Why would I join the army if I can’t drive a Gundam!

Chapter 258 This is what it means to be rich
With the release of 08ms Squad, UC 0081 has come to a close. Overall, although conflicts and turmoil still exist in some areas, the overall environment of the Federation is stable and improving.

The Earth's economic sphere was not destroyed, and there were no annoying remnants of Zeon organizing any team-building activities. In addition, the rebels and insurgents in space were either wiped out or suppressed to the point that some media outlets were even proclaiming that this was the beginning of another glorious era for the Earth Federation.

Makarius didn't know if this statement was true or not, but he did know that the glorious era of the Federation Space Force was about to begin again!
As usual, he got up, removed Nagase Hotaru's arm from around his neck, washed up and changed his clothes. The next moment, Markarius had already changed into his uniform and appeared in the cafeteria of the Federal Command Academy, carrying his handbag.

As he sat down with his plate, ready to enjoy his delicious breakfast, he saw the morning news playing on the television above him.

The news report was about the approval of the Federation Army's new warship design.

Unlike mobile suits, the Federation Forces had high standards for new ships. After submitting their tender proposals, they rejected several offers from companies such as Anaheim Electronics and Falkwellington.

Now, with the new mobile suits nearing completion and ready for mass production, the accompanying warships are still nowhere to be seen, and the Federation officials are getting a little anxious!

Fortunately, after clear specifications and the tireless efforts of the company's designers, who were working day and night until their heads were practically bald, Falkwellington finally produced a shipbuilding plan that satisfied the demanding client.

In order to meet the dual requirements put forward by the Federation Space Forces for "command and control capabilities and artillery combat capabilities as a fleet flagship" and "mobile suit operational capabilities as a carrier ship", Falkwellton boldly innovated, absorbing excellent shipbuilding experience and concepts from the Zeon side while maintaining the original design style.

Ultimately, they produced the Alexander-class heavy cruiser, a vessel that combined the style of the Federation's traditional large battleships with the Zeon Army's Musai-class light cruisers, featuring propellers that were separated from the main hull. Compared to the Salamis-class and Magellan-class cruisers, it greatly improved safety and could even be described as a culmination of various approaches.

It can only be said that Falkwellington is a long-established military-industrial complex in the Federation. Whether it is vision or technology, it is very good. Moreover, they understand the tastes of the Federation military high command and know what these veterans from the old era like.

In fact, even many Federation generals who understood the importance of mobile suits in the war still found it difficult to give up their love for firepower.

The Alexander-class is an excellent warship that achieves a balance between powerful naval gun firepower and strong mobile suit operational capabilities.

Its size is similar to that of the Magellan-class, and even wider and taller. Its armament consists of four twin 356mm MEGA particle cannons with an output of 15MW and two single 356mm MEGA cannons. It also has four twin 100mm MEGA particle cannons and four single 100mm MEGA particle cannons. In terms of firepower projection, it is in no way inferior to the Magellan-class.

As for the use of mobile suits, needless to say, the massive hull provides the Alexander-class with huge mobile suit catapult decks and hangars, two mobile suit maintenance platforms on the upper and lower parts of the hull, and four mobile suit catapults, which can usually meet the maintenance needs of two squadrons of 12 mobile suits. If additional capacity is needed in an emergency, the ship can even fit 18 mobile suits!
Such a warship is nothing short of a heavy landmine thrown into a pool for the current Federation space fleet, and it is also a resounding slap in the face to Anaheim Electronics, which came to compete with Falkwellington. After all, their proposal was still based on the Magellan, and the design was only slightly better than the Trafalgar-class.

But compared to the epoch-making Alexander-class, it is far inferior!

Therefore, at a consultation meeting at the Federation Army Headquarters, Rebil approved the construction plan for the first batch of twenty Alexander-class destroyers in one go.

According to Reibille's plan, these new Alexander-class ships would fill the gap in the Federation's fleet between the Magellan-class and Salamis-class ships. After all, strictly speaking, the Federation did not have ships of the heavy cruiser class. However, that's not entirely true. In fact, in the early stages of the One Year War, the main fleet of the Federation forces under Reibille's command actually had a small number of experimental Coral-class heavy cruisers, but these ships were all sunk in the Battle of Loum.

Therefore, since then, the Federation Army has not had a so-called heavy cruiser unit until now, when the appearance of the Alexander-class has filled this gap again.

Besides the Alexander-class, the Federation also attaches great importance to the Pegasus-class assault landing ships. The subsequent manufacturing plan for this class of warships is being handled by the ambitious Anaheim Electronics. Of course, there is also a sense of balance involved. This is not because Falkwellington is untrustworthy, but mainly due to political considerations. Furthermore, Anaheim has made many sacrifices in the design of the new Pegasus-class.

While they might not host banquets for high-ranking federal officials or give out red envelopes, they would still offer discounts to the federal army, which is why the federal army is willing to continue purchasing. On the one hand, the existing Pegasus-class aircraft are indeed somewhat outdated, and on the other hand, Anaheim's subsidies are really generous. Anaheim is going all out to squeeze into the blue ocean of arms sales.

Therefore, the Federation Forces also placed an order for five brand-new Pegasus-class destroyers!

Of course, there was also an obscure company on the list of arms sales, called Tsunami Heavy Industries. The company seemed to have suddenly appeared out of nowhere, and no one paid any attention to it, except for Makarius, who was watching the news and smiled.

After all, compared to the series of major news items mentioned earlier, the news that the Federation Army purchased a batch of supply drones from Tsushin Heavy Industries was not that important!
But for Makarius, this news was still quite important. After all, he had helped build up this company from scratch. In fact, given the company's background, its inclusion on the federal procurement list was partly due to his relationship with General King.

Of course, this was not a forced assignment. In fact, Tsunami Heavy Industries' supply drones had already been tested in the fighter wing of the Federation fleet stationed in side 3 and received good feedback.

These rocket-assisted drones, which are no more than half the size of an adult human, can greatly reduce the readjustment time of fighter units after running out of ammunition, allowing them to be resupplyed in the airspace near the mothership without having to return to it. This is also a good piece of equipment for the Federation forces.

Although the status of fighter jets within the fleet has declined considerably, they remain irreplaceable for certain specific missions. Furthermore, Tsunami Heavy Industries is indeed developing drones to resupply mobile suits, but given the diverse armament specifications of mobile suits, drones can only meet the needs of one specific type, so they haven't been put into production. In fact, Markarius had considered having Tsunami Heavy Industries develop mobile suits, but due to funding and technological limitations, they could only focus on other projects first. Moreover, even if they were to produce mobile suits, Tsunami Heavy Industries wouldn't be able to produce anything of significant quality; they couldn't very well continue building Zakus!

The Federation's military plan did not cause much of a stir when it was announced. Most of the Federation residents had no objections, and some were even happy to see the Federation army continue to strengthen its armed forces. Among them, the residents of former side2 and side5 were the main ones.

They were genuinely scared. They used to curse the Federation every day and long for the Zeon army, but once the Zeon army arrived and started shooting, everyone was able to accept the Federation forces immediately.

Moreover, after the war ended and the Union Army completed its disarmament, it also carried out a thorough overhaul of its internal structure, arresting and sending many of the bad elements who had committed crimes to military courts as a warning to others. As a result, the discipline and conduct of the Union Army have greatly improved. Although it is not yet completely free of any offenses, it is still much better than before.

Perhaps it is because of the peace that has lasted for more than a year since the war ended that the economy within the Earth Sphere is thriving, especially Side 6, the only colony that survived the war. In the past, they profited from both sides, taking from Zeon and the Federation, making a fortune.

After the war, fearing retribution from the Federation for their collusion with Zeon, Side 6 poured money into the Federation military, contributing funds and manpower to the colony reconstruction projects and even spending a large sum of money to buy a lot of retired Federation military equipment.

In fact, even now, Side 6 is the only place in the entire Earth Sphere that equips its police with mobile suits. This is because they have bought a lot of GMs and can't just leave them there. The already small number of security forces also have to operate several Magellans, so they have no choice but to cram a bunch of mobile suits into the police force as well.

Now, seeing the Federation strengthening its military again, the Side 6 government, feeling it hadn't done enough in the One Year War, looked at its pockets fuller and immediately bought another batch of Lepanto-class missile frigates from the Federation, ostensibly to help the federal government reduce its military burden.

Of course, despite the purchase, these new ships, which were launched less than two years ago, are still in the hands of the Federation. It's just that they were nominally bought by Side 6. This is not surprising, since the Side 6 Security Forces are not short of ships at the moment. After the One Year War ended, they bought four Magellans and ten Salamis from the Federation in one go. As a result, space pirates dare not show their faces in the Side 6 space domain, since the Security Forces really will use particle cannons to bombard people!

As the loser in the One Year War, Zeon, which lost everything, found that after more than a year of hardship that was even better than before, Prime Minister Darcia was surprised to find that despite having to pay for the reconstruction of the colony, war reparations from the Federation, and all sorts of other bills, the Republic's finances still had a surplus.

After all, Zeon was once the Federation's heavy industrial base, and many of the orders for manufacturing colonies were handled by Zeon companies. The Federation wasn't really a devil who would drain Zeon dry. Supporting Zeon's normal economic development and then using that to support the Federation's economy was the normal course of action.

Now, looking at the surplus figures in the Republic's account, Darcia couldn't help but curse.

"Kihren, you fucking deserve to die!"

Honestly, this is the first time Prime Minister Darcia has seen a fiscal surplus since the Zabi family came to power.

Now that they have money, the Republic of Zeon knows it's time to spend it!

As a result, many restrictions on the private markets in Zeon were relaxed, and housewives no longer had to use ration coupons to rush to buy non-staple food products such as white sugar, and there were more types of meat products to choose from.

In addition to improving people's livelihoods, the Republic of Zeon has also made a rare decision to provide some small benefits to the Republic's Self-Defense Forces. Of course, this was done after obtaining approval from the federal government. On the one hand, they slightly increased the allowances and compensation for retired veterans of the Principality. On the other hand, the Republic of Zeon is also determined to upgrade the only remaining brigade of mobile combat troops in the Self-Defense Forces.

After all, with the dismantling of military equipment such as the Zeonnik, the Zeon Self-Defense Forces completely lost the ability to upgrade and improve subsequent mobile suits.

Therefore, after discussing with Commander Schlesell, Darcia made a decisive decision to phase out the Zaku FZ currently in service with the Zeon Self-Defense Forces and replace them with brand-new GM C models procured from the Federation.

This move is partly to strengthen the Self-Defense Forces' combat capabilities to combat space pirates, and partly to curry favor with the Federation's military restructuring plan. They are also paying attention to the Alexander-class destroyers that the Federation is determined to purchase, since the regional suppression capabilities demonstrated by the ships make it hard to say who the Federation is preparing them for.

For the Republic of Zeon, which has now completely disbanded its space fleet and only retains anti-piracy patrol boats of the same class as the Lepanto-class frigates, such a warship would be sufficient to suppress the entire space domain.

In fact, if the federal government hadn't prohibited it, Lieutenant General Schleswig would have been quite keen to buy Gilley. After all, he had been paying attention to the situation of the South Pacific Alliance and even fantasized that Revan Hu could severely damage the Federation. But seeing that the whole group of monks had their KD score boosted by the Red Dragon, the old man could only sigh.

Meanwhile, after the Federation Army's procurement plan was handed over to the Federation Parliament, the parliamentarians suddenly realized that the Federation Army had not purchased any new battleships.
Although they received the answer that battleships were no longer suitable for the development of the battlefield situation, the Federal Council suddenly felt that the Federal Fleet without battleships seemed to lack the flavor of the past. After all, the old men did not understand how powerful Gundam was. They just wanted to see spaceships full of cannons flying around in the sky.

"Build them! Regardless of whether they're suitable or not, just build a few! If there's no money, the Federal Parliament will provide additional funding!"

(End of this chapter)