Chapter 126: Chapter 122, Tycoon’s Journey
The public trial was brought forward to coincide with the medal awarding ceremony, which was a great opportunity for publicity.
The awarding ceremony was for the upcoming military restructuring.
During this period, Osenia had been busy, Lambert had been busy, and so had Gu Hang.
Not to mention that although those two were officials in charge of different areas, the ultimate power still lay with Gu Hang. Anything of slightly broader scope or requiring inter-department coordination or assistance had to go through Gu Hang. Major decisions also needed his approval.
And these matters were already quite numerous.
Not to mention, Gu Hang was personally overseeing the military issues.
Internal politics were important, and so was military administration.
Gu Hang decided to implement a rank system, organizing the troops according to the standard of the Imperial Regular Planetary Defense Forces.
Officers would be classified into three categories and ten levels: generals, colonels, and lieutenants. There were four levels of generals, none currently existing; three levels of colonels, with colonel being the highest; and three levels of lieutenants, with captain being the highest.
Yan Fangxu was promoted three ranks at once and became the highest-ranking officer under Gu Hang’s command. He would assume the rank of colonel; next was Tadeusz, who would oversee the Military and Political Department as a lieutenant colonel.
The entire army was to be restructured into two major formations.
One was based on the infantry battalion that Gu Hang brought from Weixing City, expanded into a heavy composite brigade. This brigade would be equipped with five composite camps, one artillery camp, one engineer camp, one anti-air camp, one logistics camp, making a total of nine camps; the brigade headquarters and direct reporting included the staff department, command center, battlefield medical department, political department, guard company, engineer company, communication company, brigade-affiliated reconnaissance company, and a land aviation squadron.
Let’s not mention the rest, the five composite camps were going to be expansions of the current five infantry camps. Each camp would incorporate 1 artillery company, 1 armored company, 2 motorized infantry companies, 2 mechanized infantry companies, and 1 support company, totaling seven companies in all. The camp headquarters also included a reconnaissance platoon, a communications platoon, and a guard team.
Such a main composite camp would have a total strength of over 800 people. There would be 40 Iron Bull trucks, 30 Scout Rider motorcycles, 24 ‘Walker’ Infantry Fighting Vehicles, armored command vehicles, armored communication vehicles, as well as 12 155mm howitzers, and 12 tanks…
Just the five composite camps alone would have a total force of over 4,100 people, not including various heavy equipment, to say nothing of the lighter gear.
And at the brigade level, along with the four other camps plus the brigade headquarters, the scale would exceed 7,000 people.
Considering that there were less than 1,500 people currently under-strength due to casualties, scaling up to such a force of 7,000… Clearly, Gu Hang was going to absorb quite a bit of fresh blood from the former Alliance Legion.
At the same time, it was even more important that the production of weapons and equipment keep pace.
The tanks would make do with the 60 that were left over from the former Alliance Legion and still operational, though they were somewhat outdated and there was no choice.
As for the production of other equipment, Gu Hang was about to take a trip back to Weixing City to tackle the problem with Wu Jiarong.
The other items could be managed, as the transport trucks and fast motorcycles required for the motorized infantry could just use the ‘Iron Bull’ and ‘Scout Rider’.
But the heavy artillery needed by the gunners was not quite sufficient from what was captured from the Alliance Legion. Gu Hang had to consult with Wu Jiarong about the current status of the self-developed 155mm howitzers.
On the other hand, Gu Hang had to make use of the few technological items extracted this time.
For the ‘Walker’ series of armored vehicles that needed to be produced at scale, Gu Hang planned to first set up the production line for the ‘Wanderer’ Infantry Fighting Vehicle. The demand for these was large and their impact significant.
In the technologically undeveloped Wasteland World, the ‘Walker’s’ firepower was probably more ferocious and more reliable than the locally produced tanks.
As for the ‘Listener’ communication armored vehicle, ‘Defender’ anti-aircraft vehicle, and ‘Navigator’ command armored vehicle, which had lower demand, they would be directly produced from finished black boxes, not rushing to set up production lines for now.
After Gu Hang presented the idea of this heavy composite brigade, both Yan Fangxu and Tadeusz were somewhat taken aback.
The number of personnel was fine, but that equipment requirement… was just too damn extravagant.
A… luxury brigade?
If such a heavy composite brigade were indeed formed, wouldn’t it travel horizontally across the Wasteland World?
Even from the perspective of an imperial officer like Yan Fangxu, such a troop, stationed among the many regular Star Realm Army Corps units, would also be considered luxuriously equipped—if the tanks were exchanged for higher-tier tanks of the Star Realm Army.
In fact, the Star Realm Army was not in the habit of organizing elite composite brigades. More often, the Star Realm Army faced much larger and broader battlefields, where deploying hundreds of thousands, or even millions of troops, was common. Larger divisions and corps structures were more commonly used. Dozens or even hundreds of divisions would form an army group to handle a particular warfront; multiple army groups would assemble into an army group cluster to manage continental warfare…
The Star Realm Army was called the ‘Hammer of the Empire’ for good reason. It had to smash the enemy to smithereens with unmatched force, like a hammer.
However, this does not mean that the Star Realm Army, having a hammer, does not need a knife. Some elite composite brigade units would be used as spearheads for assault.
The composite brigade that His Excellency the Governor was assembling had a bit of that edge.
If this force were fully integrated and equipped and could somehow be deployed to the Quintet Starship in space, it’s probable that the troops on the starship would be in for a challenge. If they were not adequately guarded, it was not impossible for them to be pierced through all the way to Colonel Yelisia’s face.
True, there were one hundred thousand people on the starship, but most of them were workers, slaves; the armed forces might only number twenty to thirty thousand, lacking in heavy equipment.
Beyond this main composite brigade, the remainder to be organized was a standard infantry division, made up of three infantry regiments, each with an artillery battalion. Though it’s called a division, including the division headquarters, the total force was only seven to eight thousand personnel, quite similar in number to the main composite brigade but much less equipped.
Yan Fangxu didn’t think too highly of this force. Even if their training was decent, their equipment was far inferior, and in the Star Realm Army, they would be nothing more than a regular ‘fill-in division’.
Of course, in the environment of the Wasteland World, they were not bad at all.
The total force, which had about fifteen thousand personnel, was Gu Hang’s current plan.
With a population of a million, maintaining an well-equipped force of over ten thousand seemed to be no big issue for the time being.
There was of course a reason he needed to maintain such a large force.
Internal development was important; the production potential of a million people had to be fully tapped into. Yet, the drive for outward expansion could not be halted.
Gu Hang had not forgotten he had only two years. More than two months had passed. Relying on a million people to pay their taxes was not impossible in an all-out production surge, but that would mean all his resources would be devoted to that effort.
That was definitely not feasible.
He had to bring more territories and more population into his order.
Leaving Revival City to start afresh was to plant a seed; now, this seed had taken root and sprouted in Revival City. The city would become a fulcrum, which he intended to use to leverage the entire planet.
Even the necessary expansion actions were being prepared before all the logistical supplies arrived.
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Last month, a total of 160,000 characters were updated, with basically all the saved drafts used up during the launch.
For May, there’s a minimum of 4,000 characters per day, which makes 120,000 for the month; without drafts saved, an effort will be made to challenge 160,000 characters to maintain the update volume consistent with April.