The price composition of arms in the Tang Dynasty is relatively complicated.
R&D costs, manufacturing costs, factory profits, etc. are generally added up. Among them, R&D costs are not low and often occupy a very important position in new weapons.
This is mainly because the salary of scientific researchers in the Tang Empire is very high in all aspects, and the salary of scientific researchers in enterprises is not low, which also leads to relatively high research and development costs.
At the same time, the production of new weapons often requires upgrading and renovating production lines, purchasing more machinery and equipment, training skilled workers, etc. These costs are not small.
This also led to the fact that in the Tang Empire, if the sales volume of a product was too low to dilute the R&D and production costs, its price would be relatively high.
Although ordnance weapons are special, they are still an industrial product, and their prices follow this system.
In this way, the Guangdong, which was only 7,000 tons, cost more than two million, and the Luzon cost more than three million.
In fact, more than half of the above-mentioned prices are pure research and development costs, and then there are also the costs of upgrading and modifying the production lines, which also results in very high prices.
What's interesting is that the cost of the Navy's third battleship, the Banten battleship, has dropped significantly. It is estimated that it can be purchased for only about 2.5 million.
You must know that the Banten is even bigger and more advanced, but the price has dropped significantly. The most important reason is that the Banten seems to be larger and more advanced, but many of the technologies used on it are actually
The technology is mature.
For example, its power system, after the Guangdong and Luzon, the Naval Steam Engine Factory has perfected the technology of the triple-expansion reciprocating steam engine, so there is no need to invest a lot of money in research and development from scratch.
There are also naval guns. Although the plan is to use a 300mm naval gun with thirty times the caliber, this thing is a mature technology to be honest.
The same goes for turret technology. From the beginning, we were prepared to use a mature and stable hydraulic rotating turret, instead of tossing around with steam and electric turrets.
The same is true for the armor. The steel-faced iron armor used was previously developed for the Luzon. It was not only used on the Luzon, but also began to be used on other warships built by the Datang Navy.
Another more important point is that as the industrialization of the Tang Empire gradually unfolded, steel production increased year by year. In order to compete for the market, domestic steel companies started price wars one after another, causing the price of steel in the domestic market to continue to rise.
has fallen, resulting in the prices of many steel products also falling significantly.
Since warships are a large consumer of steel, the fall in the value of steel will naturally make warships more affordable.
Not only has the cost of warships dropped, but the cost per kilometer of another major user of steel: railways has also dropped.
Taken together, the construction cost of the Banten battleship has returned to rationality. Of course, although the Banten battleship has adopted a large number of mature technologies, as a battleship, it must still have applied many new technologies. These aspects have also increased.
Certain expenses.
However, being able to acquire this 12,000-ton battleship for about 2.5 million yuan made the navy very satisfied.
The cost of the Banten battleship can also be reflected to a certain extent in the cost of the navy's new generation of armored cruisers.
The first ship of the Navy's new generation of armored cruisers has been named Australia. According to the principle that the first ship is the class name, this class of armored cruisers is called the Australia class armored cruiser.
The design of this class of ships strictly controls costs, otherwise too few will be built and not enough.
Therefore, the technologies used above are almost all mature technologies. The steam engine power system they use is preparing to purchase a triple-expansion steam engine from the Navy Steam Engine Factory. Their large-scale shipboard steam engine technology is already very mature. The steam engines of the three battleships of the Navy
The system all uses their steam engines.
The same goes for naval guns. The 150mm 35x naval gun above is actually the secondary gun on many previous battleships. As for the scary 250mm 30x gun, although this thing is the first in the navy,
It will be installed once, but in fact it does not adopt new technologies, and the Navy plans to equip it on a large scale. In addition to installing it on ships, it also plans to purchase a batch of heavy artillery for shore defense.
Armor, of course, continues to use steel-faced armor. Now the Tang Dynasty Navy has a good impression of this steel composite armor. Its high-hardness steel surface can resist the bombardment of various grenades, and the wrought iron armor under the steel surface can
Block those large-caliber solid artillery shells.
The construction technology used on the hull is also a mature technology, and there is nothing that requires too much time and money for new research and development.
When mature technologies are used in the four major categories of hull, gun, power, and armor, the cost will naturally be relatively low.
At the same time, the Navy has placed a lot of orders. For this new generation of Australia-class armored cruisers and subsequent minor improvements, the Navy's first batch of orders is for four ships. They are not as petty as battleships, which are built one by one.
This is because the Navy does not plan to build too many battleships. After all, they are too expensive. Without the threat of strong external enemies, building too many battleships will be flashy.
Therefore, a second-class capital ship is needed to perform most strategic tasks. This is also the fundamental reason why Datang developed the Australia-class armored cruiser.
For this reason, the Navy believes that in the future, there must be six armored cruisers in the coastal areas of the mainland, so that they can cooperate with the battleships to carry out strategic decisive battle missions!
After all, this is the mainland. Six ships are considered too few. No matter how few there are, we will be embarrassed to see people.
In addition, the Pacific Ocean is so large, except for the mainland coast, the Central Pacific, the Eastern Pacific, the South Pacific and other places, it is not too much to build one.
On the other side of the Indian Ocean, a ship is stationed to garrison Ceylon. If necessary, it can scare the West Asians and the Indians as well.
Then there are powerful enemies on the other side of the Atlantic, so no matter what, there must be one based in South Africa, and one in Europe must be based in Ceuta to perform naval gun diplomacy missions, and more importantly, to prevent the Tatars from entering the Atlantic.
Calculating this, the Tang Navy needs at least ten armored cruisers on duty globally.
Then, this warship needs maintenance, daily maintenance plus mid-term overhaul, etc., which means that there will be warships staying in the shipyard and unable to go to war. In addition, it will also take time for warships to travel to various sea areas.
Adding the two together, plus the fact that the Navy has always been lenient to its enemies, it was simply to defraud funds and brag about the enemy's threat, so a few more ships were added as a sweetener.
Then the Navy felt that no matter what, twelve armored cruisers or similar second-class battleships would be needed to arrange it.
But this is just what the navy said. In order to defraud the navy of military expenses, they can say anything.
Not to mention a dozen or twelve armored cruisers, even the current dozens of cheap 1,000-ton frigates are enough to defeat the navies of all countries around the world.
But how to put it, sometimes maintaining armaments has nothing to do with the enemy's military strength, but more of a political and economic issue.
The Tang Dynasty is now striving for global hegemony, and will also dominate the world in the future. How can it do it without a desperate military force!
Just like the Americans in later generations, their navy can defeat all other countries combined, instead of building various new warships one after another.
As the leaders on Earth, their enemies are no longer other human countries, but aliens.
The outside world doesn't care about the navy's internal planning. They only saw an order for twelve armored cruisers!
This is not a small warship of one or two thousand tons. Although it is not a giant ship of tens of thousands of tons, it is still a large warship of seven thousand tons. This thing is not cheap, and the benefits it brings are huge.
And the Navy is not stupid. They just put out an order for twelve ships at once to keep the price down.
After much discussion, the Navy finally signed contracts with Hong Kong Dingsheng Shipyard, Qinghai Naval Shipyard, and Jiangnan Shipyard, three domestic shipyards capable of constructing such large warships.
In the next few years, the Navy will continue to purchase a total of twelve new generation armored cruisers Australia class and its improved versions.
On average, the purchase amount for a single ship is about 1.1 million.
This price is already quite satisfactory to the Navy. You must know that the first 7,000-ton battleship, the battleship Guangdong, cost more than two million. Although the cost of the Guangdong is abnormal and cannot be used as a normal reference, it is still
To a certain extent, this can explain the high price of large-tonnage warships.
The cost of building an Australia-class armored cruiser is only 1.1 million, which is really a bargain.
Of course, this is also related to the fact that the Australian-class armored cruisers are not equipped with too many large-caliber naval guns. They are not equipped with a 300-millimeter cannon. They only have one 250-millimeter main gun.
Small and medium-caliber naval guns are much cheaper than large-caliber naval guns, which also reduces a lot of costs.
Another crucial impact is that the Australia-class armored cruiser's hull will use a large number of affordable steel materials used for civilian ships, rather than high-standard steel materials specifically used on warships.
The Navy believes that cheapness and sufficient quantity are the key, and some reduction in performance will have little impact.
As long as the ship won't sink, that's fine. As for being sunk by the enemy, don't be ridiculous. Just use the smoothbore cannons of the natives and park the Australia-class armored cruiser in place and let them attack it. It probably won't be a big deal.
All these factors add up to the relatively low cost of an Australia-class armored cruiser of just over one million!