Chapter 212 Aircraft Equipment

But Arthur was not satisfied with the current performance of these three aircraft, so the aviation laboratory set its sights on the research and development of Pioneer-3. After successfully developing Pioneer-3, the second generation of three military aircraft were successfully manufactured based on Pioneer-3, namely the reconnaissance aircraft Eagle-2, the fighter Tiger-2, and the bomber Ghost-2.

Arthur can be sure that in terms of military aircraft, Australasia has successfully walked in the forefront of the world, and can even be said to be the most powerful aircraft manufacturing country at present.

Of course, such a conclusion is not just talk, but a conclusion drawn by Arthur after observing the combat performance of the three military aircraft on the spot.

First is the Eagle-2 reconnaissance aircraft, which adopts two seats in front and back, with the front seat for driving and the rear seat for observation.

The Eagle-2 reconnaissance aircraft will also be slightly larger, because it is equipped with a larger fuel tank, which also makes the maximum range of this reconnaissance aircraft reach about 600 kilometers. If equipped with two auxiliary fuel tanks, the maximum range can even reach thousands of kilometers.

Of course, due to the increase in size and weight, the speed of this reconnaissance aircraft has also decreased.

The average flight speed of the Eagle-2 reconnaissance aircraft can reach 190 kilometers per hour, and the maximum speed can only reach 210 kilometers per hour.

Although it cannot be compared with fighter jets with higher speeds, this speed is actually enough for intelligence reconnaissance.

Speaking of fighter jets, the weapons carried by current fighter jets are still very simple. Even the Wild Tiger-2 fighter jets, in addition to carrying two MA-107 Maxim machine guns developed by the Australasia Military Factory, the remaining weapons are mostly carried by the pilots themselves.

What does it mean? If the bullets of the two machine guns carried inside the Wild Tiger fighter are used up, then in addition to returning to the airport to reload bullets, the way for the fighter to engage in combat is to rely on the pilots to carry weapons themselves.

There is no way around it. Various weapons cannot be well adapted to the current fighter jets. Even the two machine guns carried were manufactured after a long period of research by the military factory.

Because of the use of roulette magazines, the total amount of ammunition for these two machine guns has reached 1,500 rounds.

This is the disappointing part of the Wild Tiger fighter at present, but I believe that its combat weapons will become more diverse with the joint research and development of military factories and aviation laboratories, and eventually grow into a real fighter.

Although there are still many shortcomings in terms of weapons, the maximum flight speed of the Wild Tiger-2 fighter can reach 235 kilometers per hour and the maximum range is 500 kilometers.

At present, among the three aircraft, the Wild Tiger fighter has the worst actual combat performance and is not very practical.

Of course, this is also the reason why countries in the world have not really realized the importance of aircraft.

Even the famous Wright brothers in history, although they have successively manufactured Flyer II and III at this time, have not received the attention of the news media and the US military.

Their aircraft was even stored in the stable for more than two years, and finally the US military realized the powerful potential of the aircraft.

In other words, at present, only Australasia has truly used national power to study aircraft.

This is also why Arthur is sure that Australasia is currently the world's number one aircraft power, because there is no opponent at all in a short period of time.

Of course, this also greatly reduces the practicality of fighters. Because there are no opponents, all kinds of aircraft in Australasia are still very safe in the sky.

In addition to reconnaissance aircraft, bombers are also the most practical.

The current military has only one means of bombing long-distance targets, artillery, but the parabola of artillery is basically fixed, and even powerful ship-borne artillery cannot avoid it.

This is why the most powerful warships and battleships now only take care of some important facilities in terms of armor protection.

One of the reasons why large warships such as battleships are eliminated is the rise of aircraft.

The heavy armor on the sides and other areas of the battleship is useless for aircraft carrying bombs.

Various bombers can easily find the weaknesses of the battleship and then bomb it.

Coupled with the increasingly expensive cost of battleships, this is why battleships gradually fell after World War II.

The firepower coverage range of battleships is often only tens of kilometers, but the attack range of aircraft carriers carrying various types of aircraft can even reach hundreds of kilometers.

This means that before the battleships discover the enemy aircraft carrier, the enemy's various reconnaissance and bomber aircraft have already arrived.

Moreover, the design of the aircraft carrier is also very simple. The initial design of the aircraft carrier is even very simple, and all that is required is the performance and practicality of the aircraft.

As of now, Australasia has the ability to design aircraft carriers, and it is not far from the birth of the world's first aircraft carrier.

The bomber currently owned by Australasia is the Ghost-2, which is an advanced bomber modified from the Pioneer-3.

In order to enable this bomber to have the ability to bomb the enemy at high altitude, the military factory specially modified the current shells and designed shells that can be used by aircraft.

At the same time, in order to adapt to more combat targets, the current shells have a total of two models, namely 35mm shells and 75mm shells.

If equipped with 35mm shells, the Ghost bomber can carry 32 shells. If equipped with 75mm shells, the bomber can carry about 18 shells.

These shells will be fixed on the gun mount in rows. When the pilot presses the launch button, the first row of shells will pour down, and then automatically switch to the second row of shells.

The amount of ammunition carried by the bomber is still too little compared to the future, but it can basically meet the current mission requirements.

Imagine that when the enemy is not prepared, a large number of shells falling from the sky are enough to cause a large number of casualties to the enemy.

More importantly, various warships are also one of the targets of bombers. Because aircraft have not yet become the target of attention of various countries, warships now have basically no air defense capabilities.

If you want to talk about defense capabilities, it may be that the naval soldiers on the warships use rifles to shoot.

But warships are not as stable as on land. Naval soldiers pay more attention to the control of warships rather than the soldiers' marksmanship.

Under such circumstances, the chances of relying on naval soldiers to shoot down bombers are really slim.

This also means that current fighters can cause huge casualties to current warships, and the research of aircraft carriers has become a possible task.

After watching the demonstration of all types of aircraft by the Aviation Research Institute, Arthur nodded with great satisfaction, and immediately announced that he would reward each staff member of the Aviation Laboratory with a reward of 10,000 Australian dollars.

"Director Theodore, what is the current production of these three aircraft? If Australasia equips these three aircraft, can their prices be equipped on a large scale?" Arthur asked.

After the birth of the aircraft, the next question is about the production and installation of the aircraft.

No matter how luxurious the paper data of the aircraft is, it must be actually equipped to the army, and the performance must be tested through training and real war.

Although Australasia is not currently troubled by war, Arthur has already planned to install aircraft on a large scale.

Not only can it improve the combat capability of the Australasia army, but it can also train more pilots for the future Australasia Air Force in advance.

You know, pilots are not like soldiers in the army and navy, who can become formal soldiers after one or two years of training.

To become a qualified pilot, the training cycle must be at least two years, and it is also necessary to be accompanied by a large number of flight tests and real wars to grow and transform into an excellent pilot.

This is also the real reason why major countries would rather destroy the aircraft than the death of pilots.

For industrial powers, it is not a troublesome thing to build an aircraft. But training a pilot requires a lot of money and time, and the importance of pilots is far higher than that of aircraft.

Of course, the research on aircraft is not perfect now, and the training system for pilots has not been established.

At present, the way Australasia trains pilots is to rely on experts in the aviation laboratory. As personnel who study aircraft, they are also most familiar with the operation of aircraft facilities.

But despite this, the training and training of pilots is still very troublesome.

It has been more than two years since the birth of Pioneer-1, but the aviation laboratory has trained less than 100 pilots so far.

Although the aviation laboratory has gained a lot of experience in training pilots in the past two years, the speed of training pilots will be much faster in the future.

But it cannot be denied that pilots are also very valuable assets even for Australasia now.

"Your Majesty, because of the different models of various aircraft, their costs are also very different. If it is mass-produced, our Pioneer-3 costs about 18,600 Australian dollars, the Eagle-2 reconnaissance aircraft costs about 20,100 Australian dollars, the Wild Tiger-2 fighter costs about 22,000 Australian dollars, and the Ghost-2 bomber costs more than 23,500 Australian dollars." The Aviation Laboratory has already estimated the cost of these four aircraft, so Theodore answered very quickly.

Arthur nodded.

Now because there is no war, the currencies of countries around the world are relatively strong.

The cost of various aircraft in Australasia is basically around 10,000 pounds, and the most will not exceed 12,000 pounds.

This is a good thing for Arthur. At least the large-scale equipment aircraft is not a burden on the current Australasia government's finances, and the Australasia government can still afford it.

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