The Rise of Australia

What Arthur didn't expect was that not long after the arms trade with the Philippines started, the Australasian arms factory welcomed a new customer.

These guests are from East Asia and are not far away from the island countries. The purpose of their coming is also very simple, which is to purchase Australasian arms and weapons and corresponding production technology.

East Asia is an extremely huge market, and there is a lot of cooperation with Australasia in food, meat, and even arms.

Moreover, the arms trade is beneficial to Australasia, so it is naturally impossible for Arthur to refuse this order that comes to his door.

In the end, the customer signed a contract with Australasia for up to 300,000 rifles, 100 million rounds of ammunition, 200 heavy machine guns, 150 M18s, 120 CA-1-37mm machine guns and 15 Krupp 105mm Howitzer orders, and corresponding matching machine gun bullets and artillery shells.

The other party wanted to buy a production line for rifles and bullets. Arthur thought for a long time and sold Gew to them at a price slightly higher than the cost price, as well as the corresponding bullet production line.

In addition, the AS-18 was already very backward and was an obsolete product in Australasia. Arthur regarded it as a favor and sold it to the other party at cost price.

This large arms trade earned the Royal Ordnance Factory 2 million Australian dollars in revenue, which was considered a win-win for both parties.

In addition to these arms trade, the other party even proposed to purchase Australasian tanks and aircraft, and use these weapons and equipment to rearm the Australian armorers.

The concept of Australian Mechanics actually appeared more than ten years ago, when the so-called Qing Dynasty had not yet perished.

However, that army only had weapons and equipment from Australasia, and its soul was still that backward army.

When the other party proposed to rebuild the Australian Arms Division, it was obvious that they wanted to invite Australasian military experts as guidance and learn the combat capabilities of the Australasian Army.

Arthur was not surprised by this, and was even willing to have good relations with this country.

Firstly, it can avoid sanctions from the river crab master, and secondly, it can also find a reliable market for future economic crises.

Moreover, the expansion plan of the island country will also be severely restricted. A more powerful opponent can completely delay the island country in Asia.

Besides, Australasia did not suffer any losses from this trade, and everything that should be earned was earned. Who would refuse a large deal?

The tanks and aircraft sold by Australasia are all products of the first generation. They are already backward for who knows how many generations. Australasia itself does not have much money to sell. All it has is endless funds. income.

Amid everyone's laughter, a large arms trade order was confirmed, which also made the experts at the arms factory smile, because they had another large amount of research funds to improve Australasian weapons.

1A testing site on the outskirts of the military factory.

This was an arms test carefully prepared by the Royal Arsenal, which not only invited important officials from the military and Ministry of Defense, but also invited Arthur to personally inspect it.

The reason for such a large-scale mobilization of troops is that the Royal Arsenal has made a lot of progress in military technology, and the corresponding military weapons have also been improved to a certain extent.

The first is the machine gun.

Before World War I, the most famous one was the Maxim heavy machine gun, which also performed quite well in World War I.

However, the Maxim heavy machine gun requires several people to control it, and it is also a burden for transportation when transferred. Generally speaking, it has excellent performance but is inconvenient.

This also gave experts at the military factory an idea. If they could retain the firepower of the machine gun as much as possible, while reducing the weight of the machine gun, and turning the machine gun into a weapon that can be controlled and transported by one or two people, logistics would be greatly reduced. pressure?

Even such improved machine guns can be equipped with large-scale troops. Equipping machine guns to single-level combat units based on squads can also greatly enhance the firepower of the Australasian army.

Under such conjecture, military industry experts began vigorous research and development of light machine guns.

Compared with heavy machine guns, light machine guns pay more attention to flexibility and portability, so the entire concept of machine guns needs to be changed.

The first is the ammunition supply method. Compared with the bag ammunition chain used in heavy machine guns, designing a magazine that is portable, effective, and easy to replace is the best choice for light machine guns.

As a well-known expert in small arms shooting, Browning conducted a large number of experiments with the support of Arthur, and finally designed a disc magazine specializing in light machine guns. At the cost of slightly affecting the machine gunner's sight, Browning successfully In exchange for a full 36 rounds of ammunition.

This improved and redesigned light machine gun was named Browning-1 gas-guided light machine gun by the military factory, or BLN-1 machine gun for short.

Although the ammunition storage capacity is much larger than that of a rifle, compared to a heavy machine gun using a bullet chain, only 3 undoubtedly greatly reduces the firepower of the machine gun.

Although it is easy to carry, it lags far behind the role of heavy machine guns in positional battles, and does not meet Browning's expectations of taking into account the firepower of heavy machine guns.

Therefore, on this basis, Browning improved the ammunition supply method and developed a light machine gun that used a bullet belt to feed ammunition, and named it the BLN-2 machine gun.

From the appearance point of view, there is not much difference, that is, the disc-type magazine is canceled and a bullet chain is used instead.

Belt feeding can bring about earth-shaking changes in the firepower of the BLN-2 machine gun, and its firepower can far exceed that of the BLN-1 machine gun.

The only drawback is that, because it is still a light machine gun design in general, if it is fired for a long time, the barrel will be overheated, or even the entire machine gun will explode.

However, responding to enemy strafing over a large area for a long time and suppressing the firepower of the entire group army are the tasks of heavy machine guns. Light machine guns are mainly responsible for the firepower output of small-scale armies, and generally there will be no long-term strafing.

It is impossible to completely replace heavy machine guns with light machine guns. These two machine gun designs have their own application scenarios, but there is no doubt that they can greatly enrich Australasia's weapon system.

Today's first test is the test of these two new machine guns.

In fact, it is more of a test than a display for Arthur and senior military officials.

Because as early as during the military factory testing period, extensive experiments were conducted on the performance of these two machine guns, and it was already possible to ensure that there would be basically no problems, so senior military officials and Arthur were officially invited to watch.

Otherwise, Arthur would not have come to watch an unnecessary test in person for a machine gun that had not yet been tested.

After watching the entire machine gun test, including Arthur, the advantages and disadvantages of the two new machine guns were already very clear.

The overall design of the BLN-1 machine gun is very light, even weighing less than ten kilograms, and a soldier can easily carry it.

But the disadvantage is also obvious, because after only 3 bursts of rapid shooting, the magazine must be replaced.

In combat, machine guns are a very powerful and reliable source of firepower. The interruption of machine gun firepower caused by magazine replacement is a serious problem in combat.

Minister Raul also gave his own suggestion, which is to try to match magazines with different ammunition loads to avoid the enemy's prejudgment about changing the magazine of the machine gun after gaining experience.

Of course, this still requires the machine gunner to make certain changes based on the actual situation. In some cases, it is not the best situation to change the magazine after firing the bullet.

Although this will reduce the pressure on logistics, for war, it will make it easier for the enemy to predict the time to change the magazine.

Making the time to change the magazine uncertain will prevent the enemy from easily predicting the time to change the magazine, and the presence of the machine gun will also make the enemy feel fearful.

After all, as long as you don't know whether there are bullets, then the enemy has bullets. In addition to fire suppression, the machine gun's deterrence is also very important.

The BLN-2 machine gun has significantly improved this shortcoming. The chain-type ammunition supply method greatly reduces the need for magazine replacement of the BLN-2 machine gun, and the firepower is not easily interrupted.

However, long-term strafing is a burden on the design of the light machine gun. Although it has a chain-type ammunition supply design, the machine gunner using this machine gun must be reminded not to fire for a long time, and to use burst firing as much as possible.

Although the ammunition belt supply enhances the firepower of the light machine gun, the portability of the entire machine gun is also greatly reduced.

Generally speaking, these two types of machine guns and heavy machine guns can be regarded as light machine guns, medium machine guns and heavy machine guns respectively.

The designs of these three machine guns vary in their application fields, but they all play a vital role.

Ministers Arthur and Raul, including many senior military officials, are very satisfied with the performance of these two new machine guns.

In particular, the portability of the light machine gun means that the machine gun can be equipped with squad-based combat units, greatly enhancing the firepower of the Australasian army.

Especially when some heavy machine guns are not easy to carry, equipping a large number of light machine guns can ensure that the firepower of the army will not be greatly reduced, and in some cases can completely influence the situation of the war.

If some raids in World War I could carry a large number of light machine guns, the casualties of the army could be reduced as much as possible.

And light machine guns are easier to equip on aircraft, tanks and cars as secondary weapons options for these weapons.

After confirming that both types of machine guns could be mass-produced, Minister Raul made a prompt decision to equip the Australasian army with light weapons in squad units, and immediately began large-scale procurement of light machine guns, striving to produce them in the shortest possible time. , to strengthen the firepower of the Australasian army.

Fortunately, the Ministry of National Defense has just obtained a sum of 47 million Australian dollars in funding from Arthur. There is no problem in placing the order for this light machine gun, and Minister Raul does not feel any distress.

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