Heavy armored infantry or heavy infantry, in addition to covering the soldiers with excellent armor with high coverage, pay more attention to dense formation coordinated combat, which is definitely not new in the world.

When the Great Yue Dynasty was established, it lacked war horses, so it focused on the development of heavily armored infantry.

At this time, the two troops of Western Qin, Dongchuan, Huaidong and Huaixi were all built on the basis of the former Imperial Army and the Western Army. Their elite combat power was basically heavy armored infantry.

The dazzling achievements of several early days of the rise of Chushan can also be said to be a model of heavy-armored infantry assault operations.

However, in the fall of Hehuai and other places, facing the Chihu cavalry with strong combat power and extremely mobile power, Chushan focused on developing light armor infantry tactics such as shield vehicles that facilitate flexible maneuvering on the battlefield.

Even the selection army, which concentrates the limited elites to develop, sometimes dismounts and fights, and still falls into the category of heavy infantry, but such combat opportunities are rare.

Of course, one of the most critical reasons is that Chushan has risen too fast, and Chushan’s excellent armor supply can no longer keep up with the pace of military expansion.

Even though Xu Huai attached great importance to the forging and casting of soldiers and armor, and his ability to prepare soldiers and armor was the first among the various routes, Chu Shan was too embarrassed in the early stage and had to trade a considerable portion of the prepared soldiers and armor for scarce grain, salt cloth horse herbs and other materials.

Even though Chushan has built a total of nearly 30,000 sets of armor and scale armor for equipment battalions over the years, the total scale of Chushan's troops has expanded rapidly in recent years, the losses of the war are also astonishing. At this time, the lieutenant generals and soldiers equipped them mainly with leather armor seized from many victories in recent years and other old armors.

This also destined that Chushan would develop light armor infantry tactics with light combat equipment such as fine iron shield vehicles as the core in the early stage, which would be more economical and practical and more in line with Chushan's reality.

However, the situation and environment on the battlefield are not static.

As the scale of the war expands and the defense line between the two sides in the confrontation buffer zone is gradually improved, the mobility of the soldiers and horses has been greatly weakened. At this time, who can master the dominance of the local battlefield can often better determine the direction of victory or defeat.

For example, both sides invested 500,000 and 600,000 troops on the Rucai battlefield at this time, and both sides were trying every means to build a solid dockyard by the mountains and rivers. It was already very small to rely on mobile combat or rely entirely on strategy to win in a short period of time.

At this time, Jingxiang needed to develop heavy infantry as the core of the entire army, enhance its dominance over the battlefield, and cooperate with cavalry and flexible light armored infantry to assist in flanking operations, which is at least more in line with the actual situation of confrontation battlefields in Guangcheng, Xiangcheng and other places.

The development of heavy infantry will definitely not be able to spread the entire army at once.

Even though the new turbines and hydraulic forging hammers have been put into use one after another, the preparation ability of the excellent armor has been improved in a leapfrog manner, the gap is even greater in a short period of time, and many things still have to be done step by step.

On the one hand, Chen Zixiao and Wang Xian are currently in the Guangcheng and Xiangcheng battlefields, and on the other hand, the Department of the China Construction will concentrate some of the heavy armor of the new army in the next stage to give priority to equip some elite battle camps.

Now I will give Xu Xian a direct commander of the heavy armored infantry battalion.

Of course, heavy infantry is not a rare thing, and the Department of Technology is very clear about its advantages and disadvantages.

Taking the armor currently equipped by Jianrui of the front-selected army as the standard, the heavy infantry will bear more than 80 kilograms of armed forces; this is because the level of Jingxiang armor is superb, and the weight of the armor has been greatly reduced, but this still greatly weakens the maneuverability of the heavy infantry on the battlefield, and at the same time, the terrain requirements for the passages entering and leaving the battlefield are also extremely high. Even the elite soldiers cannot expect them to be carrying nearly 100 kilograms of weight, and they can maintain their strong combat effectiveness after climbing more than ten miles of dangerous slopes or muddy narrow paths.

This is also an important reason why Xu Huai decided to give priority to building an iron bridge above the Majian River.

If the enemy troops in Heluo did not retreat from the Guangcheng front after the Spring Festival, the main battlefield where the two sides confronted each other would be concentrated in a flat area of ​​more than ten or twenty miles deep north of the Guangcheng main village.

Ruzhou placed the most elite heavy-armored infantry in the east bank camp. Every time he entered the west bank to prepare for war or fight, he needed to build a spacious passage across the Majian River that was not easy to destroy and destroy for the enemy.

In the next few years, Rucai and other places will focus on internal defense. In order to fully utilize the advantages of heavy armored infantry and strengthen their dominance over the battlefield, and to closely connect Guangcheng with Xiangcheng's defense line and facilitate the rapid support of heavy armored infantry in the two defense areas, Xu Huai plans to further renovate the post road north of the North Army and run through the entire Ruzhou Basin. In addition to widening the post road and laying gravel roadbeds, there is also an iron bridge to replace the wooden bridge that is easily destroyed by mountain torrents and the floating bridge that needs to be removed in the flood season.

"The Majian Bridge needs to build a single-span iron bridge with a diameter of more than 12 meters. Can the construction institute be confident enough?" Wang Ju didn't care much about the details before. This time he led the armed merchant group to the south for nearly a year before returning. At this time, he heard Xu Huai tell the next stage of the combat deployment and the direction of the development of the military, and he couldn't help but wonder whether the construction of such a long-span iron bridge would be too difficult.

In addition, in Ruzhou, it originates from Jishan and flows south into the North Rhine Water. There are about seven or eight tributary streams with a scale of similar to the Majian River. Other large and small canals are characterized by large terrain gaps after the flood season, short processes, and strong water trends.

Even if a larger iron bridge was not built on the Beijun River, Lishui, and Wujun River, which was more than thirty or forty meters wide, the post road north of Ruzhou was completely opened with an iron bridge and covered with gravel roadbeds to facilitate the transfer of the Jiabuying between Guangcheng and Xiangcheng, and the Rucai defense zone was more closely combined, which Wang Ju seemed unimaginable.

Of course, the technology of building stone arch bridges with a single span of more than ten feet was long in the world. However, including mining quarries, the construction period was too long and the cost was extremely expensive, so we could not consider it at this time.

"The Construction Institute has long been able to cast arch ribs with a single branch weighing more than 6,000 kilograms and a length of more than 4 zhang. The arch ribs are also the components with the largest weight and relatively high requirements. The Construction Institute has built the first long-span iron bridge in Longtan Ridge before the New Year. It has been initially verified that multiple sections of arch ribs are riveted and assembled, and the bearing capacity is far above ordinary wooden bridges. The Majian River iron bridge is no longer technically difficult," said Xu Huai. "In terms of its cost, the Majian River iron bridge consumes about one million kilograms of iron material, and the manufacturing department can bear it at this time. Not to mention that the total weight of ten thousand sets of armor is only 60,000 to 700,000 kilograms, but it is enough to build dozens of small and medium-sized iron bridges..."

The armor and scale armor need to be repeatedly forged and formed, and must be quenched, water retardant, and must be pruned. The depth of effort is required. Of course, the ability of molded components that are not cast in one-time is comparable - this cannot be simply compared with the amount of iron consumed.

Shi Zhen also gave Wang Ju the specific budget for the Majian River iron bridge was about 20,000 guan. The construction cost was much more expensive than that of ordinary wooden bridges, but it was within the scope of the manufacturing department.

Wang Ju asked with some concern: "Even if we can build it, will our strength be exposed too early before the enemy?"

"I want to hide my weakness, but it's useless," Xu Huai shook his head and smiled bitterly, "Wulu Lie is sure to spend time with us in the middle. We are now forced to ask them to give up this idea as soon as possible! Another one is that the iron made by Yunyang must be used!"

The core factor that can truly promote the continuous advancement of technology is by no means a few simple military orders, but a growing demand.

Yunyang Iron Farm formed an annual output of 25 million jin at the end of last year. All smelting furnaces were renovated this year, and the annual output of 40 million jin will be reached.

However, it takes a process to expand the iron material trade outside Beijing and Xiang.

Currently, including traditional iron tools, agricultural tools, and military armor, plus direct iron materials export, Jingxiang is expected to export about 20 million kilograms of iron materials to the outside world this year, which is an unimaginable number before.

This is mainly due to the devastating destruction of iron smelting in Jingnan, Huainan, Huainong and other places in the war. No matter how the monarchs and ministers in the court rejected Jingxiang's commercial goods, as long as they could not be issued publicly, the iron materials needed in these areas could only be purchased from the outside for the time being, and the demand was suddenly occupied by all the Chushan iron produced by Jingxiang.

Even if the Huainan commander's placing a pacification envoy had to pinch his nose and buy iron bars produced in Jingxiang, and forge the armor of the army.

It's so damn good. The iron quality is so good.

If people organized to mine and smelter in Huainan and other places, the amount of money and grain consumed by Huainan might not produce such good iron; not to mention that the newly organized mining and smelter in iron is a complicated process.

?????????????????? However, except for Jingnan, Huainan, Huaindong and other places, the official and Minye in other regions have a certain scale and have always occupied the local market.

Considering the closed nature of the world's commercial trade, Jingxiang's iron materials are cheap and good, and it takes a relatively long process to capture these areas.

Under this situation, if the iron industry in Yunyang and other places continues to flourish, Jingxiang needs to consume a large amount of iron material to ensure that the iron field in Yunyang and other places will not have serious backlogs.

Otherwise, if we spend so much effort to mine and smelize iron, the iron ingots will eventually accumulate in the warehouse like hills. How can we call thousands of craftsmen, craftsmen, and the spirit of studying technology?

The current annual demand for iron materials is about 14 million jin for traditional agricultural tools, iron tools and armor casting on Jingxiang Road; even if the casting of new equipment such as water turbines is included, the annual demand for iron materials will only be added for 200 million jin.

The scale of demand is already three or four times that of the Tianxuan period.

This is mainly caused by the large-scale labor and construction of villages, dams, city walls, post roads and other construction matters promoted by the General Office in prefectures and counties.

However, there is still a huge gap between supply and demand that needs to be filled.

The current method is to build defense lines and camps, and to use angle iron on a large scale, and to replace wood with industrial iron.

Because people in the world are accustomed to cooking with firewood and keeping warm, Ruzhou and other countries burned charcoal to make porcelain on a large scale in their early years, the jungles that are prone to mining in the surrounding areas have long been cut down.

Therefore, in Guangcheng and other places, the cost of replacing wood with angle iron and technical iron is still advantageous.

Another thing is that Xu Huai had intentionally built some small iron bridges very early, and proposed to explore the casting and construction of long span medium iron bridges two years ago—

The durability and maintenance of a long-span iron bridge may be much worse than that of a stone arch bridge, but whether it is construction difficulty or cost, it is much lower than that of a stone arch bridge.

Comprehensively, the iron bridge is located between the stone arch bridge and the wooden arch bridge in all aspects.

In this way, the demand for iron materials has surged to a level that is afraid of being cheap enough.
Chapter completed!