Chapter 654: The rejected shipbuilding plan
Do the veteran generals in the military have money? It depends.
From a personal perspective, although these old generals cannot be said to be very rich, they are basically above the average level.
After all, all of them are generals, and many of them are warriors who have spent half of their lives in the military. The rewards from the royal family and the seizures on the battlefield are enough to keep them from having to worry about money for the rest of their lives.
Even these old generals were able to help their old subordinates. They had money to buy a private army for Perficott.
After all, the bulk of an infantry regiment's military expenditures are rifles, cannons, and logistical expenditures. Without fighting, they can basically spend no more than tens of thousands of gold pounds a year.
According to the military establishment of the Victoria Empire, the annual military expenditure of a Guards Infantry Regiment is one hundred thousand gold pounds, and this even includes the soldiers' salaries.
If the expenditure of the extraordinary corps is even smaller, then basically 30,000 gold pounds can cover the annual expenditure of an infantry regiment.
This expenditure is not very large. A general in the military department can still afford this expenditure even if he has little other income.
It is precisely because of this that these old guys were able to gather a private army for Perfectcott.
But if we look at the navy's expenditures, the little money in the pockets of these old guys is simply not enough.
The cost of building a new warship starts at least several hundred thousand gold pounds. For these grandfathers, they have to dig out their coffins.
After all, even an old-fashioned sailing frigate costs more than 70,000 gold pounds. This does not include the cost of personnel training and maintenance. It is simply the cost of building a ship.
The cost of the flying battleship designed by Purficott alone is as high as two million pounds. Of course, it is impossible for these old generals to pay for it themselves.
They plan to spend this military expenditure from the central financial expenditure of the empire.
Although the empire had almost emptied its treasury in order to build the northern territory to cope with the apocalyptic winter, after moving to the northern territory, the empire center has gradually stabilized the situation and its financial situation has also improved slightly.
In addition, Princess Anne also restored the empire's control over the colonies. Generally speaking, the financial situation of the empire's center is relatively good, and there is finally a little balance in the treasury.
But obviously, this surplus is not enough to build a flying battleship.
So when the military submitted the shipbuilding plan to the cabinet for discussion, it was rejected directly.
By the way, during the period when Purficott was conducting private interviews on incognito, the results of the prime minister election had already been announced.
The candidate recommended by the North, Wellington, defeated Princess Anne, who had returned with the power to suppress the colonies, by a relatively slim margin, and was successfully elected as the first prime minister of the empire.
If he and Karen hadn't jointly ran for the election, he might have lost to Princess Anne this time.
Because he only won the election by a narrow margin, Wellington did not control all the seats in the entire cabinet in terms of the composition of the cabinet members.
The Northern Territory and Dominion Alliance only received two-thirds of the cabinet seats, while the remaining one-third was jointly occupied by the royalist party represented by Princess Anne and the opposition parties composed of other forces.
As for other small neutral factions, they did not get cabinet seats, but only occupied certain seats in the parliament.
Purficott is satisfied with the result of the first election.
She doesn't mind that the cabinet is not completely under control. In her opinion, having opposition is actually a good thing, as long as they don't fight for the sake of fighting, but oppose for the sake of opposition. However, judging from the current situation, the opposition party headed by Princess Anne basically focuses on national affairs and does not oppose for the sake of opposition.
Of course, this has a lot to do with the fact that they only occupy one-third of the seats. More cabinet seats are in the hands of the Northern Territory and the Dominion Alliance, which is relatively important. The impact of the national policy is naturally greater on the Northern Territory and the Dominion Alliance.
If they do not want all the proposals they propose to be opposed and rejected, the opposition party must carefully consider whether to provoke a fight.
However, the shipbuilding plan submitted by the military was opposed by both parties.
For no other reason, it’s too expensive.
The old men in the military unceremoniously proposed a huge shipbuilding plan of twelve warships, trying to build three fleet clusters, with three new flying air warships designed by Purficott as the basis. core, and then build nine more scaled-down frigates around the three battleships.
These twelve battleships will be organized into three fleets, one to guard the center of the empire, one to patrol the colonies, and the other to guard the empire's homeland and deter the old world.
From a military perspective, this is indeed necessary.
After all, if you want to restore the empire's former power, a fleet of this size may not be enough. It can only be said that it can barely suppress the situation without competitors.
But the cost of building twelve flying battleships is also an astronomical figure. The total price of up to 15 million gold pounds, even when the empire was at its peak five years ago, was at least ten years of construction for the navy. The total cost of the ship.
For such a huge expenditure, the current imperial finances cannot afford this amount of money even if it takes twenty years, not to mention that the military plans to complete the construction of all twelve warships within five years.
It can only be said that the ideal is very full, but the reality is very skinny.
Even if the cost is not considered, it is almost impossible to build twelve flying battleships in five years.
Not to mention how long it will take to complete the supporting facilities of the flying battleship, it is still far away from the Royal Shipyard itself to start building the first flying battleship.
In the end, the military argued hard at the cabinet meeting and finally convinced the cabinet to allow them to build a fleet with only three frigates and not an air carrier.
Although the military was very dissatisfied with this, it really had no choice. The financial situation of the empire's center did not allow them to make more demands.
So they had no choice but to approach the Royal Dockyard with the budget approved by the cabinet, and asked the Royal Dockyard to make a simple version of the frigate based on Perfectcott's design.
Not only that, they also demanded that the cost of the frigate must be controlled within one million gold pounds, preferably cheaper.
After all, the funds approved by the cabinet are limited. If the cost can be reduced, then maybe one more ship can be built.
However, these requirements are somewhat unreasonable for the Royal Shipyard.
The military asked them to improve the drawings before they even figured out the specific structure and design details of the flying battleship. How could the engineers of the Royal Dockyard do it?
In the end, after a lot of push and pull, they could only turn to Purficott and ask her to help design a cheaper flying frigate with reduced performance.
However, at this time, Purficott had already boarded the train to Pripyat.
(End of this chapter)