Rise of Empires: Spain.

Chapter 134 Temporary Technical Training Course
Spain's military reorganization is good news for the vast majority of people.

The existing officers will have broader promotion channels, and the 11 division commander positions will become the target of competition among senior Spanish officers.

Fortunately, Carlo did not have much real power in the army, otherwise Carlo would have had a hard time during this period.

After all, there are only 11 senior military officer positions in the whole of Spain. How to become a future division commander in Spain will probably give these officers a headache for a long time.

Under the division commander, with the expansion of the army, there are also a large number of vacancies for regimental commanders and battalion commanders. Including Andrew and Kaman, who were promoted by Carlo before, and those officers who graduated from the Royal Military Academy, there may be room for advancement.

If Carlo remembered correctly, Andrew and Carman were both majors at the moment. After all, they were all Carlo's men, and Grand Duke Serrano should take care of them a little during this military expansion.

Apart from anything else, it would be no problem to be promoted to the rank of lieutenant colonel and become a regimental commander. At worst, he could be a deputy regimental commander, and after a few years of experience, he could be promoted to the regimental commander.

Although there are many regimental commanders in Spain, this does not mean that the commander is a low-ranking officer. On the contrary, in Spain, where the army is not large, officers at the level of regimental commander can also be considered senior officers.

Once the army needs to be expanded on a large scale due to war, such officers as regimental commanders will soon be promoted to division commanders and become the main commander of an army of 10,000 people.

After all, Andrew and Kaman had only been in Spain for a few years, and they joined the Spanish Royal Army as Italians.

It is already quite good to have such achievements at present. After all, they are only in their 20s and still very young. There is still a long time to accumulate experience and wait for the war to happen.

The massive expansion of the army was great news for the Royal Arsenal.

Currently, among all the military factories in Spain, only the Royal Arsenal has the production capacity of the Vitali M1872 rifle, which also means that the rifles that equip more than Spanish troops need to be produced by the Royal Arsenal.

Although it was an extremely difficult task, it was also an opportunity for the development of the Royal Arsenal.

After completing this order, the Royal Arsenal will become the largest military factory in Spain, and no competitor will be able to compete with it.

This is also a necessity for the development of this era. The birth of a monopoly giant is not a bad thing for the country. For Spain, whose military production capacity is already limited, the Royal Arsenal has become the leader and giant of military enterprises, which can strengthen Spain's research and development and manufacturing capabilities in military technology.

After all, the R&D capabilities of a super enterprise and many small and medium-sized enterprises are completely different. Perhaps the R&D capabilities of thousands of small and medium-sized enterprises combined are not as good as those of a giant enterprise. R&D requires real money and a lot of time investment, and some small military factories simply cannot afford such efforts.

However, the most important issue at present is to increase the production capacity of the Royal Arsenal.

At present, the production capacity of the Royal Arsenal is too small compared to the needs of the Spanish Army and is completely insufficient to meet the equipment needs of the Spanish Army.

Fortunately, it will take some time for the Spanish army to reform and recruit soldiers. This period of time is the golden period for the Royal Arsenal to increase production.

Currently, the number of employees in the Royal Arsenal has just exceeded 7000, and the annual output of weapons is: 150 rifles, 120 artillery pieces, 1.5 million rounds of ammunition, and artillery shells.

If the needs of the Spanish army were to be fully met, the Royal Arsenal would need to work overtime for more than ten years.

To solve this problem, Carlo issued an order for unlimited expansion to the Royal Arsenal, requiring it to triple its weapons production within the next year.

Of course, Carlo also provided strong financial support to the Royal Arsenal. More than 800 million pesetas were available for the Royal Arsenal to use, and hundreds of weapons experts from the Austro-Hungarian Empire supporting Spain were also transferred to the Royal Arsenal to help the Royal Arsenal increase production.

The government also provided policy support for the expansion of the Royal Arsenal, such as approving land for the Seville Industrial Base, including preparing a large industrial area exclusively for the Royal Arsenal in the future Barcelona Industrial Base.

Currently, the Royal Arsenal has two large branches, one in Madrid and the other in Seville. When the Barcelona branch is completed, it will also effectively increase the output of weapons at the Royal Arsenal.

As for the employee issue, I am not too worried at the moment.

After the cabinet meeting, Carlo asked Butler Loren to start preparing for the construction of a comprehensive technical school.

Currently, a large comprehensive technical school is being built in Madrid, Seville and Barcelona, ​​each of which is expected to accommodate more than 3000 technical students.

This also means that after the technical schools are completed in the future, the three technical schools combined will be able to enroll more than 3000 students each year.

The training time for technical students is shorter than that of ordinary universities. It is expected that these students will graduate in 2 to 3 years and devote themselves to the construction of Spain.

Of course, 2 to 3 years of training is still too long for Spain at present. Considering that the construction of these technical schools takes at least several months, it will take at least three years for the first batch of technical students to graduate.

In order to train the technical talents needed by Spain as soon as possible, Carlo ordered Butler Loren to work with the government to set up technical training courses in several industrial cities in Spain, while starting three comprehensive technical schools at the same time. It would take 3 to 6 months to temporarily train a group of talents with certain technical capabilities for Spain.

There is no requirement for these temporarily trained technicians to be very outstanding, as long as they can barely meet the needs of various factories for technical talents.

Although the training time of 3 to 6 months is not long, it can allow them to gain certain experience in using factory equipment so that they will not feel unfamiliar when they enter the factory to work.

Basically, holding one such temporary technical training course in every industrial city can meet the short-term needs of Spain's industrial development.

In the future, after the three technical schools begin to recruit students, such temporary technical training classes can be gradually cancelled.

Among all the factories of the royal industry, the military factories have the fastest development momentum.

After all, the military has provided a large number of orders to military factories, which means that the military factories will not be short of orders in the next few years.

This also means that even if an economic crisis occurs in the future, military factories will not have to worry about being affected by the economic crisis as they have orders from the military.

If the military factories remain strong, they can also help steel mills and other factories better survive the economic crisis.

After all, the production of rifles and artillery, including various bullets and shells, requires a large amount of steel, which is also beneficial to steel mills.

Including various factories producing small parts, they will have a better chance of surviving this economic crisis. As for whether military factories will face a reduction in orders after expanding their production scale, Carlo is not too worried.

After all, after this economic crisis, the tenth Russo-Turkish war will soon come. This time the Russo-Turkish war will focus on the Balkan Peninsula, and the Balkan Peninsula will be more lively.

These wars will create a huge demand for weapons and ammunition. Although Spain's military industry is not well-known, it will have no problem getting a piece of the pie.

After all, both sides of the Russo-Turkish War, the Russian Empire and the Ottoman Empire, were not very strong in weapons production and were more dependent on weapons imports from abroad.

Regardless of which side of the business it does, it can ensure that Spain's military industry will not face a large-scale reduction in orders in the future.

Moreover, Latin American countries are also targets of cooperation with Spain, as well as East Asian countries, which are all importers of weapons.

As long as Spanish weapons are not too backward among the weapons of European countries and are priced appropriately, there will be basically no problem with sales.

At the end of June 1872, Carlo once again attended the annual graduation ceremony of the Royal Military Academy.

Compared with the military academy graduates of the previous year, this year's graduates will be more fortunate, because they have waited for the reform of the Spanish army before graduation, and they will have positions equal to or even higher than military ranks as soon as they graduate.

After the expansion of the Spanish army, there will be a large number of vacancies for low-level officers such as platoon leaders and company commanders. These newly graduated military academy graduates are basically lieutenants, which just corresponds to the positions of platoon leaders and company commanders.

The first batch of military academy graduates waited for a long time for the position of deputy platoon leader, and finally waited for the military reform and got the opportunity to be promoted to platoon leader or even deputy company commander and company commander.

The second batch of military academy graduates were luckier. Their lowest positions were platoon leaders, and they even had the hope of being promoted directly to company commanders, which was something the first batch of graduates could not even think of when they graduated.

Considering that the Guards would also expand, just like the first batch of graduates, Carlo also conducted a small-scale selection among the second batch of graduates, selecting a small number of officers to join the Guards.

Graduates of these military academies are still very happy to join the Guards. As a Spanish army, the welfare benefits of the Guards are much better than those of the Royal Army.

Of course, the main reason for this is that the Guards are the royal family's private army, and all current expenses are borne by the royal family.

In order to ensure the loyalty of the Guards, Carlo not only provided the Guards with higher salaries than the Royal Army, but also higher subsidies and a clear pension policy, so that the Guards could have no worries.

It is no exaggeration to say that after a soldier of the Guards is killed in the line of duty, his family will receive a valuable compensation. At the same time, all his children will be raised by the royal family until they go to college. Not only will they have priority admission to college, but all tuition fees from elementary school to college will also be waived.

Compared to the Royal Army, whose pension system is not so clear and whose pension is not much, the treatment of the Guards is already very good.

However, the Guards had always been the size of a regiment, and the soldiers were carefully selected from the Royal Army. It was difficult for ordinary people to directly join the Guards.

Selection from these young officers is a relatively easy opportunity to join the Guards, and they will directly serve as officers of the Guards.

The treatment of officers is definitely better than that of ordinary soldiers. For those graduates who have just graduated from the Royal Military Academy and are deeply influenced by the academy's patriotic ideas of the central army, the Guards are an elite army that is directly loyal to His Majesty the King. It is certainly an honor to be able to join the Guards.

This year's military academy graduates are less than last year, but they still reach more than 300. However, considering that the Royal Army will need a large number of middle and low-level officers after its expansion, Carlo does not intend to compete with the Royal Army.

After selecting a dozen officers with above-average academic performance from the more than 300 military academy graduates, Carlo completed the military academy graduation ceremony.

The remaining 300-odd military academy graduates will be assigned to various Spanish troops within a month and help reform the Spanish troops.

Don't underestimate them as just ordinary graduates from the military academy. After they join various units, they are all rising stars. Some are at the lowest level of platoon leader, commanding at least dozens of soldiers.

If we add last year's more than 400 military academy graduates, the Royal Military Academy has trained more than 700 outstanding military academy graduates for the Spanish Army in the past two years.

These 700-plus military academy graduates are crucial to this reform. After the Spanish army officially expanded, there were more than 6 positions for company commanders in the six infantry divisions alone.

With the addition of three cavalry divisions and two artillery divisions, the Spanish army's previous reserve of middle and low-level officers was simply insufficient.

Even if all these 700-plus military academy graduates were recruited into the army, they could only barely meet the army's needs.

However, what is certain is that the military level of these military academy graduates is definitely better than that of the middle and low-level officers laid off by the army.

The Royal Military Academy was famously strict in its training of students. Carlo had actually inspected the training system of the military academy and did not find any major problems.

It can even be guaranteed that, under the Royal Military Academy's strict training requirements, even if the academy's graduates are not outstanding generals, they are definitely above the qualified level among company commander-level officers.

After several years of training in the army, they were more than qualified to serve as battalion commanders or even regiment commanders. The reason why Spain did not produce any famous generals during this period was entirely because Spain did not participate in World War I and World War II, and a large number of officer positions were controlled by the nobility.

There was not much difference between Spanish officers and the hereditary system before. It would be strange if the level of such officers was good.

The influence of middle and low-level officers on the combat effectiveness of the army is still very large. After all, no matter how excellent the ability of the senior generals is, his orders must be sent down to the troops at all levels for execution.

It is these middle and low-level officers who are responsible for carrying out the tasks, and their military level determines the lower limit of an army.

If all the middle and low-level officers of an army are those who only know how to take advantage of trouble and muddle through, then even if a famous general leads the army, it is doomed to fail to exert any excellent combat effectiveness.

Senior officers bring the upper limit of combat effectiveness to the army, while middle and low-level officers bring the lower limit of combat effectiveness to the army.

The second update of 4,200 words, please support!
Here is a long chapter. I have to go to pick up my bride tomorrow (my cousin is getting married), so the update may be a little late.

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(End of this chapter)