Empire Rising: Spain

When using a long magazine with ten rounds, the rifle’s theoretical maximum firing rate can exceed 30 rounds per minute. As long as the soldiers are familiar with the process of changing magazines and firing, achieving this rate of fire is absolutely possible," Maxim introduced with a smile.

The design of both long and short magazines is actually intended to respond to different logistical circumstances.

When logistics are relatively abundant, the long magazine can be fully equipped, allowing soldiers to pour their bullets onto the enemy at will.

When logistics are not very abundant, the short magazine needs to be used to reduce the rate of bullet consumption.

Don’t underestimate the few bullets saved by a single rifle. Imagine if there were tens of thousands or even hundreds of thousands of rifles? The bullets saved would reach millions, making this design quite meaningful.

Carlo nodded with great satisfaction at such a design. The officers beside him seemed quite pleased as well, smiling and discussing softly.

"Let the soldiers try it out, I can’t wait to see the performance of this rifle," Carlo ordered.

Following Carlo’s command, several soldiers stepped forward, picked up the new rifles placed nearby, and began checking and preparing for testing.

These soldiers had already handled this new rifle in advance and had learned how to operate it.

In fact, the operation process for bolt-action rifles in this era was quite similar. After all, weapon designs in European countries wouldn’t rely entirely on their own research and development; copying was also a crucial method.

Among the most famous copiers was Germany, which produced the Commission Rifle 1888.

At that time, to counter France’s introduction of the Lebel Rifle in 1886, the Germans urgently produced a rifle that could match the French one, known as the Commission Rifle 1888.

This hastily produced rifle referenced the technology of numerous countries. The rifle’s bolt and magazine were inspired by Austria’s Mannlicher Rifle, while the rifling design was copied from France’s Lebel Rifle, and the bullet directly adopted was Switzerland’s 7.92×57mm rimless smokeless powder cartridge.

This is also why Carlo specifically required the Defense Department to issue confidentiality orders and prohibition of sales orders to all military factories participating in the bidding.

Because now European countries’ military factories are genuinely copying, they don’t care whether you’ve registered a patent or not.

Even if an international patent is registered, they wouldn’t care about infringement. During this era, the time needed for a cross-border patent lawsuit is enough for the firearm design in question to become outdated.

By the time a cross-border patent lawsuit wins, the copied rifle would have already fallen behind the times, and then abandoning infringement is the solution; after all, an outdated rifle is useless.

As for compensation, countries kept weapon procurement confidential; no one would foolishly disclose the relevant procurement data.

Without procurement data, there’s no way to know how much the other party has earned through infringement. Without knowing how much they earned through infringement, how can one apply for infringement compensation?

This is also the reason why various countries openly imitate and copy, because during this era, patent infringement has become commonplace, and even international patents cannot be protected once crossing borders.

Of course, this has to be when both countries are on the same level and no major economic loss has been caused to the other party.

If a Dutch company dares to infringe on a British company’s patent and causes significant losses to the British company, the British would certainly seek revenge on the Dutch.

Returning to the rifle experiment, after thorough preparation, the rifle testing officially began.

Firstly, testing various data of the new rifle, such as the firing rate, bullet speed, shooting distance, and power, among other things.

This round of testing wasn’t complicated, and the specific data was quickly gathered.

Carlo was the first to receive the test data, followed by the generals of the Ministry of Defense.

Looking at the test data in their hands, some people’s faces broke into smiles.

This test data not only didn’t disappoint them but also delighted the army generals immensely.

Just look at this test data.

The effective shooting distance of the new rifle not only reached the Ministry of Defense’s minimum target of 400 meters but also met the Defense Department’s highest expectation of 600 meters.

Although accuracy drops significantly once exceeding 200 meters, and beyond 400 meters it relies on luck to hit the enemy.

But this performance is already quite excellent; after all, this isn’t a sniper rifle, neither equipped with a scope nor tuned, such accuracy is already very good.

This rifle’s performance in shooting distance is quite outstanding, and this is only one aspect.

In terms of bullet speed, preliminary estimates suggest bullets can reach a staggering speed of 700 meters per second, so much so that from a slightly long distance, the bullets arrive before hearing the gunshot.

However, a significant increase in bullet speed is not surprising, considering compared to the Vitali Rifle’s bullets, the new rifle’s bullets have undergone significant modification with the bullet weight reduced by nearly half.

The original Vitali Rifle used 10.7×47mm black powder rifle cartridges, with bullet weight as high as 20.3 grams, offering considerable power.

However, due to such heavy bullets, the shooting range of the Vitali Rifle was short, even with smokeless powder only reaching an effective distance of over 400 meters.