel would be much more convenient, and the transport of letters and parcels could be done much more timely and quickly.

The spies dispatched by Tang Mo only needed to deliver the film to the border, then hand it over to the Great Tang Air Force, and transport planes could deliver the photographic information to Chang'an at speeds a hundred times faster than before.

What concerned Tang Mo more was the boost in efficiency. In the past, someone wanting to travel from the Eastern Continent to the Western Continent might have to spend a lifetime.

Now, if one had money, in just a bit over a month, one could make the journey! This increase in efficiency could speed up the entire world's development and make the exchange of progress-promoting communication unimaginably fast.

"Radar... factories? Related to radio equipment?" As Parker looked over a personnel transfer list in his hands, he realized what kind of production these newly built factories were specifically intended for.

"All these projects starting almost simultaneously really make one's heart ache," Mathews remarked, too finding Tang Mo's construction plans astonishingly ambitious.

In the past, if he had seen just one of these projects, he might have shaken his head and said it was impossible for him. But now, they saw dozens of such large-scale projects all at once, and they didn't even have a sliver of doubt.

Remember, each of these projects required training tens of thousands of workers and several hundred thousand construction personnel. Building them all at once could keep every citizen of the Tang Country busy for a year or even many years.

"Do you know that, to support all these projects, I've almost had to mortgage my trousers?" Tang Mo said, scratching his head and making a self-deprecating comment.

"You're the richest man in the world, Your Majesty! If you're broke, then probably everyone in the world has gone bankrupt," Mathews joked, and then noticed that Tang Mo wasn't laughing, so he paused in surprise.

Parker also sensed something in the brief silence, his eyes widening as he turned to Tang Mo, "Your Majesty! My God, you didn't actually pay out of your own pocket, did you?"

"Van Kums told me that by past standards, I am bankrupt," Tang Mo shrugged indifferently, as though talking about something that had nothing to do with him, "It's not that funny, is it?"

He pointed to the plans in front of him and said to the two men, "I need to come up with 60 billion Gold Coins... Although thinking about this sum already gives me a headache, it's really not the main issue."

Tang Mo spread his hands, "What really worries me is that I can't get you 33 million tons of steel, 500,000 tons of nickel, and 9 million tons of petroleum in a year..."

"We need to construct 5,000 factories of various sizes in the coming year, build 40,000 buildings, repair and rebuild the streets of 100 towns both large and small, and construct roads to connect all these together..." Tang Mo leaned back in his chair, sighed, and said, "Gentlemen, without selling anything, how shall we develop?"

Parker and Mathews returned the plan documents to Tang Mo's desk and sighed along with him.

The Great Tang Group's military might be invincible, but up until now, their numbers hadn't risen to the level that would allow the Great Tang Kingdom to sweep across the world.

They were too few! So few that if thrown into the vast territory of the Dahua Empire, these troops would be so scattered they couldn't even control all the towns at the battalion level.

As for the tanks, planes, and cannons needed to arm these people, they still hadn't gathered enough! Not to mention the extra weapons and equipment that would be needed to further expand the military.