Chapter 118 : Power Unknown, Stronger When Met with Strength
Chapter 118: Power Unknown, Stronger When Met with Strength
If industry existed only for the sake of the military, then everything would have been meaningless.
On the military side, the Seris Federation not only reequipped with entirely new heavy weapons, it also introduced heavy-armored mech-warriors, the first batch of tanks, large transport aircraft, and giant airships.
With rapid military development, second-tier technologies could naturally be devolved to private enterprises.
And the most eye-catching of all was the thing Mitia had loved most in her previous life: 【walk-behind tractor】!
The manufacturing difficulty of hand-cranked tractors was practically nil; because they were single-cylinder, their parts were simple and easy to repair, making them farmers’ good helpers.
As the saying went: “Diesel single-cylinder — power unknown; stronger when met with strength.”
There was nothing it could not pull, only things you dared not pull.
Although it was a bit bulky and crude, the simpler it was the more suitable it became for farmers to use, and the ease of making single-cylinder diesel engines meant the technology could be handed down to township factories, further lowering costs.
The walk-behind type could transport; converting it into a tractor-head configuration would allow it to assist with mechanized transplanting, seedbed laying, and plowing. Paired with small 【Cat-type All-terrain Vehicles】, the vast plains and muddy fields of the Seris Federation could fully realize large-scale mechanized planting.
Plains occupied a not-insignificant portion of the Seris Federation’s territory; because of its connection to the sea, rainfall was generally abundant, and most regions’ soils contained high moisture — drought was an extremely low-probability event.
So after Mitia rose to power, aside from the central regions that planted wheat, other regions were converted to rice cultivation.
The first batch of seeds had been imported from states on the main continent — superior varieties that had been ripened and iterated by the elves — and for the Federation at this point, food basically ceased to be a problem.
The real issue was how to cultivate all the arable land within the territory, so aside from rice, Seris also vigorously promoted the planting of fruits and vegetables to further enrich people’s tables.
To achieve large-scale planting, the production and use of machinery had to keep pace; otherwise planting would lag and land reclamation would lose its meaning.
Regarding land-related interests, Mitia strictly forbade other groups from intervening, providing farmers with a route through agricultural association collectives where people pooled funds to contract cultivation.
The current policy allowed rural-registered citizens involved in planting and reclamation to sign targeted agricultural loans with the Federal Bank, funneling money into their village’s agricultural association.
The association’s capital would purchase agricultural machinery and seeds, carrying out large-scale reclamation and planting on nearby wasteland; profits would then be distributed according to each household’s contribution.
To support rural farmers’ incomes, the Federal Bank standardized the loan amounts for farmers—any farmer with household registration qualified to apply.
Inspection teams would periodically visit the countryside to ensure the special funds were used for their intended purpose.
Honestly, Mitia had been prepared for the policy to cost a fair amount of money—“selling the offspring and the grandfather’s land without a twinge” wasn’t a phrase she used lightly.
But there was no other way: one could not negate an entire policy’s benefit to a group because of some low-probability events. If even half the villages in a town could lift themselves out of poverty through this, the money would not have been lost in vain.
“Fire!”
【Boom!】
Watching the new tanks below conduct various tests, Mitia stroked her chin and looked at them; she felt as if she had seen this silhouette somewhere before.
Hmm... a bit like Xie Mantou? Only two sizes smaller...
Being two sizes smaller was really unavoidable — under current conditions it was impossible to get a single engine to reach five hundred horsepower; even if radial engines could be stacked, that still wouldn’t do.
Stacking two four-cylinder engines into an eight-cylinder was already absurd; stack any higher and it would become a nightmare for the repair crews.
And to be frank, she didn’t like the radial engine design philosophy; using it now was simply a matter of necessity.
In her view, tanks were meant for swarm tactics in this world, so their parts should be easy to manufacture, highly standardized, and easy to maintain. At least that was how she positioned light and medium tanks.
If something much fiercer was needed, she wouldn’t waste time on this little thing with a 75mm main gun.
Still, something was better than nothing — a 16-ton curb weight was roughly equivalent to the light tanks of her previous life; once engine efficiency improved, scaling it up a couple of sizes would make it a medium tank, which was convenient.
For now, it would be treated as an experiment to see whether light tanks were useful in this world.
The little vehicle now sprinting on the test track had changed a lot from the experimental prototype and had gradually begun to approach the production model.
Crew was certified at five members: radio operator, driver, gunner, loader, and commander.
The frontal armor had been changed to sloped armor; the turret was round like a bun; the two machine-gun configuration had been changed to three. Besides the forward radio operator’s gun, there was a coaxial machine gun beside the main barrel.
The third machine gun was mounted at the rear of the turret and was assigned to the infantry riding with the vehicle as a supplementary fire point.
The first two were new Hotchkiss-type machine guns — though their rate of fire was lower, they offered good sustained fire and were less prone to jamming, making them suitable for tanks to clear obstacles.
The rear one was a water-cooled Maxim heavy machine gun taken from semi-retired 12.7 black-powder rifle ammunition stock.
The War Department thought it a shame to give all of those to second-line units, so it was perfect to repurpose them as infantry support fire and burn through the ammo stocks.
Mitia’s directive to simplify components had been well executed: the manufacturing difficulty of most of this tank’s parts had been greatly reduced; high-precision machine tools were no longer necessary.
Give the blueprints to local factories and most of them could produce one or two parts; then transport the parts to one place for assembly.
Especially its chassis with six pairs of road wheels — the engineers were nearly driven to tearing their hair out by Mitia’s insistence on simplification, simplification, and more simplification, continuously optimizing the chassis design.
It was essentially the same technological path as the earlier armored tracked vehicle: a basic universal chassis with manufacturing difficulty minimized.
Then, in wartime, the vehicle could be modularly modified according to the enemy’s characteristics and the environment, achieving multi-role flexibility.
The earlier tracked armored vehicle chassis had been used from the Astal era through the founding of the Seris Federation and was still in service, occupying a crucial tactical position.
Mitia had already seen local units cram a howitzer into a tracked vehicle compartment... that was the benefit of an excellent universal chassis.
Upgrades to it had mostly been engine swaps; the hull frame still did not feel obsolete — truly cost-effective.
Now that the new tank had tasted success, the War Department and Mitia naturally wanted to follow this design philosophy.
The cockpit interior had also been roughly changed to follow automobile layouts to reduce the learning curve for tank crews.
As for shell feeding... for now it still relied on the loader’s physical strength; a fully or semi-automatic loading mechanism was truly not something this ten-odd-ton little fellow could be expected to carry.