Chapter 410: Naval Development Plan

As time came to the second half of 1902, the progress of the sea trial stage of the Dreadnought battleship had also reached halfway.

Throughout the entire test stage, the design of the Dreadnought battleship still exposed some problems. After all, it was a brand-new warship design, and all secondary guns were canceled, so it was impossible to improve the new design so perfectly all at once.

The good news was that the problems exposed during the sea trial stage were not serious. After several months of modification and improvement, most of the problems had been solved, and the remaining defects were just a matter of time.

The Navy was very much looking forward to this battleship that was about to officially enter service, and Gao Da also had great ambition and expectation for this.

For Gao Da, he would definitely not be satisfied with only possessing one dreadnought. Since Spain had already taken the lead in dreadnoughts, why not make such a lead more obvious?

After the cabinet election in 1902 ended, Gao Da immediately summoned the re-elected Minister of National Defense, Qiao Di, and the high-level generals of the Navy, expressed his support for vigorously building the navy in the next few years, and requested the Navy and the National Defense Department to come up with a naval construction plan for the next ten years and submit this plan to the cabinet meeting.

As the Kingdom's government, the various budgets of the Spanish cabinet government did not need to be approved by the House of Representatives, but only needed to be reviewed by the cabinet meeting.

But this also increased the difficulty for various departments to ask for financial budgets. If they wanted to increase their department's financial budget, they either had to obtain the permission of the King or the Prime Minister, or they could only fight and snatch with other departments.

Although the various departments in Spain were relatively harmonious in daily government affairs, in the annual financial budget competition link, the arguments that should be had would still be had.

After all, no department would think that their financial budget was too much, and when building projects, they would also have sufficient funds to play freely, rather than carefully calculating the cost of the project one by one, fearing that the budget would be exceeded.

After receiving Gao Da's hint, the Navy Department was quite excited. In the previous ten years, the development of the Spanish Navy had been forcibly restricted by Gao Da, and the number of warships built each year could be said to be minimal.

With the construction cost of a single battleship reaching more than 20 million pesetas, the Navy Department's annual warship construction and maintenance funds were only 25 million pesetas, and on average, only one battleship could be built every two years, and the construction speed of warships was very slow.

Originally, the high-level generals of the Navy thought that they would have to wait a few years before Gao Da issued the order to build warships. Unexpectedly, the sea trial link of the Dreadnought battleship had not ended yet, and Gao Da had already hinted that they should come up with a complete naval construction plan, plan the warships to be built in the next ten years.

There was nothing to hesitate about; the main warships to be built in the next ten years must be Dreadnought-class battleships. Like the difference between battleships and ironclad ships, the difference between Dreadnought-class battleships and ordinary battleships was also very huge.

According to the Spanish Navy Department's estimate of all its warship models, once the Dreadnought battleship officially entered service, all warships previously built by Spain, including the Monarch-class battleships, their roles would be greatly reduced.

Don't look at the Monarch-class battleship's construction cost as also very expensive; in front of the Dreadnought battleship, the Monarch-class battleship almost had no means of resistance.

The speed of the Dreadnought battleship far exceeded that of the Monarch-class battleship, and because the caliber of the artillery was unified, factors such as the range, power, and rate of fire of the artillery were all unified.

Under these circumstances, the Dreadnought battleship could completely adopt the strategy of hitting when approaching, running after hitting, reloading shells and then approaching, hitting when approaching, and running after hitting.

Anyway, there was no warship in the world that could catch up with the Dreadnought battleship. Under these circumstances, unless other warships could discover the Dreadnought battleship first and hit the Dreadnought battleship quickly within its firing range, there was no other way.

However, according to the armor coverage rate of the Dreadnought battleship, even if it was lucky enough to hit the Dreadnought battleship, unless it luckily hit a place where the armor coverage was relatively weak, it would not cause too much damage to the Dreadnought battleship.

It was precisely because the Dreadnought battleship caused data crushing to all previous battleships, including various battleship models of other countries, that the Spanish Navy had to vigorously develop Dreadnought-class battleships.

Because the high-level generals of the Navy had already had a plan for the future construction of the Navy, this ten-year naval construction plan was submitted to Gao Da's desk in just a few days.

Gao Da looked at this naval construction plan and did not say anything, letting the Navy Department submit it to the cabinet meeting for the cabinet government to discuss.

The Prime Minister of the new cabinet government was still Baron Angelo Olcah, and Gao Da was still relatively satisfied with his ability, so his re-election was naturally a matter of course.

It was worth mentioning that the elderly Hoviliard Solier no longer served as the Minister of State, and the Minister of State of the new cabinet government was served by Count Menotti.

Other cabinet positions were almost the same as the previous cabinet government. Because Count Menotti served as the Minister of State, the Minister of Colonial Affairs was served by the former Governor of the Congo Territory, Helen Hakes.

When the Minister of National Defense, Qiao Di, submitted such a naval development plan to the cabinet government, the specific content of the naval development plan caused fierce discussion among the cabinet ministers.

The first one to stand up and express dissatisfaction was the Minister of Finance, Aoer Akosta, who was shocked by the financial budget requested by the naval development plan proposed by the Ministry of National Defense.

Yes, it was shock.

How exaggerated was this naval development plan proposed by the Ministry of National Defense?

According to what was said in this development plan, the Spanish Navy would build two Dreadnought-class battleships, five auxiliary warships of several thousand tons, three latest-model submarines, and other small warships on average every year in the next ten years, that is, between 1902 and 1911.

In these ten years, the total tonnage of warships built by Spain would reach an exaggerated 750,000 tons. Spain after the completion of the naval construction plan would possess a full 21 dreadnoughts, dozens of battleships and ironclad ships, hundreds of cruisers and small and medium-sized warships of various models, and dozens of submarines, with a total naval tonnage exceeding 1 million tons, which was a super fleet in the true sense.

Spain, possessing such a fleet, could undoubtedly walk sideways in the Mediterranean and even the whole of Europe.

By then, whether it was France or Britain, the number of their fleets in the Mediterranean could not be compared with Spain.

Even not to mention the scale of the Mediterranean fleet, by then, Spain's total fleet tonnage would be about the same as Britain's current total fleet tonnage. Spain could completely rely on the advantage of 21 dreadnoughts to defeat Britain's Royal Fleet like Britain defeated Spain's Invincible Armada before, and become the maritime hegemon of Europe and even the whole world again.

So the question came, how much warship construction cost did the Navy Department need in total to build a fleet with a total tonnage exceeding 750,000 tons?

According to the construction cost of each Dreadnought battleship being close to 40 million pesetas, and the construction cost of each cruiser and other small and medium-sized warships of several thousand tons ranging from several million to tens of millions of pesetas, Spain had to pay at least 150 million pesetas in funds for this naval construction plan every year, and the ten-year naval construction plan would pay a total of at least 1.5 billion pesetas, which was 60 million pounds.

The naval construction cost of at least 150 million pesetas per year was exactly the point that made the Minister of Finance, Aoer Akosta, stand up instantly.

Don't look at the fact that the government's total annual financial revenue had reached nearly 1.6 billion pesetas, in fact, the government's annual surplus was only tens of millions of pesetas. ===== CHAPTER 411 =====