Wild North America 1846

After nearly a year of arduous negotiations and several twists and turns, under the difficult promotion of Tang, France and Britain, the international debt restructuring plan finally reached a preliminary consensus in Washington on July 7, entering the stage of substantive debt repayment arrangements;

Based on the previous outstanding loan principal of 3.762 million Tang Yuan in the United States, an 18.2% reduction or exemption was made, and the outstanding loan principal was determined to be 3.07732 million Tang Yuan. Countries will discuss repayment matters on this basis.

How much will the countries after the division of North America and the occupied areas of Datang each apportion?An exact ratio needs to be determined.

This is another difficult bargaining process. Every decimal point increase in debt means a huge debt of more than 300 million Tang yuan, which is a disaster for small North American countries.

As a larger political entity, the Republic of New York needs to bear nearly half of the debt, with a total of about 1.5 million Tang Yuan.

for it
There is a huge difference between one more decimal point and one less decimal point, and it is related to vital interests, so of course we have to argue hard.

The same is true for the Democratic Republic of Maine and the Republic of Connecticut. Although they only need to bear a few decimal points, which is 3% to 3.5% of the total debt, they have to cut down desperately.

3% is to bear the debt of more than 900 million Tang Yuan from the previous government, and 3.5% is to bear more than 1000 million Tang Yuan from the previous government. Can it be the same?

Fortunately, after negotiations, the international creditor committee, mostly composed of French creditor banks and big capitalists, agreed to cancel the international debts that should be borne by the disputed area of ​​Colombia, which is 3.2% of the total debts.

Now this disputed area in Colombia is occupied by three countries. Washington, D.C., Colombia is occupied by the French Expeditionary Force, and Maryland and Delaware are occupied by the Tang Empire and the British Army (note; the total number of British troops is more than 1300). How to repay the debt?

The Kingdom of Massachusetts is part of the Tang Empire, and the debts that should be repaid by the former government are also included in the total plate. The Tang Kingdom should bear 42% of the total, totaling 1.26 million Tang Yuan. This has been determined early.

This part of the debt is divided into three, with a total of 1/3 borne by the imperial government and the royal family, which will be resolved through the appropriation of funds in the next year, and the loan will not be postponed.

The remaining 2/3, a total of about 8400 million Tang Yuan, will be repaid by several major multinational banks with strong domestic strength, and it will be settled in one go.

The three states and one vassal state under the empire each bear different proportions, which will be repaid year by year through local financial expenditures in the next ten years.

The government of the Tang Dynasty and the royal family respectively subsidize part of the interest, which is not high. The preferential annual interest rate is only 2.1%, and there is no need for three states and one vassal state to bear it. This is the advantage of being backed by a big tree to enjoy the shade.

calculated like this
The three states and one vassal state have a total population of more than 860 million, and the per capita public tax burden is less than one Tang yuan per year. The debt repayment pressure is relatively small and can be easily borne.

The pressure on the Republic of New York, the Democratic Republic of Maine, and the Republic of Connecticut is relatively heavy, and their split finances will certainly not be able to repay their debts at one time. This requires discussing interest and debt repayment periods with the International Creditors Committee.

On the one hand, they are actively negotiating, and on the other hand, they are frequently in contact with several powerful business consortiums in the empire to discuss loans at preferential interest rates.

I was thinking in my heart, or "tear down the east wall to make up for the west wall".

In order to retain this large amount of international loan business, the International Creditors Committee also made substantial concessions on the loan interest rate and term, roughly speaking of an annual interest rate of around 4% to 4.2%, and a new loan term of 12 to 15 years.

But looking at the 2.1% preferential interest rate of Datang Empire, the three companies in New York, Maine and Connecticut are unwilling to reconcile and try to continue to compress the level of annual interest rates.

Don't expect an annual interest rate of 2.1%, at least around 3%, ideally 2.8%.

This kind of excessive request made the International Creditors Committee's nose crooked, angrily pointing out that it was "a great deal for Tang Guo to give to his family, and there is no such low preferential loan interest rate in the world", which is almost unheard of.

Ever since, the negotiation has been dragged down...

In philadelphia

More than 300 hectares of land around the secret research and development base "Wuthering Heights" in Fairmont Park has been turned into a military restricted area, covered with barbed wire and closely guarded by military police.

In the research and development base, a large group of experts, scholars and students have already moved into the base, and have begun to propose as many as a dozen research and development plans according to the needs of the military.

There are light tracked armored vehicles, medium-sized tracked armored vehicles, and various strange shapes, including round, square, hexagonal, and water tank shapes. Explore various ways to realize them.

With the support of sufficient funds, three plans have been approved by the military representative Lieutenant Colonel Ling Xiao, and the development of actual vehicles will soon begin. These tracked armored vehicles will be based on agricultural tracked tractors and will advance at a fairly fast speed.

A complete logistics supply has been established. There are even more than 30 dairy cows, hundreds of fattened piglets and some chickens, ducks and poultry in the base, providing a rich supply of meat, eggs and milk.

In front of the two-storey British-style building, there are seven or eight crawler tractors covered in dirt and dust, and more than a dozen staff members are banging and repairing, very busy.

Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao also changed from his straight woolen officer uniform to coarse overalls, and squatted beside the crawler tractor, asking about the breakdown.

"Sir, the chassis design of these crawler tractors is unreasonable, and the head-to-head setbacks are serious. Once the long-term high-intensity operation is performed, the entire chassis will fall apart."

"The strength, wear resistance and toughness of these track pins are not enough. Basically, after running for more than ten kilometers, mechanical fatigue occurs frequently, and they are easy to break, deform or fall off, and the wear is very severe."

"There are also the front and rear support lugs of the chassis, and the road wheels are not good. In the case of rough driving, the teeth of the guide wheels are deformed. They must be strengthened, and better alloy materials must be used..."

"And the design of this walking mechanism is unreasonable..."

As soon as the crawler tractor chassis was used, many problems were exposed, which made Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao feel like a dick.

Because of the different use scenarios, agricultural machinery is mostly used in farms or pastures for dry plowing, harrowing and harvesting. The operating environment is relatively stable. After a busy farming season, it only needs to drive [-] to [-] kilometers, which is enough to cultivate a large piece of land.

It is different in military use. Once it is transported away from the railway line, Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao requires these tracked armored vehicles to be able to travel at least 120 kilometers autonomously without failure.

Calculated at a speed of 15 kilometers per hour, that is 8 motorcycle hours. This requires crossing ditches and ridges in the wild, climbing slopes and wading. All the experimenters sprint at the maximum speed to verify its reliability.

When these crawler tractors come to the base, they usually run more than [-] kilometers a day, and they run continuously without changing vehicles. How can they bear such a high-intensity toss?

No... I've been lying down for more than 10 days.

Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao is the kind of person who has a relatively axial personality. He must be serious when he has identified a path. He pursues perfection and cannot tolerate all kinds of flaws.

So when he was keenly aware of the huge use of armored vehicles in the military field, he was even willing to pay for modifications at his own expense.With the help of the royal relationship, he produced thin bulletproof armor, led a group of technical engineers to work hard, and successfully established a cavalry armor brigade.

Now that there are projects, money, people, venues, and plenty of time, he is even less willing to lower R&D standards.

After collecting a lot of questions, Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao stood up, frowning, and turned to look at Captain Pan Zhixin who was recording with a pen, with a questioning look in his eyes.

Captain Pan Zhixin smiled wryly, flipped through the notebook in his hand, and added together the dozen or so questions he had recorded recently, before answering;
"Report sir, there are as many as 171 issues related to the tracked chassis, 66 of which are related to material strength, wear resistance, toughness and torsion resistance, 37 are related to unreasonable design, 21 are related to the harsher service environment, 9 are related to the chassis beam, 7 are related to design concepts, 16 are related to the special needs of the military, and 14 are related to your high requirements.

Especially in terms of materials, we urgently need more experts who are familiar with steel material technology, senior engineers from automobile factories, custom-made special parts, comprehensive improvement of chassis beam structure, and more support. "

"How about this, you go to meet with the expert team and make a list of which experts are needed, what kind of special materials are needed? What kind of technical support is needed? I will solve these." Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao knew that any difficulty would confuse the rest of the project team.

For this kind of troublesome matter, I have to do it myself, at worst, I will find Brother Huang for help!
Gathering the industrial power of the entire empire, he did not believe that he could not develop a tracked armored vehicle chassis suitable for the military's needs.

These agricultural tracked armored vehicles do not represent the highest level of imperial industry, because of cost factors, the materials used are not the best.

Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao knows;

There is a special steel plant in Salem, which specializes in the production of bearing steel, improved Harvey armor steel, gun steel and other steels with special needs, and its strength is among the top in the world.

Don't ask why you know, Lieutenant Colonel Lei Xiao smelted a furnace of thin armor steel at his own expense, which came from this special steel factory. It cost him more than 1 yuan to smelt more than 120 tons, and the price per ton was almost 70 times that of ordinary steel.

For this, they still charged the cost price, which made them lose face.

Using high-quality bearing steel to make track pins, wouldn't the performance be doubled?

There are always ways to improve...

If it doesn’t work, the tracks can be redesigned to thicken and thicken the original track pins that are as thick as little fingers. Then its ability to withstand rough driving, tensile and torsion resistance will be qualitatively improved, enough to meet the needs of the military.

To overcome the technological difficulties one by one, the material difficulties one by one, and the design difficulties one by one, he doesn't believe that he can't build a tracked armored vehicle that meets the military's requirements?
Confidence comes from strength.

As the world's number one industrial power, the Datang Empire has been developing in depth in the second wave of the industrial revolution represented by electrification and petrochemicals, ranking among the world's top in dozens of electrification and petrochemical industries.

Datang is so strong that if it can't develop a qualified tracked armored vehicle, then other countries are also useless.