Empire Rising: Spain

Chapter 149: Chapter 132: Temporary Technical Training Program

The reorganization of Spain’s army is good news for most people.

Existing officers have wider channels for promotion, and those 11 divisional commander positions will become coveted targets for senior Spanish officers.

Fortunately, Carlo doesn’t hold much power in the army; otherwise, he wouldn’t have enjoyed any good days during this period.

After all, there’s only 11 positions available for senior officers in all of Spain, and figuring out how to become one of Spain’s future divisional commanders is likely to trouble these officers for quite a while.

Below the divisional commanders, as the army expands, there is a massive number of vacancies for regimental and battalion commanders. This includes Andrew and Kaman who Carlo promoted previously, as well as officers who graduated from the Royal Military Academy; they may all have some upward mobility.

If Carlo remembers correctly, Andrew and Kaman presently both hold the rank of Major. Since they are, after all, Carlo’s men, Duke Serrano should look after them a bit during this army expansion.

At any rate, promoting them to the rank of Major to serve as regimental-level officers shouldn’t be an issue. Even if not, they could serve as deputy commanders, and after gaining a few years of experience, ascend to regimental commanders.

Although Spain has many regimental commanders, that doesn’t mean being a regimental commander makes one a low-ranking officer. On the contrary, in Spain, where the army size isn’t extensive, regimental-level officers can be considered senior officers.

As soon as a war requiring large-scale army expansion erupts, commanders at the regimental level will quickly get promoted to divisional commanders, becoming the main commanders of a unit consisting of 10,000 troops.

Moreover, Andrew and Kaman have only been in Spain for a few years, joining the Royal Spanish Army as Italians.

The achievements they’ve reached so far are quite impressive, considering they are only in their twenties, still young, with plenty of time to earn experience and wait for a war to occur.

For the Royal Military Factory, large-scale army expansion is excellent news.

Currently, among all the military factories in Spain, only the Royal Military Factory possesses the capability to produce the Vitali M1872 Rifle, which means that rifles needed to arm the tens of thousands of Spanish troops must be produced by the Royal Military Factory.

Though a highly challenging task, it is equally a development opportunity for the Royal Military Factory.

Once this order is completed, the Royal Military Factory will ascend to become Spain’s largest military factory enterprise, with no competitor capable of matching it.

This is also a necessity in this era of development; the emergence of monopoly giants isn’t necessarily a bad thing for the nation. For Spain, whose military production capability is limited, the Royal Military Factory becoming the leading and dominant force in military enterprise could actually strengthen Spain’s research and manufacturing capabilities in military technology.

After all, the research capabilities of a mega enterprise are vastly different from those of countless small and medium-sized enterprises. It’s possible that the combined research capabilities of thousands of small and medium enterprises don’t even compare to that of a giant enterprise. Research requires actual investment in gold and silver, along with a considerable amount of time, which small military factories cannot afford.

However, the most important issue at present is about increasing the Royal Military Factory’s production capacity.

At the moment, the production capacity of the Royal Military Factory is far too small compared to the requirements of the Spanish army, completely insufficient to meet their equipment need.

Fortunately, the reform and conscription of the Spanish army will also need some time, and this time is indeed a golden phase for the Royal Military Factory to improve its output.

Currently, the Royal Military Factory’s workforce has just exceeded a thousand, with annual weapon production rates of: 7000 rifles, 150 artillery pieces, 1.2 million cartridges, and 15,000 shells.

In order to fully meet the demands of the Spanish army, the Royal Military Factory would need to operate overtime for more than ten years.

To solve this issue, Carlo issued unrestricted expansion directives for the Royal Military Factory, requiring it to triple its weapon output within the next year.

Of course, Carlo also provided substantial financial support to the Royal Military Factory. Over 800 million Pessetas are available for the Royal Military Factory’s use, and hundreds of weapon experts from Austria-Hungary supporting Spain have been deployed to the Royal Military Factory, aiding it in increasing production.

The government has also given policy support for the Royal Military Factory’s expansion, such as approving land from the Seville Industrial Base and preparing a large industrial area solely for the Royal Military Factory in the future Barcelona Industrial Base, among others.

Presently, the Royal Military Factory has two large branches located in Madrid and Seville. When the branch in Barcelona’s Industrial Base is completed in the future, it can also effectively increase weapon production for the Royal Military Factory.

As for the workforce issue, that’s currently not much of a concern.

After the last Cabinet meeting, Carlo had already instructed Steward Luo Lun to begin preparing the construction of comprehensive technical schools.

Right now, in Madrid, Seville, and Barcelona, large comprehensive technical schools are concurrently being constructed, each expected to accommodate over 3000 technical students.

This also means that after the technical schools are completed, the three schools combined can enroll over 3000 students annually.

And the time required to train technical students is less than that of ordinary universities, with expectations that in 2 to 3 years, these students will be able to graduate and dedicate themselves to building Spain.

Of course, the 2 to 3-year training period is still too long for the current situation in Spain. Considering the time needed for constructing these technical schools, which requires at least several months, by the time the first batch of technical students graduates, it will be at least three years later.