The more Jiang Chen looked at the 20-meter-long cannon, the more he liked it.
Although the actual combat value of this pure kinetic weapon in a space battle with a scale of tens of thousands of kilometers was still uncertain, giant cannons were a man's romance! The scene of tens of thousands of cannons firing at the same time was exciting.
Now that there was a cannon, the giant ship would be far away.
"Can I test it?" Jiang Chen looked at Ling Tao.
"Of course! I'll show you its power now. " Ling Tao took off the walkie-talkie on his shoulder and gave a few instructions to the engineers of the institute. Soon, the 20-meter-long cannon was suspended by the robotic arm and slowly lifted half a meter off the ground.
Ling Tao raised his hand, extended his finger, and tapped a few times on the touchpad. Soon, the door of the warehouse where the electromagnetic pulse cannon was stored was closed and locked. The sprinklers embedded in the ceiling began to throw dry ice into the warehouse behind the protective wall. At the same time, more than a dozen large vacuum pumps in the laboratory began to work.
Accompanied by the enchanting smoke, the warehouse where the cannon was located was quickly vacuumed.
Pieces of "steel plates" a few centimeters thick, moved by the robotic arm, were slowly placed in the slot 500 meters in front of the electromagnetic pulse cannon and stacked vertically to form a steel wall. However, it was not over. When the steel plates were stacked to a thickness of more than five meters, a concrete wall more than ten meters thick rose behind the steel plates.
The size of the entire vacuum laboratory was limited after all, and it could only test up to five hundred meters. However, for weapons used in space, there was not much difference between five hundred meters and five kilometers. After all, there was no air resistance in the universe, so there was no need to consider kinetic energy attenuation.
The cannon pointed at the five-meter-thick "steel plate", and the capacitor in the cannon began to charge. The mouth of the cannon even had a faint blue arc leaking out.
When everything was ready, Ling Tao looked at Jiang Chen and smiled. He respectfully gestured to the touchpad and said.
"Just press the red launch button."
Following Ling Tao's suggestion, Jiang Chen took two steps forward, looked at the cannon inside the wall, and pressed the red button.
There was no warning.
The blue electric arc suddenly flashed, and the dazzling white light flashed. The 50-kilogram bomb hit the steel plate at the same time, followed by the tremor of the earth and the roar from the soles of their feet.
"…"
Simple words could not describe the shock in Jiang Chen's heart.
Almost as soon as he came back to his senses, a fracture as thick as a thigh was engraved on the steel plate, and this steel wall that was made up of dozens of steel plates had been blasted into a "V" shape on the side.
As for the concrete behind the steel, half of it had been shattered …
Because he had seen it many times, Ling Tao did not have much of a reaction.
"The cannon barrel can fire a maximum of fifty kilograms, and in theory, it can fire nine rounds per minute. Do you still want to test the next round?"
"No need, I've seen its power." Jiang Chen shook his head.
“OK”
Nodding, Ling Tao stepped forward and tapped a few times on the touchpad. After the overflowing electrical energy in the turret's high-energy capacitor was slowly released, he immediately turned off the turret's power. The blue arc of light also dimmed and eventually disappeared.
After a long time, Jiang Chen ended the silence and said emotionally, "… I'm thinking now, if this thing is placed in the Pacific Ocean, which warship can resist it?"
"No warship can carry this kind of turret." Ling Tao thought that his boss really had such a plan, so he quickly explained to him, "Now the electromagnetic pulse cannon on the Guardian-class is strong enough. No warship armor can take a shot and come out unscathed —"
"I know." Jiang Chen waved his hand. "I'm just saying. How can I really use a cannon to kill mosquitoes?"
Looking at the turret, Jiang Chen paused for a moment, then continued to ask, "How much does such a turret cost?"
"If you ignore the research and development cost, the cost of this prototype is about one billion Xin New Dollars."
One billion Xin New Dollars!
When Jiang Chen heard this number, even as a major shareholder of the Xin Reserve, he was speechless.
Even if large-scale production could reduce the cost by half, it would still be 500 million Xin New Dollars. If hundreds of electromagnetic pulse cannons were to be installed on warships, wouldn't the Earth Defense Alliance go bankrupt?
Seeing the expression on Jiang Chen's face, Ling Tao, who vaguely guessed something, quickly explained.
"The reason why it's so expensive is mainly because of the manufacturing process. Many parts can't be produced with the current processing technology, and only industrial-grade 3D printers can be used. When the production technology improves, this turret will definitely not be so expensive. "
When Jiang Chen heard this, he finally felt better.
In a few days, the Earth Defense Alliance Committee would begin again, and the content of the next meeting would be about which ship type should be used for the first million-ton interstellar warship.
In fact, no matter what type of warship it was, conventional weapons such as electromagnetic pulse cannons were indispensable. Therefore, no matter what the final result of the discussion was, Future Military's order was inevitable. After all, Future Group's technological advantage in electromagnetic pulse cannons was obvious to the world.
It was just that the cost of nearly one billion was too expensive.
Jiang Chen asked himself, if he was a member of the committee, he would not easily compromise on the budget.
After all, the Earth Defense Alliance was not founded by him. Each member state contributed according to the percentage of GDP and population weight. Hua alone spent three trillion dollars a year! How could this money be easily earned by companies in other countries?
As the executive officer, he had decision-making power, but the committee also had veto power, voting power, and budget review power.
When Jiang Chen thought of this, he began to have a headache.
How should I fool those committee members?
They don't seem to be easy to fool …
…
As August approached, the expectation of the 2019 Asia-Pacific joint military exercise gradually heated up. However, Celestial Trade's reaction was quite calm, as if it did not take the aircraft carrier battle group parked at the door seriously.
At an altitude of thirty-six thousand kilometers, shuttle-shaped aircrafts were flying among the iron skeletons that were thousands of meters long. Like silver needles with wires, they were weaving the future of the Earth civilization in the bouncing electric sparks.
It was the second shipyard of Celestial Trade, and the current progress of the project was only 15%.
The new shipyard, covering an area of hundreds of acres and costing nearly 20 billion Xin New Dollars, was like a satellite city suspended beside Celestial City, connected by a graphene track to the space elevator.
Six axles about three kilometers long suspended parallel in the synchronous orbit, connected by a titanium alloy skeleton, like a narrow and hollow hexagonal prism, outlined the outline of the entire shipyard.
Nearly a thousand engineering robots that had participated in the construction of the space elevator, with the help of neural access technology, were remotely controlled by human engineers to weld pieces of alloy steel plates to the skeleton. The shuttle-shaped aircraft traveled through the construction site, sending materials and construction equipment to the hands of engineering robots.
In the future, all warships of Celestial Trade and the Earth Defense Alliance above 500,000 tons would be produced by this new shipyard.
Regarding the first order of this shipyard, the Earth Defense Alliance had held more than a dozen meetings in a row, but they still did not reach a conclusion. Some proposed to develop missile ships, and some proposed to prioritize the development of aircraft carriers and unmanned carrier-based aircraft …
The last person to end the debate was a representative from Hua named Lu Hao.
At the 17th meeting, the "functional ship theory" he proposed was approved by most members.
"It is undoubtedly ridiculous to use 19th-century artillery to fight 20th-century battleships, but 19th-century battleships can still play a role on the battlefield after being modified with 20th-century artillery systems. Instead of debating whether to use bows and arrows or spears to arm our ships, it is better to build the ships first, and then consider what weapons to install on them. "
The choice of weapons could be considered later, and the first thing to do was to produce a bare ship with room for modification. Even if the bare ship was eventually eliminated with the innovation of shipbuilding technology, it could be converted into an engineering ship at a lower cost and play a role in the field of infrastructure.
Lu Hao's proposal also made Jiang Chen feel relieved.
At least for now, he didn't have to worry about how to convince the committee to buy a billion Xin New dollars cannon.
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