Although the Navy decided to equip front-loading rifled guns last year, many naval generals are still not sure whether the front-loading rifled guns can be put to great use.
What they want more is a breech-loaded rifled gun, which they have been thinking about for many years.
Even the breech-loading rifled gun has been delayed.
Although it is now said that the Guangdong-class battleships are expected to adopt breech-mounted rifled guns, in fact they are just predictions. It is still unclear whether they will be equipped with them in the next three or four years. For this reason, when the Guangdong-class battleships are being designed, they are actually also
I have made preparations. If the breech-loading rifled gun cannot be used, then I will use the front-loading rifled gun first.
However, in any case, the smoothbore cannon is really outdated and cannot be used for much purpose.
With the rise of the Tang Dynasty navy, the navies of various European countries have successively entered the era of professional battleships in the past ten years. Battleships are also widely equipped with forward-mounted long-barreled smoothbore cannons, and they also learn how to use grenades. Although they are all
Match-rope fuses are still used, but the wooden fuses currently widely used in the Tang Empire actually do not have too many technical difficulties and do not require too high-precision processing. If people really put some effort into making them, it is also
It can be done.
Naturally, the Tang Navy could not see its opponents slowly catching up with them.
Therefore, the Tang Navy did not hesitate to extensively equip steam and steel battleships, and at the same time, it also focused on developing more advanced artillery, trying to once again completely change the mode of naval warfare.
Let Europe's wooden sailing warships become completely useless.
For more advanced artillery, the first choice of the Tang Navy was naturally the breech-loading rifled cannon. However, as the breech-loading rifled cannon has not been able to be installed on a large scale, it is okay to use the front-loading rifled cannon for emergency purposes. It can also be used for a few years.
of.
Nowadays, the combat effectiveness of front-mounted rifled guns has made the navy's senior officials feel relieved, and they quickly placed a large number of orders to replace all the large-caliber smoothbore guns of Shanxi-class battleships with rifled guns.
In addition, some other main cruisers also need to be replaced.
This also means that starting from this year, the Tang Navy will officially enter the era of front-loaded rifled guns.
While the Navy was quick to equip front-loading rifled guns, the Army was not too impressed as they did not like this thing very much.
Now the Army feels that the front-mounted smoothbore cannon is very useful. Even if it needs to be updated, it is prepared to directly replace the breech-mounted rifled cannon in one step.
After all, the artillery used by the army generally has a small caliber and does not pursue much penetration, so the requirements for the barrel are not too high, and the difficulty of production is much lower than that of the navy's naval guns.
The fact that the Navy has been unable to use large-caliber breech-loading naval guns does not mean that the Army cannot use small- and medium-caliber breech-loading guns.
In addition, compared to the replacement of artillery, the Army wants rifled rifles more!
Even though the Tang Army had just replaced its equipment with 18mm smoothbore flintlock guns two years ago, the Army had never given up on the idea of equipping them with rifled rifles.
Regarding the word "rifling", in fact, both the army and the navy care about the same thing, but their early emphasis is different, and the choice of technical routes is also different.
But even so, the army and navy actually don't have much urgency for these new weapons. Many of the reasons are basically to scare themselves, or simply say so deliberately to win military expenditures.
For example, the threat from the Tatars and the threat from the European seas. Strictly speaking, these things do not exist. Now Datang has firmly gained the upper hand, and it is an absolute advantage.
However, if these threats are not mentioned, the military really has no good reason to ask for a large amount of military expenditures to replace it.
Because the existing equipment is already advanced enough and is far ahead of its opponents, there is no need to spend huge sums of money on research and development to equip them with more advanced weapons, at least in the short term. There is no urgent need.
However, this is just an appearance. In fact, the emergence of the Tang Dynasty has greatly promoted the technological development of countries around the world. Even if the Tang Dynasty implemented a strict technological blockade, it is still impossible to avoid the various scientific and technological externalities of the Tang Dynasty.
Vent.
Needless to say, other small things, even big things like steam engines, were available to the Portuguese more than ten years ago, let alone now.
The steam engines of the Tang Dynasty were widely equipped on many ships, and these ships would always have some accidents and then fall into the hands of other people. Today, Spain, Portugal, and England all have large-scale ships in their official or private hands.
Don's steam engine.
There are even high-pressure shipboard steam engines.
It's just that they can't imitate it for a while now.
If the blockade of physical objects is quite effective, the blockade of knowledge is even more difficult, especially some basic scientific and theoretical knowledge, which cannot be hidden at all.
Because if Datang wants to launch scientific education, it must be exposed to many people, such as students, and everyone must have a set of teaching materials.
There are even a large number of related textbooks and books on the market for sale.
The Tatars have known for a long time that they sent people to the Tang Dynasty to secretly collect various books, and other European countries are no exception. The various basic science books of the Tang Dynasty are actually no secret in Europe.
Regardless of whether they are Tatars or Portuguese, they actually have complete science textbooks from primary school to university level in the Tang Dynasty. In addition, due to the large-scale overseas immigration and trade in the Tang Dynasty, it is inevitable that so many people will go out.
Lead to the leakage of scientific knowledge.
In terms of theoretical knowledge, what is really blocked is only the higher-level theoretical knowledge from the Royal Institute of Technology.
There is no way to completely block knowledge. After it slowly spreads, foreign countries will be slow to master it, but after a long time of accumulation, with a few geniuses, they will soon be able to break the knowledge blockade of the Tang Dynasty.
The United States had a strict enough blockade on nuclear bombs in later generations, but they did not spread throughout the world within a few years, and each country gradually mastered nuclear bomb technology.
Many things can't be solved because they don't know they exist, but after breaking the window paper, everyone will know how to do it.
Today's steam engines are almost the same. Even though the Tang Dynasty has been blocking it, Xu Zhenchuan, the Tang Dynasty's ambassador to Europe, has already sent back the news, saying that traces of steam engines have been found in England. Although their steam engines are still very small, they only
How many horsepower it can produce is generally quite lower than the early steam engines of the Tang Empire, but such a steam engine is still a steam engine that can be used in practical applications.
Even though the power is only a few horsepower and it doesn't have much strategic value, it is still a practical steam engine and can be used to pump water in mines.
If they continue like this, who knows when they will be able to build a high-pressure steam engine.
The reason why the Tatars were able to equip guns and artillery on a large scale was not because they had stolen gun technology from the Tang Dynasty, and even directly kidnapped craftsmen and other technical personnel.
Although this world is still in the sixteenth century, it is completely different from the original world. The emergence of the Tang Dynasty is equivalent to inciting hurricanes one after another on a global scale, which ultimately leads to a major change in the global cultural, economic, political and military structure.
In this regard, Datang continued to block technology on one hand, and on the other hand continued to climb the technology tree in order to continue to maintain its technological advantage.
It's just that these are all things behind the scenes, and you can't see them for a while.
And many people don't have deep feelings about this, even Li Xuan himself is like this. They feel that the various military equipment of the Tang Dynasty are already advanced enough, and there is no need to invest huge sums of money in research and development and equipment in a short period of time.
But he would not know that in the past few years, countless craftsmen in various European countries and even the Tatars who were thousands of miles away from the Tang Dynasty had been studying the flintlock guns of the Tang Dynasty and wanted to imitate them.
According to the current technical foundation of European countries, it won't take them long to develop it.
Historically, even if the Tang Empire did not give them guidance, they were still able to develop the flintlock gun in about the same period of time, and then they showed great success in the Thirty Years' War.
Now that they have the flintlock guns of the Tang Empire at the forefront, why don't they risk their lives to imitate them?
Once they found a method for mass-producing springs for flintlock bolts, overnight, war in Europe would be upgraded from the era of matchlocks and spears to the era of flintlock muskets.
After all, when it comes to technology, it is extremely difficult for leaders to take a step further.
But it is actually much easier for latecomers to catch up, because the leaders have already told them directly what to do.
In later generations, in order to allow jets to board aircraft carriers, the United States crashed thousands of planes, nearly 10,000 people died, and numerous accidents occurred, making jet carrier pilots the most dangerous profession in that era.
In the most dangerous period of the 1950s, the U.S. Naval Air Forces could lose nearly a thousand aircraft and hundreds of people a year!
But as for latecomers, they can easily apply the experience of the United States and avoid detours, and they will not suffer such exaggerated losses at all.
In this world, the Tang Dynasty is the leader, while the Tatars and European countries are the pursuers!
Datang has already cleared the way ahead, all they have to do is catch up!
Of course, it's not that easy to catch up.
While the Tatars and European countries were still struggling with flintlock rifles, the Tang Dynasty was already developing rifled rifles.
Even if the Tatars and European countries were able to develop flintlock muskets in the future, it is estimated that the rifled rifles of the Tang Dynasty would have been developed by that time, and by then there would be another generation of technological gap.
However, not everyone pays attention to these things hidden deep behind.
The few people who paid attention to this also continued to promote the upgrade of Datang's technology, especially those in the military. Their sense of urgency was actually much stronger than that of Li Xuan. They had already mastered the technology of flintlocks to guard against enemies, so
The technology of rifled guns and even artillery has been developed for a long time.
But then again, it's not that Li Xuan doesn't have this sense of worry, it's that he doesn't care about these problems at all.
It will take at least twenty to thirty years or more for the Tatars and Europe to reach the current overall technological level of the Tang Empire.
He is now forty-five years old. Who knows how long he can live? He will most likely be dead in twenty or thirty years.
What does Li Xuan care about what happens after his death?