Chapter 543: Spider

When Sun Cheng first brought out the Type 1 Exoskeleton and applied for a national defense military production license from the Equipment Department, he had indeed said that the cost could be kept under 200,000 Xia Yuan.

However, that was merely an intention, and the military's performance requirements for the exoskeleton mecha were significantly higher than Sun Cheng had initially anticipated.

By the time the final, perfected X-1 was produced, the military procurement price for the Normal Mode was finalized by both parties at 264,000 Xia Yuan per set, and 292,000 Yuan for the reinforced version.

Future Machinery Technology Co., Ltd. definitely makes a profit at this price, though the margins are not that high.

After all, the costs of purchasing various machines for the production workshops of Future Machinery Technology Co., Ltd., as well as recruiting technical personnel and production workers, all have to be factored in.

Of course, Sun Cheng does not care about that little bit of profit.

Otherwise, if he really wanted to make money, he could just let Yinhao and Base No. 3, which have already begun to take shape, handle production; the cost per set could easily be kept under 100,000, a windfall profit of several times over.

"General, we will continue to work hard to drive down the cost control! But as it stands, even with further reductions, it will be at most two or three percentage points."

Sun Cheng did not hide the entire production process; whenever domestic or foreign defense military products are involved, the military or competent authorities of every country will dispatch professionals to be stationed there, who do not interfere with specific management on a daily basis and only perform quality supervision.

Future Machinery Technology Co., Ltd. is no exception, and Sun Cheng readily agreed to the Equipment Department's request to have Captain Sun Long, with whom he had dealt a few times before, serve as the quality supervisor.

Since the construction of the workshop was completed, Captain Sun Long has participated in almost the entire process from machine procurement and installation, raw material procurement, to employee recruitment; the Equipment Department actually had long guessed the true cost of the X-1, which is roughly between twenty and thirty percent.

For military products, this profit margin definitely does not count as a windfall.

Because among national defense military products, products with a unit profit of over 100% are everywhere.

Among them, some seemingly inconspicuous individual combat weapons, as well as various rockets and missiles, have the highest profits.

In the Transformers universe, one type of missile sold to the military by the United States' Thor Company has a gross margin of around 180%, and for the castrated products sold to several major oil-producing countries in the Middle East, the profit can even reach nearly three times; one can see a glimpse of the windfall profits from this.

Upon hearing this, the Major General indeed just smiled and nodded lightly: "The country also understands the difficulties of you, Chairman Sun!"

He immediately changed the subject: "What is your company's current production capacity? How long will it take to complete the delivery of the military's order?"

Future Machinery Technology received a military order for 27,000 sets of X-1 Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor from the Equipment Department, and there may be another 50,000 to 60,000 sets in subsequent intended orders.

Of these, the Normal Mode accounts for about 20,000 sets, the reinforced version for about 7,000 sets, and if one counts some emergency maintenance parts, the total procurement amount is 7.6 billion Xia Yuan, which is only slightly higher than the Navy's procurement of one Shield-class Destroyer.

However, considering the complex surrounding environment of Xia Country and the annual military expenditure of trillions of Xia Yuan, the country is likely desperate to stretch every penny as far as it can go.

Therefore, Sun Cheng did not take the initiative to lobby for more orders from the beginning; all he wanted was a national defense military production license and to take the opportunity to establish a closer relationship with the country.

After calculating in his mind, he replied: "If raw materials are sufficient, the two current workshops can produce and assemble about 80 sets of Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor per day. Once the third workshop is built, our final output can reach about 120 sets per day."

"The Equipment Department requires us to deliver once every half month, so before January of next year, we can stably provide about 1,200 sets of Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor every half month, and later it can increase to about 1,800 sets every half month! It will not take a year to finish producing the entire order."

Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor is different from aircraft or warships, which require a training and break-in period of a year or more, or even several years.

After soldiers receive them, they can master the X-1 exoskeleton armor after at most one or two months of training, thereby rapidly improving their combat effectiveness.

Future Machinery's production efficiency was clearly satisfactory to the General Armament Department, and they stopped there without chatting further on this topic.

Seeing that the Major General no longer mentioned the X-1 Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor, Sun Cheng understood.

The Equipment Department sent people over this time not only because the X-1 Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor had officially started production, but also for another very important matter: to verify a new piece of equipment.

Sun Cheng made a gesture of invitation and led the Major General, along with Captain Sun Long who was following to the side, toward a warehouse nearby.

This warehouse looked completely ordinary from the outside, no different from common warehouses.

However, the area around the warehouse, like the several production workshops of Future Machinery, was filled with various surveillance equipment, and there were Future Technology security guards in both plain sight and hidden spots, as well as a squad of soldiers stationed by the military, making the security level extremely high.

The warehouse was intended for the temporary storage of the X-1 Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor that had already been produced, but because no finished products had been transported over yet, it was temporarily requisitioned by Sun Cheng to display a new product to the Equipment Department.

After the group entered the warehouse, the two strangely shaped 'monsters' that came into view surprised even Captain Sun Long, who had not visited the Intelligent Machinery Laboratory for some time.

Not to mention the Major General from the Equipment Department; the moment he saw those two monsters, his eyes widened instantly.

"Chairman Sun... is this the new product you mentioned..."

In the center of the huge warehouse, two strangely shaped metal monsters were placed.

They were one large and one small; one was 2.4 meters long and only about one meter high, with a flat body, standing there supported by six mechanical legs around it.

The other was significantly larger, about four meters long, nearly twice the size of the former; its body was also flat, about 1.5 meters high, and it stood supported by eight mechanical legs.

Seeing the two metal monsters in the warehouse arouse the curiosity of the several people from the Equipment Department.

Sun Cheng led them quickly to the front of the metal monsters and explained with a smile: "These two mechanical monsters are temporarily named 'Special Terrain Transport Robot', and we also gave them a nickname called 'Spider'. It is a transport robot designed specifically for special terrains such as mountains, hills, and plateaus where motorized convoys are inconvenient for transporting supplies."

"This small 'Spider' is designed to carry 0.8-1.2 tons of supplies, and theoretically, it can march 80-100 kilometers in the vast majority of mountainous, hilly, and plateau areas at speeds ranging from 40-60 kilometers per hour!"

"The large 'Spider' is designed to carry about 3 tons of supplies, and theoretically, it can also march 80-100 kilometers in the vast majority of mountainous, hilly, and plateau areas at speeds ranging from 40-60 kilometers per hour!"

These two Spiders were first proposed as a theoretical concept by several robot enthusiasts in the Intelligent Machinery Laboratory, referencing the Big Dog series of robots from Boston Dynamics.

As everyone knows, Xia Country is one of the countries with the most complex terrain in the world; not only is the domestic terrain diverse, but the borders with neighboring countries are also very difficult for border-guarding soldiers to live in due to the complex terrain.

That is why researchers who are more concerned about military affairs, after learning that the Future Machinery Technology Co., Ltd. to which the laboratory belongs was producing Mechanical Exoskeleton Armor for the military, proposed whether it was possible to use the company's existing technology to design a transport robot that could come and go freely without being restricted by special terrain.

They originally did not hold much hope; after all, even the several military robots produced by Boston Dynamics, which is touted as having the most mature military robot technology, received very unsatisfactory feedback after being purchased by the US military for testing.

Yet, unexpectedly, Sun Cheng actually possessed the technology regarding transport robots, and it was very mature.