Chapter 79: Toward Modernization

"Commander, I have some thoughts regarding the arms sale."

That evening, Tang Wen had been planning to get a good night's sleep at the hotel when Tang Yi came knocking on his door.

However, upon hearing it was about an arms sale, Tang Wen immediately got up.

He had only mentioned the warship trade mission to Tang Yi in passing, and honestly had no real confidence in it.

But Tang Yi had taken it as a mission, buried himself in modern naval warfare books, and somehow produced some results.

Tang Yi: "Although gunpowder warships are already completely obsolete, these old warships aren't entirely useless. There are two possible directions:

First, accept modernization refitting and serve as missile warships;

Second, strip the armament and rely on the decent hull strength to serve as coast guard patrol ships."

"The second option is a pass."

Tang Wen said it almost without blinking. Coast guard? You think this is the coast guard of twenty-plus years from now?

The coast guard of twenty years from now can take a main destroyer and use it as a patrol ship, but right now even the navy big brother is so broke his pants are falling off, and the coast guard doesn't even have a few broken ships, nothing to even fall off.

"Fine, then only the first option is left."

Tang Yi pulled out a few simple draft sketches of warship three-view drawings. Tang Wen recognized at a glance that it closely resembled the Yashiro, belonging to the same Agano-class light cruiser.

"The combat core of a modern missile destroyer lies in its missiles and radar electronic systems. The requirements for speed and protection aren't that high; the only hull requirement is power generation capacity.

Taking the Agano-class cruiser as an example, its tonnage is over 2,000 tons more than the Type 052, its length of 174 meters is longer than the Type 052, and its width of 15.2 meters is shorter than the Type 052's 20 meters.

If we remove the forward No. 1 and No. 2 gun turrets and cut them away, there's enough room to fit six MK41 8-cell vertical launch systems. Remove the aft turret, take out the two longitudinal torpedo launchers and the seaplane catapult, then rebuild the raised superstructure, extending it all the way to cover the former No. 3 turret position;

This way, the original positions of the two torpedo launchers can easily accommodate eight 8-cell vertical launch systems, the original No. 3 turret can be converted into a helicopter hangar, and a helicopter deck can be installed aft.

As for things like anti-air missile launchers and Phalanx CIWS systems, they can be installed directly on the original secondary gun and anti-aircraft gun positions.

A cruiser like this, with a full load displacement of around 8,800 tons, carrying 14 sets of 112-cell vertical launch systems, can have at least 4 Phalanx CIWS installed, with 12 positions left for anti-air missile launchers and anti-submarine missile launchers;

The electronic system depends on the radar level provided by the navy. The total crew is around 300, and the maximum speed can still maintain 35 knots. It's a missile cruiser with quite excellent performance."

Tang Wen saw this plan and immediately exclaimed, "Goodness."

Although the width is a bit smaller than the Type 052, thanks to the hull length of over 170 meters, this modernization refitting plan for the Agano-class has considerable potential.

112 vertical launch cells — that's the firepower of a Type 055!

Moreover, the Agano-class is the Tier V cruiser in the R-line tech tree, requiring skipping Tier II, III, and IV cruisers, with a total research cost of 11,200.

But if we make sweeping modifications according to Tang Yi's plan, the entire superstructure needs roughly... the research cost rises to 13,000 experience.

Tang Wen currently has 8,500 experience saved up unused; he's still short by quite a bit.

As for the cost, the Agano-class has a direct construction cost of 1.16 million silver coins. If materials are provided, the processing fee is 320,000 silver coins, and the construction period at a Tier I shipyard is 82 days.

But once the Tier II shipyard is up and running, this time will definitely shrink by more than half.

320,000 silver coins, roughly 15 million RMB, but if we factor in the cost of salvaging the sunken ship... let's say 30 million.

According to the rule that the system subsidizes half the selling price, if we sell at 60 million, the subsidy is 30 million, and Tang Wen would immediately make a killing.

Tang Wen muttered darkly, Damn it, is this dog planner trying to get him to brazenly scam subsidies?

With conditions like these, there's really no way to refuse.

Tang Wen's eyes lit up as he continued to ask:

"In other words, the bigger and easier to refit the ship we build, the more cost-effective it is?"

Tang Yi: "In theory, yes. We don't need it to be originally powerful; we need it to have decent refitting potential.

If we have a battleship in the future, then the refitting potential would undoubtedly be the greatest.

A battleship of around 40,000 tons, like the Hood, might be able to fit 80 MK41 vertical launch systems fore and aft, with 640 missile launch wells... of course, this is only a rough estimate."

Tang Wen thought of the future Type 052D — 7,000 tons and only 64 launch cells. A battleship would have ten times the vertical launch cells?

Even at a firing rate of one missile every 2 seconds, it would take a full 21 minutes to fire them all.

If we had to deal with an enemy fleet of 16 warships, each one could evenly receive... 40 missiles?

This would become saturation strike — brutally simple, able to exhaust the enemy's anti-air ammunition, then sink them with an overwhelming rain of missiles.

Of course, this approach has its price. Even at 5 million per missile, fully loading a missile battleship would cost over 3 billion in ammunition...

"Hiss~"

Tang Wen shook this extravagant scene out of his head. If it were really built, the navy probably wouldn't even have the money to load the ammunition.

But after Tang Yi's argument, he realized this business could still go on.

Although the focus of modern warships is on electronic systems and weapons, and the hull itself isn't worth much, even just the hull in the 90s would cost hundreds of millions of RMB.

If Tang Wen could push the unit price down to the tens of millions range, there might really be a chance.

It's just that the vertical launch system and electronic radar can't be obtained, otherwise...

Wait!

Tang Wen suddenly remembered that the first time he had reverse-engineered the village chief's tractor, he had also upgraded and developed a 25-horsepower diesel engine.

The vertical launch system and modern radar are also part of shipborne weapons, just slightly more advanced by a tiny bit. Maybe...

After a long search back at the shipyard, Tang Wen spotted a marine radar purchased by Fudong Fisheries.

An unrecognizable foreign brand, the antenna less than two meters long, rotatable, supposedly costing several tens of thousands.

Tang Wen reached out and touched it, and information appeared before his eyes:

【Radar discovered: JKRC092 waveguide slotted array antenna radar system

X-band peak power 15KW, antenna rotation speed 24rpm, effective detection range 10 km

System weight: 25 kg】

【Comprehensive technology 26 years ahead, can be reverse-engineered at a cost of 1,300 (50*26) experience】

"......"

Tang Wen silently released his grip and fell into thought.

A small thing that originally only required 50 experience to replicate had its cost multiplied dozens of times because it exceeded 1960s technological levels by 26 years.

And this was only a simple civilian maritime radar—how much technological penalty would complex systems like an active phased-array radar or an advanced vertical launch system require before they could be unlocked?

He was afraid it would take at least several hundred thousand, or even over a million experience points to obtain the corresponding construction technology.

The terrifying pace of electronic technology development.

Tang Wen gave up on this idea and decided to honestly see if he could try to sell the hull.

But this also had to wait until the Level-2 shipyard was in place; before that, Tang Yi's main job was to draw more PPTs and come up with more improvement drafts.

And the question of how to obtain the missing experience was equally headache-inducing.