The separation of the army and navy, as early as hundreds of years ago, opened, from the countries of the world to the sea, the navy and the army are separated, and the real air force appeared, the history is only about a hundred years, the earliest application in the military field of the aircraft is the hot air balloon, he at most only provides a higher perspective for artillery, as for the airship, it is not safe, at most it plays the role of reconnaissance, the future has been greatly developed, become a part of the army, navy and air force, or high technology, high attack, The aircraft, the main force of asymmetric strikes, has only been developed for more than a decade and is still in the stage of being a toy.

Yang Yuanzhao knows very well that compared with the advantages are not obvious, but the navy is equipped with a strong army, the generation gap of the air force is greater, and the power is also stronger, and the air force is the most powerful branch of the army in later generations, and there is huge support for the navy and the army, and the lack of air supremacy basically loses the initiative on the battlefield.

Flying in the air itself has a considerable advantage, gravitational force, the reason why people can stand on the earth, is to rely on gravity, and everything launched into the air needs to overcome gravity, airplanes rely on the lift of the wings to overcome, but bullets and shells, etc., need to use their own kinetic energy to overcome, so that in the absence of continuous propulsion such as rockets and missiles such as weapons, ordinary artillery and bullets, will only fly slower and slower.

The bullets and shells fired into the air are far from being fired so far above the flat ground, and they must overcome the earth's gravity, so they can deal with aircraft, almost only airplanes, and only when they are at low altitudes, there are anti-aircraft machine guns or anti-aircraft guns to shoot down, even if it is in the northwest, it is just to take out an anti-aircraft gun within 9000 meters. Beyond this altitude, there is nothing that can be done.

Future. Materials and artillery technology reached a certain level, a height of about 20,000 meters. are all within the scope of anti-aircraft guns, higher altitudes, and missiles, this is a later story, Yang Yuanzhao came from later generations, and he has the vision of later generations, and he knows very well that missiles will be used as the first means of attack in the future, but when radio and microelectronics technology has not reached a certain level. There is no way to manufacture missiles at all, at most they are rockets, and the accuracy of rockets using liquid or solid fuel is extremely low, and in the research of weapons in the northwest, there are also studies of 160 mm and 320 mm rocket artillery vehicles, and at present it is only to improve the basic rocket theory, and there is still a long way to go before it is developed and put into actual combat.

In this plane has just appeared. The era when airships still occupied the sky, that is, the Northwest had a forward-looking anti-aircraft machine gun, and the firing range was only within 10,000 meters, for an aircraft of about 20,000 meters. It is simply out of reach, and as for larger caliber anti-aircraft guns, it is not necessary for the time being. There are no enemies, and they are gradually perfected in the research institute. It's good to accumulate strength.

Airplanes can be said to be the natural nemesis of airships, excellent speed. It makes it difficult to attack the self-defense firepower on the airship, and the cannon that solves the propeller problem is enough to knock down the weakly defended airship, although it is replaced with helium, it will not be like hydrogen, and a bullet will make the airship explode, but the airship is still a weak weapon.

Huge body, in air combat, just like a target, the small airship is stronger than the big airship's combat effectiveness, such an unreasonable thing, is enough to subvert everything, and the plane, especially the plane with a speed of more than 200 kilometers, is also known as the terminator of everything, when the plane shakes rapidly, the machine gun fire rate of 600 rounds per minute, will make the airship suffer huge damage, and even destroy the internal structure, air leakage and structural destruction, even if the helium cannot be burned, it cannot support the heavy body of the airship, The airship will crash quickly.

Such asymmetry, only appear in the northwest aircraft and mainstream airships, the early airships are just toys, even after the outbreak of the European war, but also as a reconnaissance purpose, the original aircraft is the nose traction, because the nose can withstand the strength of the propeller and piston engine, the reason is very simple, most of the early aircraft are the thinnest planks constructed, its strength is limited, for a long time, in the use of aircraft, there is no place to place weapons, the first cannon of air combat, It was actually the pilot who took out his own gun and opened fire on the other side.

More than a few hundred kilometers per hour of the plane, different altitudes, different displacements under the premise, how can the pistol hit, this is just a gesture, but this opened the era of aircraft air combat, two-seater aircraft began to become the mainstream, rifles, machine guns, have been loaded on the plane, but the non-stop moving plane, to rely on the back seat of the person to hit, it is more difficult.

As for the wing, the wings of the aircraft in this era cannot withstand the vibration of the machine gun, and once it is fired, the wing will be broken, and the machine will be destroyed, until the machine gun coordination device of the aircraft can ensure that the machine gun bullet is launched from the gap in the propeller, thus opening the era of aircraft air combat.

There is no such problem in the northwest, from the very beginning of the nose propeller aircraft, and soon progressed to the classic era of propeller aircraft on both sides, the body structure of the northwest, from the very beginning, is the use of hard aluminum alloy skeleton, enough to bear the weight and vibration of the propeller, and the nose position, can be loaded with weapons, basically did not take the German machine gun coordination device, after all, no matter how reliable the coordination device, there will always be problems, between the high-speed propeller and the bullet, or produce a rebound, or reduce efficiency, This is not what the Northwest wants to choose, and the reliability of the twin-engine aircraft is still greater than that of the nose single-engine.

With more and more advanced aircraft and more and more powerful roles, the air force has become more and more important to integrate into the military system of the northwest and play an increasingly important role, and even now, among the armed forces, the call for separate division and separate management is quite high.

Yang Yuanzhao knows the history of later generations, the air force in the northwest, except for the close support aircraft belonging to the group army, the rest are similar to the vertical management of the navy, the reason why there is no real separate list, is because to avoid startling the snake, once the war breaks out, it will inevitably become an independent army.

Compared with the army, flying in the air is really a bottomless pit, take the airship as an example, the small airship is hundreds of thousands, the large one is more than a million, the same is true for the aircraft, the small one may be tens of thousands of yuan, similar to commercial aircraft and strategic bombers, at least, it will definitely not be much worse than the large airship, or even more expensive, even if it is as strong as the northwest, in peacetime, at best 500 aircraft will be built, and if you really want to build, you need to wait until the outbreak of war.

Aircraft may be equipped on a large scale, the most important of which is the military strategic bomber, the cost of such an aircraft is too expensive, and the maintenance and training consumption is relatively high, which is similar to the capital ship of the Navy, in this case, when the war has not been thorough, and the Northwest has not yet participated in such a world-class war, it is not suitable for large-scale production, at least not now, only when the war has broken out, in consideration of the power and energy efficiency of the war, will consider the large-scale production of large strategic bombers.

The US Army, which has not experienced war for decades, will need time to adapt to the situation on the battlefield and win against the Germans on the frontal battlefield, perhaps one year, or two years, which will have a lot of buffer time.

It was in this situation that commercial aircraft came into Yang Yuanzhao's eyes, which was another large-scale pilot training project outside the military sequence, or a pilot of a heavily loaded large aircraft. In the previous calculations, taking into account various circumstances, such as cost, time, labor costs, etc., at present, the entire northwest, the possible scale of commercial aircraft will reach more than 800, if the cargo capacity and manning capacity continue to increase, it will reach 1500-1700, and ordinary military aircraft are different, business opportunities have 3 teams, each team at least 3 pilots, so that 3-4 sets of teams will be formed, and the future can seamlessly enter the strategic bombing force, so down, more than 6000 groups of flight teams, enough to handle 3000 strategic bombers.

For each strategic bomber with a bomb carrying capacity of 25 tons, 1,000 is already counted as a cover, and 3,000 is enough to deal with any complex situation. From the beginning of the armed forces in the Northwest, it attaches great importance to aircraft, starting from the first to the second type in the northwest, and has been equipped with more than 5,000 aircraft, these aircraft, some have not even gone to the battlefield, they have to be retired, the rapid development of technology, but also let many military high-level people notice this, most of the current models, only equipped with one or two hundred, really to be finalized, but also to wait until the war comes, really go to the battlefield of the aircraft, now study a batch, assemble a batch, train a batch, Taking such a road of small steps and fast running not only ensures combat effectiveness, but also does not require a large amount of investment.

Aircraft can wait, with the strong production capacity of the northwest, some lightweight, using most of the non-metallic materials of the aircraft, maybe within a month or two, can produce thousands, or even more, even strategic bombers, the production of the same number is two more months, the production line has also been researched and arranged, and even small-scale production is used to run in the entire production line to meet the needs of large-scale, in this case, the army is most lacking pilots, from fighters, reconnaissance aircraft, bombers, Even the strategic bombers in the now updated list have a crew of up to 14 people, including 3 pilots, and this gap must be filled in advance, which needs to be laid out a year or two in advance. (To be continued......)