"In fact, the production of this gun barrel is very difficult..."

"Now, the main method of electroslag refusion and secondary smelting is used to smel out the most basic materials."

Secretary Zhang and Minister Li sang together to explain to Xiao Feng the current overview of the development of artillery in China.

Then we began to explain the sound field process of the gun barrel in detail.

It’s true that the two of them explained this, but Xiao Feng’s eyes widened and gained a lot of insight.

It turns out that gun barrel steel first uses arc smelting to produce the first wave of rough blanks.

This step is to extract molten steel from the ore, and after desulfurization and denitrification, it is cast into steel bars with a diameter of about 30 cm.

Then there is the second part, electroslag remelting, which we can understand as a large-scale welding process.

Those steel # rods with a diameter of thirty centimeters are equivalent to large welding rods.

These thick welding rods will be clamped up by giant robotic arms and placed in an electroslag remelting furnace for power-on heating and melting. Then, after special treatment, the melted molten steel will become large electroslag remelting steel ingots.

This process often requires dozens of steel bars from the first furnace of molten steel.

The steel rods after the electroslag is remelted usually turn into hexagonal prisms, and these prisms are basically two meters high and about one meter in diameter.

Each of these prisms weighs thirty tons upwards.

After that, this prismatic steel ingot will be placed on the forging machine to hit, and this forging machine starts with more than 30,000 tons of equipment...

In this process, the barrel steel will be constantly forged, which will make the internal structure of the steel more tight. Only in this way can the barrel steel emit the high temperature and high pressure brought by the medicine, and the high-speed friction brought by the projectile launch...

After such a blow, these steel ingots will become qualified steel billets and then drill holes in the middle.

After drilling, there will be another secondary heating, followed by a process of fine forging and elongation.

The equipment required for this process is a rotating precision forging machine, which will lengthen the thick blank of the gun steel to the length of the barrel we want.

This kind of equipment used to require importation, and the price of each unit was as high as tens of millions of dollars.

In recent years, it was not until we could manufacture it ourselves that Europe and the United States have relaxed the control of such equipment.

Only then can we buy some such equipment from Europe.

As for the equipment we manufacture locally, although it can also be used, it still has an old problem, and its accuracy, lifespan and reliability are still inferior to European products.

However, although the performance is not as good as theirs, it is at least useful. It is precisely because of this that they relax the control and the price is much lower than before.

And these are tolerant by the Army.

After all, although such equipment is expensive, we don’t need to import too much.

We can afford to have tens of millions of dollars a unit.

The cannon steel that has completed this step is no longer a thick blank, but is called a fine blank.

However, a heat treatment will be carried out next to make the internal structure of the billet closer, thereby achieving higher strength.

Then there is a process of straightening the fine blanks once. If this step is not performed, the produced gun barrel will have serious problems with insufficient accuracy.

Sometimes there may even be hundreds of meters of "secret position" deviation...

Only after completing this straightening process can you proceed to the last few steps.

The next thing to do is self-tightening process processing.

To put it bluntly, it is to use an iron rod called a core rod to insert it into the barrel, and at the same time it injects liquid into the barrel, and then performs a high-pressure sealing treatment.

It is to let the hydraulics change the internal structure of the gun barrel and eliminate the stress of the steel inside the gun barrel.

This allows the outside of the barrel to maintain elasticity while allowing the inside of the barrel to obtain higher strength to cope with the huge heat and impact force caused by the firing of the launching medicine.

After completing this step, the last step of cutting and rifling process is now.

And this step is often the most difficult.

Because it uses deep hole processing technology, and the gun barrel is still very long.

Therefore, the internal situation inside the barrel cannot be seen from the outside, and the internal situation can only be judged by the engineer's experience.

Engineers will judge whether the cutting of the rifle inside the barrel is normal when watching the drill bit rotating and vibrating, as well as the temperature of the cutting cooling oil flowing out.

And every year, we ourselves will have tens of thousands of tons of barrels scrapped at this step.

So a cannon is often priced at a few million. Do you think it's something you want randomly?

If you understand the process of this gun barrel processing, you will know that it is not.

The problem facing the Army now is that we have a lot of artillery.

But to be honest, the training is pitifully small every year.

You should know that we are the country with the least practical experience among the Five Constant People.

Our army's combat effectiveness can only be maintained by training now.

High-quality and high-intensity training is the key to our army's combat effectiveness.

But the problem is that we only have so much military expenditure every year, and now the country has put its main energy in national defense construction on the Navy and Air Force.

In recent years, the Army has really been unable to let go!

Even though military spending has increased every year recently, most of it is used to improve the lives of soldiers and daily equipment.

After all, the equipment of the American soldiers has been armed to the teeth, but we can't let the soldiers wear yellow rubber shoes on the battlefield, right?

You said that the bulletproof vest does not require too much equipment, but how many pairs of military boots should you give the soldiers?

Also, training shoes should be updated, right?

Don’t always use yellow rubber shoes to make people foolish people by doing it.

Who doesn’t know that those shoes not only burn their feet, but the most important thing is that they are also stinky?

And wearing those shoes to the battlefield was a helpless choice before when we had no choice.

But now that technology is so developed, we are not that short of money. If we still let the soldiers wear yellow rubber shoes on the battlefield, it would be a bit unreasonable.

Not to mention going to the battlefield, even daily training, those shoes can no longer meet the needs.

Problems such as spraining ankle, piercing the ankle, easily injuring the feet, etc. are endless.

It is precisely because of understanding the difficulties of the soldiers that the army has begun to talk about some inappropriate equipment and has begun to retire.

It is precisely because there is a lot of money to renew these materials.

So our speed of updating and replacing large-scale equipment has slowed down, which is nothing, after all, the threat to our borders is not great now.

But the key is that high-quality training cannot be guaranteed, which has always caused a headache for the military.

In the Army, let’s talk about anything else, just a shooting training. How many troops can open up the supply of bullets and let the soldiers shoot and find a feeling?

Look at the Americans, the soldiers trained to shoot, and the bullets were absolutely open to supply, as if they didn't have money.

Do you think the soldiers fed with bullets like this have poor combat effectiveness?

There is also the artillery troops we attach the most importance to. To be honest, these troops can count the number of artillery shells they can fire in a year.

We have no shortage of shells. After all, we used to work hard to build a lot, but we haven't finished it yet.

But the key is that we really can't afford to consume this gun barrel.

One piece costs hundreds of thousands, which is already a very low price.

Especially in recent years, our artillery has been constantly being updated.

Many of the original artillery have been eliminated and have been replaced with self-propelled artillery.

The comprehensive command and combat mode is adopted. To put it bluntly, it is radar and integrated fire control system to improve the shooting accuracy of the artillery troops.

But the problem is that your radar is advanced, and your drone can detect enemy targets early, but this cannon has to be fired!

Look at how the Mid Army trained artillery?

The artillery squad in groups of several people will have to be able to remove at least hundreds of shells in one training session.

But as for us, if we go out for training once in a row, it will probably be good if we can fire 100 shells.

Every time it can be opened, it is a large-scale comprehensive military exercise that is once every few years.

So now the army is very troublesome about gunner training. If you don’t look at soldiers from ordinary military branches, you can retire when you reach the age of your life.

However, experienced artillery soldiers will try every means to keep these people.

Because experienced gunners are really scarce, especially when training a gunner again, it will take hundreds of shells and a few barrels to make a pupil.

In order to change this situation, we have been working hard in technological manufacturing and want to solve such problems.

Since we cannot be as generous as the United States, we can train soldiers to fire firecrackers, find feelings, and accumulate experience.

But we can make a fuss about accuracy!

The first shot must be a bit exaggerated, but within three shots, the error in the bombardment range can be reduced to the range of killing. This is the goal we are pursuing.

So we started working hard in the field of viewing and drawing first.

For example, the earliest artillery comprehensive combat command system was used for the Americans to play air suppression. If we can’t afford it, we will play artillery comprehensive command.

To put it bluntly, it is to equip the artillery with radar and command vehicles, and then to equip the artillery with wheels and replace it with self-propelled artillery.

This greatly improves the maneuverability of the artillery.

By improving the fire control system, the combat effectiveness of the artillery has been greatly improved.

The advantage of this is that the Americans also need to fire a hundred shells to feed the gunners.

We may only have fifty shots to train.

But even so, you have to let the artillery squad really hit fifty shots?

Why do you say you hit fifty shots? Because you have to simulate various environments, such as storm environments, night environments, ice, snow, hail environments, etc.

And a lot of what we watch on TV are fixed target training, but in actual combat, who would stand there and let you fight?
Chapter completed!