I want to be emperor

Chapter 411 Low Cost Regular Army
When the time came to the end of December in the third year of Chengshun, the Great Chu Empire Army completed the reduction of the garrison one after another, and took advantage of the opportunity to set up a number of regular military divisions, expanding the army's division-level troops to 22 times.

At the same time, as a large number of garrison soldiers were successively transferred to reclamation, construction, transportation, and labor, the local garrison strength declined to a certain extent.

In order to solve this problem, the Army has proposed a method of forming a low-cost regular army to garrison and suppress places in various places.

When Army Chief Xu Zhixian approached Luo Zhixue to report the matter, his definition of this low-cost regular army was quite interesting.

"The main forces of our army now spend a lot of money. However, in addition to personnel salaries, there are also a large number of mules and horses, guns, armor, and more importantly, ammunition."

"In order to maintain mobility, each ministry must be equipped with a large number of mules and horses, such as artillery units. A four-door nine-jin artillery sentry needs nearly a hundred mules and horses, and the cost of these mules and horses is comparable to four or five. Hundreds of soldiers."

"Not only the artillery units use more mules and horses, but also the logistics units use more mules and horses. Even the infantry units will be equipped with carriages to transport armor, spears and food with the army in order to ensure mobility and not consume too much physical energy during the march. , tents, etc.”

While Xu Zhixian was talking, he also handed Luo Zhixue a report drafted and compiled by the army on various aspects of the troops.

The report includes three units: this year participated in the Fujian-Zhejiang operations, and used as the main force the Sixth Division that fought all the way from Ningbo, Zhejiang to Quanzhou, Fujian.

The garrison was deployed at the front of Jiangbei, and there were several operations and small-scale battles, but there was no fourth division that had large-scale engagements with the enemy.

Garrisoned in Jinling City, without any action, has been training, and at the same time replaced the flintlock, adopted the new book tactics, and newly organized the Tenth Division.

The Army lists and compares the costs of these three different types of troops in different states.

Xu Zhixian said: "Your Majesty, please see that in the three armies, the cost of personnel is basically the same, because the salaries and food subsidies of the main forces of our army are the same standard, although the total amount of the tenth division is higher, but this is because The Tenth Division has more troops, while the Sixth Division spends more, but because of the long-term combat, a certain amount of combat subsidies and rewards are issued, and for long-distance combat, it is more troublesome to transport supplies, so it costs more .”

"Generally speaking, the salary expenditures of the various departments of our army are similar, and if they are deployed on a fixed basis, they are highly consistent. Even the former garrison's personnel salary expenditures are not much lower than those of the regular army."

"The gap in personnel costs occurs during operations, especially over long distances."

"Furthermore, there is the consumption of mules and horses. The consumption of mules and horses is very huge. In order to maintain the mobility of the troops, we generally assign a large number of mules and horses to each main force, and the consumption of each mule and horse is equivalent to four a soldier."

"The last thing is the cost of equipment. The initial fixed cost of equipment is not too high. It is mainly the purchase price of guns, armor and various cold weapons. However, guns, cold weapons and armor are good if they are not used intensively. If so, its service life is relatively long.”

"Ammunition consumption, the number of daily training is less, the bulk is still during combat, especially the consumption of shells is extremely huge."

"Our colleagues in the Army have found after many comparisons and studies that the main expenditure of the army can be roughly divided into three parts. One part is the fixed expenditure of personnel and equipment, including equipment costs, training costs and personnel expenses."

"The other part is the maintenance of mobility, especially the cost of maintaining the mobility of artillery."

"The last part is the cost of marching and fighting, including the cost of supplies, the cost of ammunition consumed during combat, and so on."

"And the latter two are the big ones, together accounting for more than [-]%!"

When Xu Zhixian said this, he paused for a while, and then continued: "So we thought, whether it is possible to build a force with a little less mobility, which is mainly used to garrison local areas, suppress local areas on weekdays, and conduct local defense during wartime. Combat missions, and when necessary, the maneuverability will be strengthened to cooperate with the main force in maneuvering operations."

"In this way, we can save a large number of mules and horses, and we don't need to maintain a full manpower for local suppression. Especially in logistics, we can only keep the backbone and replenish a large number of logistics troops in wartime."

"In this way, in the end, we can reduce the cost of the troops stationed in such places by at least half, and we can also keep these troops at the level of training and equipment they should have!"

"Under such circumstances, we can set up several regiments in each province to garrison the local area, maintain suppression in various places at a lower cost, and free up the main forces of each department to participate in front-line battles."

"In addition, if we are a new type of army that uses flintlock guns as the main weapon, then after the infantry unit saves armor, spears, and carriages for transporting these weapons, the overall cost will be further reduced!"

Hearing Xu Zhixian's words, Luo Zhixue basically understood the thoughts of Xu Zhixian and other army generals.

They disliked the garrison's combat effectiveness, so they strongly supported the elimination before, but it was a waste to use the current main force to suppress places. Well, what's more important is that the army doesn't have so much money and food to prepare too many main forces.

Therefore, they decided to take a compromise plan and create some troops that lack mobility, logistics and other auxiliary forces, but at the same time maintain the training level of combatants.

Luo Zhixue thought about it carefully, and felt that it was okay.

Anyway, the Great Chu Empire now only has more than 20 main troops, which is not enough. Even if the number of troops increases to more than 30 by next spring, this is still very reluctant for the huge Huaxia region.

After all, at that time, Huaxia will not only suppress internally, but also defend externally and even launch wars. The total number of troops will not be able to be arranged at all.

After careful consideration, Luo Zhixue said: "It sounds okay. The army can make a batch to try it out first. If the effect is good, it can be popularized."

After all, Luo Zhixue thought for a while and said: "This kind of troops can be downsized in terms of organization. While retaining the command system, backbone system and some combatants, the number of non-combatants can be reduced as much as possible."

"In addition, since this kind of troops is going to be directly transferred to the front line after being supplemented during the necessary period of war, a corresponding supplementary system must be established, and the troops should be replenished as soon as possible. Resume to the regular combat formation at a faster speed."

After Luo Zhixue flipped through the plan again, he pointed to the words "Low-cost regular army" on it: "Change the name of the later plan, don't use words like low-cost, and continue to use the number of the army regular army when it is compiled later. , um, the serial number goes directly from one hundred to the last."

Low-cost regular army, if such words are known to the outside world, they will think that the Great Chu Empire is going to do some rubbish.

But in fact, this plan developed by the Army is actually only reducing the auxiliary forces and mobility of the troops. Needless to say, these auxiliary forces are actually useless during non-combat periods, and they can be recruited during combat periods.

As for the mobility, it mainly reduces the mobility of the artillery.

Among these reductions, there is a very important point, that is, to control and reduce the number of mules and horses as much as possible.

After all, the cost of mules and horses is too high. If the number of mules and horses cannot be reduced, cost control will become a joke.

As for the subsequent maneuvers of these troops after the cancellation of the mules and horses.

When it comes to internal pressure, it is estimated that those landlords can't pull out any Hongyi cannons with their armed forces, so they don't need to focus on heavy weapons, and they can get it done with light infantry.

At the same time, these troops are stationed locally and are responsible for local defense, and there will be no such things as long-distance raids.

Therefore, the cancellation of a large number of mules and horses will not actually affect these troops' responsibility for local suppression tasks.

As for a large number of enemies coming, they don't need too many mules and horses for defensive operations, just like many new standard troops in the Ming court. Except for the new Qin army and a few Jiangbei new standard troops, most of them actually Some of the new standard troops don't have many mules.

Because most of the time they fight defensively and don't need mules...

And when it really comes to a need, mules and horses can be recruited on the spot for emergency replenishment, and then you can just run around with the artillery.

In the next few days, many personnel from the army worked overtime, and quickly worked out a preliminary staffing plan.

After reading the plan, Luo Zhixue thought it was okay, so he approved it on the spot, and asked the army to build two new divisions for pilot projects, namely, the [-]th Division and the [-]st Division.

The [-]th Division is expected to be deployed in Jiangxi, and the [-]st Division is expected to be deployed in the southern Anhui area of ​​Anlu Province.

These two divisions have two kinds of formations, one is wartime formation, which completely imitates the existing main force, um, specifically refers to the troops equipped with matchlock guns.

There is also a peaceful establishment, which has greatly reduced non-combatant personnel such as logistics personnel, and at the same time reduced the establishment.

In the end, this kind of division has only 8000 people under the peace organization, which is more than 4000 people less than the 6000 people in the combat organization.

In terms of weapons and equipment, the individual weapons are still the same. The artillery is also equipped with two and a half catties, five catties, and nine catties field guns, and some eighteen catties mortars, 24 catties mortars, but the number is much smaller. The artillery regiment had only 24 guns.

However, most of these artillery are fixedly deployed in permanent fortifications, and do not have too many mules and horses. In addition, the artillery unit does not have too many auxiliary soldiers. If it is necessary to maneuver on weekdays, it has to be borrowed from the private sector. Or requisition mules and horses...

(End of this chapter)