In the budget allocation of the 37th year of Xuanping, the army suffered a dumb loss.
In contrast, although the navy has also been affected to a certain extent, the impact is not significant.
After all, the navy does not receive much military expenditure, and even if it is reduced, it will not reduce much, not to mention the navy's extra money.
In many overseas colonial operations, the navy is the leading force. Sometimes when there is a shortage of money, just send a Marine to raid the indigenous kingdoms and so on, and often get a lot of results.
Of course, the more important thing is that the navy is not under great pressure.
The army has to fight externally and suppress internally, so it needs to maintain a huge force. Even if it is not one million, it still needs 700,000 to 800,000, otherwise it will not be enough.
However, as for the navy, there is basically no need to consider the issue of internal enemies. Even if it does, there is no need for battleships. Even if the navy participates in the suppression, at most it will dispatch inland river gunboats or offshore patrol ships in inland areas. Those are
Cheap stuff, not worth much.
On the navy's side, the main concern is foreign enemies.
But as the people in the cabinet said, the navy actually has very few enemies at all.
No, not even a few, but none at all.
On this earth, apart from the Tang Dynasty Navy, the only other sizable maritime forces are the Spanish/Portuguese, and then there are the England and the Dutch. As for the maritime forces of France, Naples, Ottoman and other countries,
That would be even weaker.
Even if the maritime power of all the above-mentioned European countries were added up, based on the current strength of the Imperial Navy, a Seventh Fleet would be enough to defeat them.
Although the headquarters of the Datang Navy's Seventh Fleet is based in South Africa, as the Atlantic Fleet, the fleet's defense area includes the entire Atlantic Ocean and directly connected marginal seas such as the Mediterranean Sea, the North Sea, the Black Sea, and the Baltic Sea.
It is not even necessary for the entire Seventh Fleet to take action. Even just the 76th Squadron under the Seventh Fleet, which is what outsiders call the European Fleet, is enough to suppress the current maritime power of the entire European region.
As the core military force of the Tang Empire in Europe, the 76th Squadron's home port is Ceuta, and it is also located in Cadiz, Athens, Marseille, London, Constantinople, Rotterdam and other European port cities.
, all have naval bases acquired through leasing, purchasing, etc.
Although the squadron bears the name of a squadron, it is very powerful. It began to gradually expand from the European Ministerial Escort Fleet in the early years. After many reinforcements from the navy, it has become the huge scale it is now!
Currently, the squadron has six cruisers of various types with over 1,500 tons, including four Guangxi-class armor-protected cruisers with a standard displacement of 4,000 tons, which used to be called battleships.
There are also two ordinary cruisers!
There are nine more thousand-ton frigates.
Some of the above-mentioned ships have been modified with rear-mounted cannons, and even those that have not been modified use front-loaded rifled cannons, which have amazing firepower.
There are also more than 20 offshore patrol ships, shallow water gunboats and other small vessels.
Such a huge squadron can easily crush the maritime power in the entire European region.
For example, the Spanish and Portuguese combined together, together with the professional warships that can be used for naval warfare and armed merchant ships, are estimated to be able to assemble one or two hundred ships, and the total tonnage may reach tens of thousands of tons.
However, if they really came out to fight the 76th Squadron, they would probably be sunk one after another without even scratching the surface of the Tang Navy.
With sails, wooden ships and smoothbore cannons, this fleet, which was still at the level of the Middle Ages, could never be the opponent of the 76th Squadron.
The pressure in Europe is considered acceptable for the rest of the world. In other places, the Tang Navy can only station a few cruisers and frigates for daily patrols.
Most of the time I was chasing pirates, but I never considered fighting the indigenous navy, because those indigenous people didn't have a navy at all!
You can imagine how little pressure the Navy is under!
They are so small that they themselves are embarrassed to ask for too much military expenses.
The navy bosses maintain a low-key development, unlike those idiots in the army who are still pretending to be cool after all these years. Isn't that bad luck now?
So now that there is a little less military spending, the Navy says there is no problem. At worst, it will slow down the construction time of battleships and armored cruisers, and there is no rush to use them anyway.
The 10,000-ton battleships and 300-millimeter cannons used to support the facade are already behind us. Nowadays, the navy is not so obsessed with 10,000-ton giant ships. Those things are expensive to build, troublesome to maintain, and expensive to use.
Because it is too expensive to use, the Banten, which is now in service with the Navy, has not even been to the ocean. The farthest place it has been to is a trip to Malacca. As for the Indian Ocean, the depths of the Pacific Ocean or even the Atlantic Ocean.
.
The Navy would be crazy to drive such a big thing of more than 12,000 tons out so far.
Let’s not talk about what to do if we encounter wind and sink along the way.
Moreover, such an expensive gadget has a lot of sophisticated equipment. If it goes overseas and encounters some kind of malfunction, there won’t even be a place to repair it.
The Bandan spends most of its time patrolling and exhibiting at several major ports in the country!
Go to Guangzhou for a tour, and then open it to receive tourists and display the navy's big toys to the public.
Then go to Shanghai, which is also open to tourists, and fire a few cannons to tell the people of the empire that our warships are still very powerful.
Then I go to Tianjin or other places for a run. Basically, a year has passed like this.
In fact, it's not just the Banten. The 10,000-ton battleship Luzon in front of it, plus the 7,000-ton Guangdong, basically stay on the mainland. Their biggest task is to serve as a museum, and then go to various ports.
The city is parked for tourists to enjoy.
The battleships that the Navy spent huge sums of money to build eventually turned into mobile museums. This sounds ridiculous, but this is the reality.
In fact, not only in the Tang Dynasty in this era, but also in the peace period of later generations, large warships from various countries were basically used as mascots and the life of museums.
Without a war, these large warships would naturally have no use.
But why continue to build and maintain the size of the fleet?
Naturally, this is just a precaution.
The navy is a very special branch of the military. It cannot be done quickly. It is impossible to say that you are going to fight this year and then start building warships.
If that's the case, maybe the war is over and your battleship hasn't been built yet.
Therefore, it is necessary to maintain a fleet of considerable size before the war.
The Tang Navy is doing this kind of thing now.
Enemies don't exist now. If they do exist, they are just those damn Army bumpkins.
However, the meager army was not worthy of the Tang Navy's massive deployment. The reason why the Tang Navy insisted on maintaining a strong navy was to deal with unknown threats in the future.