Chapter 120 119: War Giant Beast
After years of unwavering dedication to advancing technology, coupled with numerous breakthroughs, Li Qingsong believed the time was ripe to develop and manufacture the larger, more strategically significant Earth-class Warship.
As a higher-tier Warship, it naturally had to possess far greater offensive and defensive capabilities. It needed to be able to face any chaotic situation and act as a Stabilizing Needle—once an Earth-class Warship arrived on the scene, the situation would be brought under control.
It had to possess unparalleled long-range offensive capabilities, able to inflict massive damage on enemies from tens, or even hundreds, of thousands of kilometers away.
Only then could it cover a sufficiently vast battlespace and project its influence into every corner of the battlefield.
It also needed to have the longest operational endurance. In extreme cases, it had to be capable of fighting continuously for several months, or even a full year, without needing external resupply.
Furthermore, it required the most stable communication capabilities. It had to maintain constant contact with the strategic Wukong while also projecting its signal to every Venus-class and Mercury-class Warship on the battlefield, ensuring these smaller vessels never lost connection with the main fleet.
Every aspect of it had to be the absolute best. Only then could it fulfill the role Li Qingsong envisioned for it.
In contrast to these extremely demanding requirements, the standards for its maneuverability were not as high.
It didn't need to achieve the same acceleration as a Mercury-class Warship—tens or even hundreds of meters per second squared. It didn't need to be able to go from a standstill to high speed in an instant.
For a Warship of this immense size, that would be unrealistic anyway.
It only needed an acceleration of a few tenths of a meter to several meters per second squared.
Although its acceleration was low, the Earth-class Warship's massive fuel reserves meant it could still reach a high cruising speed after a sustained period of acceleration.
Following this design philosophy, Li Qingsong quickly completed the blueprints for the Earth-class Warship.
Although the blueprints were complete, Li Qingsong still faced more than ten thousand technical hurdles, both large and small, before it could actually be built.
But that was no problem. These obstacles were purely technical, not theoretical. They could be overcome with focused research and development.
With Li Qingsong's complete dedication, numerous labs began reporting good news in just six months.
All technical hurdles had been overcome.
During this period, the factories specially designed to meet the production needs of the Earth-class Warship were also completed.
And so, after a full upgrade of the production lines and a refinement of the manufacturing processes, construction of the first Earth-class Warship began immediately.
Just six months later, a brand-new combat vessel appeared before Li Qingsong.
It no longer had the butterfly shape of the earlier Mercury-class and Venus-class Warships. Instead, it looked like two rectangular prisms joined together.
The total length of the two prisms was about 210 meters. The larger prism was around 150 meters long with sides of about 30 meters, while the smaller prism had sides of about 20 meters.
It was larger at one end and smaller at the other.
Its surface was not smooth, but was instead densely packed with all kinds of equipment, covering nearly the entire thirty-thousand-plus square meters of its total surface area.
Matching its enormous size was an equally unprecedented mass.
In Li Qingsong's designs, the fully loaded mass of a Mercury-class Warship was around 300 tons. The Venus-class Warship saw a steep jump to about 2,500 tons.
And now, the Earth-class Warship climbed even higher, its fully loaded mass reaching a staggering 16,000 tons!
Such a colossal mass and volume finally allowed Li Qingsong to hold nothing back, equipping it with almost every piece of advanced technology he had developed.
It was equipped with a total of 3,000 small Electromagnetic Cannons and Laser Cannons for defensive purposes!
Its large, offensive-grade Electromagnetic Cannons and Laser Cannons were positioned across the hull, numbering over 100 in total.
In addition to these, it was armed with four colossal Electromagnetic Cannons, mounted at the bow and stern.
Because of its extremely long hull, the barrels of the Electromagnetic Cannons could be made exceptionally long, which in turn gave them far greater acceleration power.
As a result, these colossal Electromagnetic Cannons were capable of accelerating a 10-gram Electromagnetic Cannon Projectile to a velocity of 20 kilometers per second.
A 10-gram Electromagnetic Cannon Projectile was unprecedentedly large. A velocity of 20 kilometers per second was likewise unheard-of for an electromagnetic weapon.
At that velocity, a single one of these projectiles carried 2 million joules of energy! In terms of TNT equivalent, that was comparable to half a kilogram of TNT!
Back in the age of Earth, a standard hand grenade typically contained only a few dozen grams of explosives. Therefore, the energy from a single one of these projectiles was equivalent to ten high-explosive grenades strapped together and detonated.
Furthermore, a grenade's explosion releases energy in all directions. But when an Electromagnetic Cannon Projectile struck its target, the energy release was extremely focused. It traveled in a single direction with a high degree of concentration and almost no dispersion, ultimately dumping every last bit of its energy into the target with zero waste. This made it vastly more effective than a conventional grenade.
And despite the immense power of each projectile, the incredible acceleration granted by the Earth-class Warship's long hull allowed these massive cannons to achieve a rate of fire of ten rounds per second!
That was almost as fast as a machine gun.
Besides the massive Electromagnetic Cannons, it was also equipped with four large Laser Cannons.
Similarly, because they could be built with much greater mass, the laser beams fired from these cannons were extremely high-energy and had a minimal divergence angle.
During testing, these laser beams proved to have lethal capability against targets even more than 50,000 kilometers away, far surpassing the maximum effective range of a few thousand kilometers found on Mercury-class and Venus-class Warships.
Beyond its weaponry, the high-speed radar systems installed on it were also the most powerful yet.
A total of 1,024 Deep Space scanning modules continuously swept the celestial sphere, collecting data on any target approaching its position. The moment a target was detected, the ship's 3,000 defensive weapons would react instantly.
The supercomputer serving as the Warship's brain boasted performance incomparable to that of any other vessel.
This supercomputer alone used 2,048 two-nanometer chips! When accounting for the various sensors, controllers, and other systems throughout the ship, a single Earth-class Warship contained over one hundred thousand chips of various types and manufacturing processes!
And now, this behemoth—armed to the teeth, with no part of it left unequipped, a vessel that could truly be called a War Giant Beast—began its maiden voyage under Li Qingsong's control.