The Rise of Australasia

After the establishment of a dedicated tank factory, the speed of tank construction can further increase. After all, the Royal Agricultural Machinery Factory was previously responsible for the manufacturing of both tanks and agricultural machinery, especially tractors.

In addition, due to the necessity of secrecy with tank manufacturing, the speed of production was considerably restricted.

The new tank factory is expected to increase the speed of tank construction, producing about 500 tanks annually within five years, and about 1500 tanks annually within ten years. This would essentially fulfill the needs of the Australasia Army.

Given Australasia’s current conditions, the importance of the navy surpasses that of the army, and the scale of the army is significantly limited by population size.

If Arthur’s predictions are correct, during the World War II period, many countries produced tanks at incredible speed.

Germany, famed for its industry, under various restrictions, reached its highest tank production speed of over 700 tanks per month.

Meanwhile, Russia, with its significant industrial progress, broke through a monthly production of 2000 tanks at its peak, indicating the esteem each country held for tanks and their heavy investment of resources in military affairs during wartime.

However, for present-day Australasia, the quality of tanks is of more crucial interest than the speed of their production.

After all, there’s a limit to the total size of the army; they can’t each have a tank. The scale of Australasia’s tank fleet is destined not to be large. As an island country, the ocean is what Australasia should value the most, and it is also the real defense line of the homeland.

No matter how strong other countries’ armies are, as long as their navy can’t overpower Australasia, they still won’t pose a threat to Australasia’s homeland.

Through a comprehensive chain of island defenses, Australasia can completely rely on a small navy to defeat a large number of enemies.

This also signifies that, other than long-range weapons like intercontinental missiles, it is difficult for Australasia’s homeland to be threatened, even by the now powerful British Empire.

As for missiles and rockets, Australasia is already heavily invested in research, and in the field of rocket science, they may not necessarily fall behind other countries.

After all, over one-third of the aerospace power experts that Arthur has won over aren’t trifling. As long as Arthur supports them strongly, if other countries want to overtake them, they must invest more time and resources than Australasia. However, which country can win over more aerospace talents compared to the one-third gathered by Arthur?

Especially when Australasia has already taken almost half of the talent available.

Arthur’s expectations for the speed of Australasia’s tank production are generally based on the new tank factory’s goal of reaching 500 tanks in five years and 1500 tanks in ten years.

In ten years, it will only be 1929. The tank factory would still have about ten years to increase the speed of tank production and use tanks as a weapon in the arms trade, selling them in large quantities to warring parties and making an enormous profit for itself.

Besides tanks, airplane research also occupies a high priority in Arthur’s plans.

Like tanks, World War I era aircraft were just the beginning and had many design flaws, such as the twin-wing design, which greatly impaired speed.

Australasian aircraft are not so bad, having already undergone four generations of iterations. The current fourth-generation military aircraft’s performance is roughly equivalent to or even slightly exceeds that of World War II era aircraft.

That doesn’t imply that fourth-generation military aircraft have completely surpassed World War II era aircraft. At least in some technological aspects, these remain significantly flawed. Additionally, because of technological backwardness, they lack some of the new technology possessed by World War II aircraft.

When even Austalasia’s most advanced fourth-generation military aircraft are like this, there’s no need to mention aircraft from other countries.

The context of World War I in this world varies greatly from its historical counterpart: at the very least, the number of aircraft that various nations deployed in World War I was not so dramatic, barely exceeding 10,000.

However, in reality, even though there seem to be as many as 10,000 aircraft, fewer than 1,000 played a decisive role in the aerial battlefield, and most of them were from Australasia.

All participating countries in World War I, including the United Kingdom, had significant deficiencies in their manufactured aircraft’s performance. This, to a certain extent, constrained the combat capabilities of the planes.

After all, the global focus was initially on airships. It wasn’t until they discovered during the war that planes could easily destroy airships that they hurriedly began researching planes, but by then, it was too late.

While the war itself has ended, according to Arthur’s intelligence, Europe’s study on aircraft has not ceased but has even gathered more momentum.

It was still tolerable for defeated countries such as Germany, as the Allies were severely strict on them by prohibiting any research on new weapons which included aircraft and tanks that appeared in World War I.

Even for airships which were already confirmed to be less effective than airplanes, the Allies posed numerous restrictions on Germany.

The Zeppelin Airship, once reputed in Germany before World War I, was directly dismantled by Britain and France, with two production lines taken away. This led to uncertainty as to whether it could reach its peak as it did in history.

The British and French restrictions on Germany’s tank research were also exaggerated, thoroughly clearing all of Germany’s tank research facilities and explicitly prohibiting any research on tanks.

Meanwhile, Germany was also banned from researching and producing any type of artillery, heavy machine guns, etc. The 150,000 troops that Germany retained were only allowed to be equipped with rifles and handguns, with even the bullet allocation for each soldier strictly limited.

Under such circumstances, it would be extremely difficult for Germany to conduct military technology research before the restrictions are lifted.

On Arthur’s proposition, submachine guns were added to the list of weapons Germany was prohibited from researching, preventing Germany from shifting its research to submachine guns as historically done when their machine gun research failed.

Not only Germany, but the Austro-Hungarian Empire, Ottoman Empire, and Kingdom of Bulgaria were also strictly prohibited from researching and manufacturing large-caliber weapons.

This means that those who could really conduct intensive research on tanks and airplanes were the victors, apart from Australasia, the ones with maximum investment are only Britain, France, and America.

Although the status of airplane research in Britain, France, and America is not clear, it is certain that they should be able to surpass the technology of the first-generation military aircraft of Australasia soon.

After all, the difficulty of constructing first-generation military aircraft isn’t particularly high, based on the existing technology and research capabilities of Britain and France, it wouldn’t be problematic for them to develop the technology in a short period of time.

Though Americans are inferior to Britain and France in terms of military technology, they should be able to break through the technology of the first-generation military aircraft as long as they attach importance to it.

Due to the influence of the influenza, the benefits that Americans should have gained were all abolished, causing America to get practically nothing out of the defeated countries. Comparatively, America was significantly less prosperous than it was at late World War One in history, especially in terms of talent reserves and research capabilities.

More importantly, after taking the blame for the influenza, the Americans were in considerable debt.

A large proportion of profits from the war were already taken by Australasia, plus the burden of debt, America could be described as a completely defeated party. Not only did they lose money in participating in the war, but they also ended up having to pay compensation.

This also represents a tremendous change in the status of America. In history, America’s status improved substantially in late World War I, at least their voice could no longer be ignored.

However, even though America’s industrial strength hasn’t been weakened, and overall power is second only to Britain and France among the world powers, their status in the world is just like their actual strength.

Generally speaking, the World Alliance represented most countries in the world.

The four countries with the most authority in this alliance were naturally Britain, France, Russia, and Australasia among the Four Great Powers.

America’s international influence, with its notorious reputation, might not even be higher than Australasia’s, perhaps it can only be ranked ahead of Italy.

If it hadn’t been for a civil war that made Russia’s situation extremely tense, with both Tsarist Russia and Soviet Russia weakening Russia’s overall strength and status in the world, America’s status might only be a little higher than Italy’s.

The technological level of the fourth-generation military aircraft is equivalent to the aircraft of the World War II period, which means that if Australasia’s aircraft research halts, Britain and France should still be able to catch up during the World War II period.

However, there are still more than ten years until World War II, this gives Australasia an opportunity to research for the fifth and possibly even the sixth-generation military aircraft.

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