Chapter 832 Weapons Reserve Plan

After the funeral of Princess Louise, Arthur was in a very heavy mood.

But at this time, there were obviously more important things for Arthur to do, and the busy state affairs made Arthur have no time to immerse himself in personal grief.

Because of the funeral of his mother Princess Louise, Arthur's original plan to go to Douglas Aircraft Company and Boeing was postponed for several months.

Originally, the latest transport aircraft in Australasia could be seen at the beginning of the year, but now it can only wait until March.

Before March, Arthur held a cabinet meeting and officially determined the main direction of the development of the Australasia Empire in 1935, which was to continuously expand the number of weapons and strategic materials.

At the end of February, Arthur agreed to the request of the Ministry of Defense, and the military factory began to produce weapons and equipment in an all-round way.

In the strategic reserve of weapons and equipment, Arthur specifically asked for the weapons warehouse of the Ministry of Defense. So far, the weapons warehouse has a total of 1.557 million rifles, 14,000 machine guns, 12,000 artillery of various types, 750 million bullets, and 25 million artillery shells.

In addition, in terms of heavy weapons, the weapons warehouse has 420 tanks, 780 aircraft and matching weapons and ammunition.

The reserves of these weapons and ammunition are completely sufficient for peacetime, and can even support a medium-sized war.

But for now, the reserves of these weapons and equipment are far from enough. According to Arthur's request, the Ministry of Defense has greatly increased the number of reserves of all weapons in the request submitted to the cabinet government.

According to the plan, the Ministry of Defense will increase the number of light weapons to at least 5 million rifles, 100,000 machine guns, 50,000 artillery pieces of various types, 3 billion rounds of bullets and 75 million rounds of artillery shells within two years.

The cabinet was originally hesitant. After all, in order to achieve such a large number of weapons reserves, not only must major military factories across the country enter full production, but even work overtime.

Even the government's finances will be tight for this, and it may even have to think about doing everything possible to raise funds for the purchase of weapons and equipment.

But Arthur will not give the government a chance to refuse. It is very important to reserve weapons and equipment in advance, even if it puts the government's finances in crisis, it is something that must be done.

The good news is that it is relatively easy to collect this money because the financial situation of the Australasian government has always been good.

Moreover, with Arthur's high reputation among the people, as long as the government issues relevant national debts, a large number of people will subscribe to these national debts, which can create a huge source of funds for the government in a short period of time.

According to the government's estimate, more than 40 million people in Australasia can at least subscribe to more than 2 billion Australian dollars in national debts, which is about 5 times the government's annual fiscal revenue.

In addition to the reserve of light weapons, Arthur also has certain requirements for the number of tanks and aircraft reserves.

Within two years, the weapons warehouse of the Ministry of Defense must have at least 2,250 Cromwell I light tanks, 1,550 T-31 medium tanks and 750 T-31A heavy tanks.

The tank reserves alone add up to 4,550 tanks, enough to arm more than a dozen tank divisions.

According to the budget statistics given by the Ministry of Defense, it will cost at least 1 billion Australian dollars to complete the manufacture of these weapons and equipment.

Although it was only the government's fiscal revenue for two years, it was a very risky act for the government to invest heavily in weapons and equipment at this time.

If the war did not break out in two years, it would be a huge loss for Arthur's early stockpiling of weapons.

But Arthur knew that the war was not far away. Arthur even felt that the war would definitely break out within these two years.

If it were not for the purpose of appeasing the people and not to alert the enemy, Arthur would even want to directly transform the country into a military state and enter the maximum military production.

You know, the performance of military weapons production in various countries during World War II was far more exaggerated than the weapons reserve plan currently formulated by Australasia.

In history, the United States produced more than 108,000 tanks and self-propelled artillery, 2,382,300 military vehicles of various types, and 372,000 artillery pieces from 1941 to 1945.

It only took five years, which means that the Americans had to produce at least 20,000 tanks, 400,000 military vehicles and 70,000 artillery pieces every year.

Although this was caused by the excessively abnormal industrial scale of the United States, the weapons production shown by the industrial powers of the same period was not much inferior.

The British produced a total of 47,800 tanks and self-propelled artillery, more than 460,000 military vehicles and 125,000 artillery pieces in World War II.

The Germans produced more than 50,000 tanks, 340,000 military vehicles and nearly 160,000 artillery pieces.

Even the islanders with the weakest industrial foundation produced nearly 5,000 tanks, 60,000 vehicles and 13,000 artillery pieces in World War II.

To put it bluntly, the competition in World War II was actually the industrial strength and comprehensive national strength of various countries. Industrial strength represents the speed at which countries produce weapons, which plays a vital role in the advantage of the front battlefield.

And comprehensive national strength includes a series of factors such as economy, population and others. Only a sufficiently prosperous economy and a large population can support the consumption caused by such exaggerated weapons production.

This is also the reason why the strong countries performed far better than the weak countries in the super war. The weapons and industrial output of the island countries may barely catch up with the European powers, but their fragile economy is destined to make it impossible for them to hold on for too long in the war.

From this point alone, we can also see the current industrial gap between Australasia and the island countries.

After all, it is a pure Western country. Australia was able to obtain strong support from European powers in the early stage. Coupled with the rich domestic mineral resources, the industrial scale and level are not comparable to a small island country.

Since 1932, Arthur has gradually relaxed restrictions on industry. Especially with the completion of the construction of the Broken Hill Industrial Base, Australasia's industrial scale has ushered in a new round of growth.

In 1932, Australasia's annual steel production reached 5.9732 million tons and 10.5721 million tons respectively.

After two years of development, Australasia's annual steel production has exceeded 20 million tons, reaching 6.924 million tons of steel and 13.2546 million tons of pig iron respectively.

The islanders did not see much growth in steel production compared to two years ago.

This also has to mention that Arthur exported a large number of weapons, which slowed down the expansion of the island to a certain extent.

In 1934, the island's annual steel production reached 3.198 million tons, which was less than half of Australasia.

But this is not the island's fault. Australasia's steel production has reached the fourth in the world, second only to the powerful British Empire, Germany, which still has industrial strength, and the Great Lakes Republic, which inherited most of the American industry.

Of course, in terms of steel production, the French and Australasia are still very close. If it were not for the industrial growth caused by Arthur's permission for arms expansion in the past two years, it is probably unknown which industrial scale is larger between France and Australasia.

The result of the industrial gap is that Australasia has completely surpassed the island countries in terms of weapons production.

The islanders only produced 5,000 tanks and 13,300 artillery pieces in World War II. For Australasia, this data can be achieved in just one year.

Even while completing the production of these weapons, Australasia can produce more weapons and equipment, reaching a gap of several times.

Although the amount of weapons and equipment cannot directly determine the outcome of the war, it has a great impact on the outcome of the war.

Moreover, with more advanced and more numerous weapons and equipment, the Australasia army will suffer fewer casualties in the war, and at the same time, it can cause greater casualties to the enemy.

As one rises and the other falls, Australasia's advantage will become greater and greater, which is the real reason why Arthur is confident that he can defeat the island countries.

To be honest, since the demise of the United States, Arthur has no longer worried about the threat of the islanders.

The combat effectiveness of the island army may be at a certain level, but it can no longer pose a great threat to Australasia.

After all, the island country is just a country with a narrow land area and scarce mineral resources. Let alone the burden of a long-term war on the economy, even if it is just a simple competition of resource consumption, the island countries will never be the opponent of Australasia.

Moreover, once the island countries go to war with Australasia, it is equivalent to fighting with the entire Pacific Alliance.

Although these countries in the Pacific Alliance are small countries without much say, a large number of ants can kill an elephant, not to mention these small and medium-sized countries with certain strength.

During the war, Australasia can still have the four major markets of the Philippines, Kalimantan, the United Kingdom of the West Coast and the Kingdom of California, and can even expand its influence to South America across the Pacific Ocean. Its war potential is much greater than that of the island countries.

Facing such a war that is impossible to lose, Arthur's goal from the beginning is the more chaotic situation in Europe.

After signing this weapons and equipment manufacturing plan, Arthur's idea of ​​quickly building the finished sixth-generation military aircraft became more urgent.

Of course, there are also the new generation of transport aircraft reported by Douglas and Boeing, which Arthur also wants to see very much.

Although the reserve plan for weapons and equipment is very comprehensive, there is not much expansion in terms of aircraft. The main reason is that both military and transport aircraft will usher in the next generation of brand-new models.

Arthur still understands the principle of buying new rather than old, not to mention that any performance of the aircraft may determine the victory of the war.

Moreover, the previous generation product of Douglas Aircraft Company was the DC-2 transport aircraft. Arthur is very much looking forward to whether their so-called new generation product is the famous DC-3 transport aircraft in history?

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