Empire Rising: Spain

Chapter 130: Chapter 117: The Development of the Armaments Factory

Although Prime Minister Prim and Duke Serrano didn’t explicitly state it, their attitudes have already demonstrated their support for the Royal Military Factory.

Officially, the government encourages private arms enterprises to grow and strengthen, but in reality, it also hopes for a larger-scale military factory to support Spain’s prestige.

No matter whose enterprise this factory belongs to, as long as it can develop more advanced weapons for Spain and consistently manufacture these weapons, providing them to the Spanish army, that will suffice.

Spain indeed needs a leading military enterprise; a large military factory can do more than dozens of small military factories can. Currently, Spain indeed needs an extremely large-scale military factory to fill the gap.

This is the same for all countries. Just like the Krupp Factory of the German Empire and the future Skoda Works of Austria.

Only such a military giant can open up the arms market. Relying on small and medium-sized military factories to expand arms trade is less realistic than expecting foreign weapons to be cheaper.

Currently, in Spain’s military industry, only the scale and capital of the Royal Military Factory qualify it to become a giant military enterprise.

After all, in this era, there are no overly advanced weapons; rifles and cannons are already the most commonly used light and heavy weapons.

The number of military enterprises in Spain is not small, with a total of hundreds of various factories and private workshops.

But most of these military enterprises produce old hunting guns, pistols, and the like, lacking technical content; they can’t even guarantee firearm quality.

Even if there are military factories that can produce front-loading guns and cannons, in research and development of breech-loading guns and manufacturing more advanced cannons, they are destined not to compare with the Royal Military Factory.

The current attitude of the Spanish Government towards these military enterprises is to provide help to other medium-sized military factories as much as possible, under the premise of prioritizing support for the Royal Military Factory.

If flourishing on multiple fronts is naturally better. But if these medium-sized military factories cannot take on great responsibilities, ultimately, all efforts must be concentrated on making the Royal Military Factory the leading military enterprise in Spain.

Of course, those small and medium-sized military enterprises will not be eliminated. After all, hunting guns and pistols also have their markets. These low-profit weapons with few orders are naturally not something the Royal Military Factory would compete for.

Once it received orders from the military and Guard Army, the Royal Military Factory entered a relatively busy state.

Although it is just a company established a few years ago, the scale of the Royal Military Factory is at the top among all the military enterprises in Spain.

However, compared to Europe’s larger military factories, the Royal Military Factory is still relatively small in scale.

The entire Royal Military Factory has fewer than a thousand employees, and there is no exact number for weapon output. But based on the current production capacity of the Royal Military Factory, it can basically produce at least 500 rifles, 10 cannons, 75,000 bullets, and 1,200 shells each month.

Of course, this is under a bit of everything scenario. If focusing on rifles and bullets, the monthly output should increase to 1,000 rifles and more than 150,000 bullets.

This also shows the current scale of the Royal Military Factory; it is too small for Spain.

Without saying more, just for Spain’s army of one hundred thousand to be fully equipped with the latest Vitali M1872 Rifles, it would take at least eight years, even if the Royal Military Factory worked overtime.

This has led to the Royal Military Factory’s biggest task in the future being to expand its scale, increasing the number of employees to at least ten thousand and annual weapon output to at least 50,000 rifles.

Now, the Royal Military Factory’s production capacity cannot even meet domestic demand in Spain, not to mention opening up Spain’s arms trade market and trading weapons with other countries to earn continuous foreign exchange income.

The good news is that with the technical experts from Austria-Hungary stationed, the expansion of the Royal Military Factory will be much smoother. New employees entering the Royal Military Factory can grasp certain technologies under the short-term training of these experts, naturally no problem in producing weapons.

Previously, the large-scale expansion of the Royal Military Factory was not approved; firstly, because the developed breech-loading gun had not shown any progress, even if the factory expanded, weapons couldn’t be produced.

Secondly, because the military’s orders were not confirmed. If the factory expanded to an adequate scale, but there wasn’t a continuous stream of orders, wouldn’t it be just consuming the Royal Family’s funds in vain?

Now that there is a continuous stream of orders, it can be ensured that the Royal Military Factory will not lack income in the coming years. As for the source of orders after this order is completed, attention can be turned to America across the Atlantic Ocean.

Breech-loading guns in Europe are just getting started, and Latin American countries naturally can’t grasp this technology. With the help of Italian and Austria-Hungary technical experts, Spain’s breech-loading gun technology is also considered top-tier in Europe.

The standard long guns, which Spain is equipping on a large scale, naturally also have a certain market in Latin America.

Countries like Argentina and Mexico in America were once colonies of Spain. Although they have gained independence from Spain, they have resolved their only conflict with the Spanish Government.