Most of the places in the northeast are bitter cold places, and the further north they are, the more so, in the Liaohe River area, this place belongs to the plain area, and the water and grass are abundant, but other places, especially the areas in the north, are mostly bitter cold places, and it is difficult for human beings to survive.

At the same time, the enemies entrenched in these places are only some barbarians who are still in the savage stage, and they cannot be compared with the Chahar Department and Duoyan Sanwei in the Liaohetao area.

Therefore, the Army has not invested much energy and resources in these places, and it is also in the process of cleaning up.

Now, all the thoughts of the army are on how to eliminate the Chahar Department and the Liaohetao campaign of Duoyan Sanwei, not to mention not paying attention to the battle in the Heilongjiang Valley, and even the battle to capture Shuangchengwei in the right flank direction.

This is not only the idea of the army leadership, in fact, it is also Li Xuan's idea, although the strategic goal of the Northeast Campaign is to reach Heilongjiang, but the real core battle is actually around the Liaohetao area and the Chahar Department and the operation of Duoyan Sanwei.

After killing the Chahar Department and the Duoyan Sanwei, the remaining battles are at most a clean-up operation, and the scale is not even as large as the anti-bandit operations carried out by the Imperial Army in the southwest and other inland areas in the early years, and everything that follows will be a matter of course.

However, the idea of the navy is obviously not the case, in order to increase the sense of presence in the Northeast Campaign, the navy did not hesitate to pay out of its own pocket to make a Heilongjiang battle plan, for the navy's actions, the army is happy to see it, and Li Xuan is not opposed, anyway, there is no large-scale action on the navy's side now, and there is no enemy in the surrounding waters to make the navy need to face a big enemy, even the Portuguese cannot pose any deadly threat to the Datang Navy in the South China Seas.

However, if you want to go deep into the Indian Ocean or the waters of the Americas, it is more difficult, so in the past few years, the navy has been looking for trouble everywhere, in Fuso, on the islands in the South Sea, and in Annam, all of which is not because the navy is idle and panicked, but in order to maintain a sense of existence.

The navy always has to give an explanation to the government and the opposition: it spends millions of dollars in military spending every year, so it needs to see some results, right?

Why do you say that your navy spends so much military money every year to build so many warships?

If there is any strong enemy that needs your navy, it will be fine, but the key thing is that there is none!

In the entire sea area of East Asia, and even the entire Pacific Ocean and the Indian Ocean, the Portuguese and Spaniards are the only ones who have the strength to fight with the Tang Navy.

Nowadays, the Spaniards have a good relationship with the Tang Empire, and the Tang Empire is even supporting the Spaniards to open up round-the-world shipping routes, opening important ports under the control of the Tang Dynasty, such as Banten, Luzon, and Gehe Prefecture.

As for the Portuguese, although there are many contradictions with the empire, this contradiction is more of a conflict of commercial interests, and on the issue of the South Seas, the Portuguese have also taken tolerative measures in recent years, as long as the Tang Empire continues to do business with them, they almost do not care about all the actions of the empire in the South Seas.

Even in India, as long as the Datang Navy does not openly enter the Indian Ocean on a large scale, they even turn a blind eye to the colonization of the Datang Western Trading Company in India, at most they disguise themselves as pirates and attack merchant ships.

But until now, the Portuguese have not carried out any direct military operations against the state of the Go.

That is to say, as of today, the Tang Empire and the other two maritime powers in the world: the Portuguese and Spain, have maintained a relationship of coexistence of cooperation and competition, and it is unlikely that they will completely turn their faces for the time being.

Under such circumstances, the navy was still clamoring for more warships every day, and in the seventeenth year of Xuanping, the navy put forward the so-called '100 ships plan'.

What is the 100-ship plan, that is, to fill the Navy's capital ship arsenal to more than 100 ships, this capital ship refers to cruisers, battleships, frigates, and if it is calculated in terms of tonnage, then it is a capital ship of more than 400 tons!

According to this plan, the Imperial Navy needed to maintain fifteen battleships of more than 1,300 tons, cruisers of more than 800 tons, and 65 frigates of more than 400 tons.

And now in the Tang Imperial Navy, there are only six battleships in active service, and another three are under construction, which means that six new battleships are needed to achieve the goal.

As for cruisers, now there are only twelve cruisers in the Tang Empire, and there is still a gap of eight from twenty.

In the case of frigates, the number is already nearly fifty or so, but many frigates and cruisers built in the early days of the empire, because the craftsmanship and design of the early ships are average, and they have been in service for more than ten years, so they will be retired one after another, which also needs to be replenished one after another, and after calculation, there are almost twenty or so ships missing.

Such a huge fleet expansion plan is not so easy to achieve, because it is not only necessary to build such a fleet of warships, but also to maintain the size and normal use of the fleet, which means that more fleet maintenance funds are needed, more naval officers and sailors are needed, more docks, docks and so on.

In the end, the total cost is much more than just building these dozens of warships.

The Navy's ambitions are so great that it naturally needs financial support, and the current Navy's funds naturally cannot support such a large-scale expansion plan, and more funds are needed.

But the funds are not so easy to get, and the government and the opposition must see that the navy has taken so much military spending, what it has done, what achievements it has made, and what benefits it has brought to the empire!

Just seizing a few colonies and emigrating tens of thousands of people is not convincing.

Therefore, the navy has put its long-term goal on the expansion of India, Australia, the Americas and other places, but then again, it is more difficult to occupy these places, and it is unrealistic in the short term.

In desperation, the navy can only find a sense of existence everywhere in these places in the northeast of Fuso, Nanyang.

Li Xuan knew and supported the idea of the navy, but things came first, and now the direction of the empire's expansion is not to colonize overseas, but to completely solve the threat from the north.

Only by addressing the threat to the north and northwest was the empire free to develop a massive navy and then compete with the Spanish and Portuguese for places like India and the Americas.

Now, it's too early.

In Li Xuan's plan, now was not the time to conquer India and the Americas, he needed to wait until the high-pressure steam engine that could be used as the power of transportation was developed and matured, and after the trains and steam ships were built, the time to start large-scale expansion.

And this day, it won't be long!

Now Li Xuan has the report from the Royal Institute of Technology in hand!

This report is a test report of the steam engine R&D project!

According to the test report, when the high-pressure steam engine project team conducted an operation test on the eighteenth prototype, the prototype successfully achieved five hours of trouble-free continuous operation, and during the test process, five horses were smoothly output, and the calorific value efficiency reached 5 percent.

At the same time, the report also said that the five hours are not to say its limit, but the test plan is only five hours, and they plan to overhaul the prototype, and there will be a second operation test, and this time it is 12 hours, if it can be achieved, it will continue to challenge for a longer time to test its limit.

The five hours of continuous uptime were the minimum and most important goal set by the project team.

Because this five-hour continuous trouble-free operation time is based on a steam pressure of 0.35 megapascals, which is more than three times that of a low-pressure steam engine.

Because of the increased steam pressure, the volume of this prototype is only 25 times that of a low-pressure steam engine with the same power!

This twenty-fifth ratio, which is quite terrifying, because it means that the steam engine can be miniaturized, lightweighted, and then loaded on ships, trains, and used as transportation power.

Even in industrial production, higher efficiency can be obtained, because the efficiency conversion ratio reaches about 5 percent, which is about double the efficiency conversion ratio of the traditional low-pressure steam engine.

Doubling the efficiency means doubling the amount of coal needed for the same amount of power.

These performance indicators have been set for a long time, and even the detailed design of the various components of the high-pressure steam engine has long been determined, and the only thing that bothers the researchers of the Royal Institute of Technology is how to build this high-pressure steam engine!

In other words, what kind of material should be used and what kind of process should be used to create it!

Materials and processing technology are the core difficulties that plague the difficult birth of high-pressure steam engines!

To this end, the Royal Institute of Technology has united with the navy and manufacturers directly under the ministries of state-owned enterprises to carry out various experiments unremittingly to find new materials and better processing technology to meet the requirements.

All this was a success on this prototype 18th fuselage!

Li Xuan looked at the experimental report and held back the excitement in his heart, he had already seen the dawn of the future industrial explosion from this steam engine.

Although the steam engine has been used for a long time, the high-pressure steam engine is incomparable to the low-pressure steam engine!

The steam engine has been around for a long time, and now it is widely used in major factories in the empire, except for the use in the mines at the beginning, and now it is basically a steam engine in a factory of the upper scale.