Bright Sword: Construction starts from southeastern Shanxi

After hearing Zeng Jiwen's plan, Teacher Wang immediately laughed.

"You kid, so you're waiting here. It seems like you look down on Master Su."

Zeng Jiwen shook his head.

“Of course not. Although our industry is weak, it has already started in the south and northwest.

Now is the time to give back and develop our own industry.”

Moreover, if we were to organize our troops purely according to the Soviet-equipped division, then the equipment we had this time would not be enough to match that of Tainan's troops.

Zeng Jiwen's favorite is the Type 56 family of weapons from the 60s in the original time and space, which is used in conjunction with Soviet-made artillery as the standard weapon for the entire army.

However, considering the logistical pressure of fully automatic rifles, although the Taihang Military Factory has already produced a prototype, Zeng Jiwen currently cannot cope with the logistics.

Maybe we can wait a few years before considering fully replacing them with fully automatic rifles.

Zeng Jiwen therefore planned to equip conventional troops with the Type 56 semi-automatic rifle and the Type 56 squad machine gun.

As for the Type 56 automatic rifle, Zeng Jiwen asked He Ping to manufacture it based on the Type 56-1 automatic rifle he drew. It was mainly used to equip special troops such as armored troops, motor vehicle troops, airborne troops, scouts and artillery.

All bullets are of the same caliber as 7.62x39mm.

As for the process of producing bullets, it is also a headache for Zeng Jiwen.

Zeng Jiwen was so busy with this problem that he was dizzy.

As the war continues to expand, the price of copper, the raw material needed to produce bullets, is not only rising rapidly, but there is also a shortage of copper in the country.

Zeng Jiwen had to face reality and adopt the same approach as the north, using steel shells.

Although the steel shells were rumored to be of good quality and low price, Zeng Jiwen almost burst into curses when he was actually organizing people to operate them.

Which smart senior came up with this idea? It would definitely work in the future, but in this era and environment, Zeng Jiwen almost lost everything.

First of all, let’s talk about the raw materials of steel. If you want bullets, you must have steel. If you want to make steel, you have to build a steel plant. Then you must also have coal mines, reservoirs, railways, iron smelting, power generation and other factories and supporting facilities to support the steel plant.

A steel plant with an annual output of 150,000 tons cannot be built without 30 million yuan.

Including the war, they would need at least a steel plant with an annual output of one million tons, so the total cost would basically be over 100 million.

Not to mention that the construction period is at least five years. If Zeng Jiwen has to wait for five years, his life will be almost over.

For this reason, after clearing Gansu and Qinghai, Zeng Jiwen gritted his teeth and built a steel plant with an annual output of one million in Jiuquan, but the difficulties involved can be imagined.

Moreover, this output was built according to the steel production in Northeast China when the full-scale war of resistance broke out.

To this end, Zeng Jiwen searched for many technical personnel in the west.

Until now, they are still rushing to make progress, otherwise why would Zeng Jiwen still need so many technical personnel in the north.

According to several responsible persons there, with support from the north, production will be able to begin in the first half of next year.

After Zeng Jiwen had solved the problem of raw materials, he thought of what later generations often called replacing steel cartridge cases.

To make steel cartridge cases, either painted steel cartridge cases or copper-clad steel cartridge cases are used.

To make copper-clad steel shells, you first need to process electric furnace carbon steel, then add rare metals to make alloy steel, then process the alloy steel shells again, then electroplate them with copper, then phosphate the shell hook grooves, and finally paint the shell hook grooves.

Every step in it is not something they can do now.

Especially when it comes to rare metals, the whole of China is basically a blank slate except for tungsten mines.

Alloy steel costs about US$380 per ton, which is about 1,200 US dollars, while copper costs more than 1,000 US dollars per ton.