Chapter 1476: Chapter 1393: Inferior Quality

The Great Tang Empire has already begun dealing with internal affairs and basic construction even before the war ended, which seemed somewhat disrespectful to Qin Country, still in a state of war.

At this moment, Qin Country has plunged into a doomsday frenzy, desperately increasing its forces at the border, chanting the classic slogan of keeping the enemy outside the national gate.

Countless young people have enlisted and started training. The Great Tang Empire’s slowed attack pace also gave Qin Country a little breathing room.

Ying Duo used this time to once again raise his troops to about 4 million, but this time the quality of his troops was worse, with only a trace of so-called courage to defend the homeland left.

In modern warfare, courage alone is not enough. Qin Country must find a way to provide these newly enlisted troops with sufficient munitions so they can fight against the Tang Army.

But even with the war machine of Qin Country working at full strength, it can only provide basic equipment from ten years ago for these soldiers.

Indeed, distributing a rifle with a bayonet, providing some bullets, adding a set of military uniforms, and at most giving a Steel Helmet, is enough for them to go to the front line and die.

To save steel, most of the troops don’t even have enough shovels, and their shoes are not standardized. These troops, though intimidating in number, actually have no combat power.

Qin Country is aware of these issues, so they are trying their best to train these soldiers, hoping they can survive the brutal war.

After all, dying only means another conscription and retraining, which is extremely cost-ineffective: it’s a simple math problem, only differing in computation and choice of results.

With enough time training recruits, they might survive a few more months on the battlefield, relatively increasing the front line’s troop strength, and as these recruits become veterans, their combat effectiveness greatly increases.

Conversely, simply sending inadequately trained recruits into battle means they will be consumed rapidly, leading to more conscription, reducing the chance of recruits becoming veterans and making it impossible to talk about combat effectiveness improvement.

Normally, this is indeed the case, yet why do some still choose to continuously send recruits to the front, creating a vicious cycle? Because of time! They need time.

Qin Country needs time. Even though Ying Duo, who has been fighting for a lifetime, knows that veterans are the real combat strength, he also knows that untrained recruits are actually not useful, but he truly has no time left.

If he doesn’t send recruits to the front, his defense line may collapse within a month, so he can only honestly fill the front line with inadequately trained recruits, even knowing this is a serious waste.

In fact, it’s not just training recruits; Qin Country is descending into hysterical madness, entering a desperate doomsday mode in other areas as well.

Children and women are required to do simple urban combat training, and the elderly start providing simple services for the military.

They act as lookouts, observing Great Tang Empire airplanes and providing early warning for rear cities—after all, Qin Country’s radar hasn’t been effective since the war began, so only the most primitive methods can be used for air defense.

In addition, women have also massively entered factories, filling the vacancies left by large numbers of young laborers being conscripted. They are forced into very strenuous work, even having to work overtime daily for production.

Furthermore, even the elderly of Qin Country can’t stay idle. They begin constructing various types of fortifications between the border of the Great Qin Empire and the front lines, including bunkers, trenches, roads, and various defense facilities.

To slow the Great Tang Empire’s advance, Qin Country began laying cement barricades almost everywhere and building machine gun bunkers in concealed areas behind these barricades.

Every border city would be transformed; countless buildings were strengthened with sandbags, becoming defensive works. Barricades blocked traffic, and behind every window could potentially hide a deadly machine gun.

Besides building fortifications, the Great Qin Empire requisitioned almost all available cars and consolidated all the gasoline and diesel they could find.

The radio stations all aired broadcasts inciting people to join the military and fight for the country to the last moment; almost every channel had the same content, and even the occasional songs played were resounding military marches.

This is the situation visible to the public, yet in places unseen by the public, the Great Qin Empire plunged into even more madness.

Due to tanks being lost too quickly, and unable to guarantee against the various means of penetration by Tang Country no matter how armor-plated, engineers of the Great Qin Empire began reducing the features of tanks under higher orders.

Armor thickness was significantly reduced so that the materials used to produce two tanks could now produce three.

The quality of tank guns also greatly declined, with some hardening processes and coatings omitted, reducing the lifespan of tank guns from initially thousands of rounds to only 100 rounds.

Anyhow, the newly recruited tank crews wouldn’t be able to fire that many rounds on the training range, and these tanks barely had any chance to fire upon reaching the front line…

So, everything that could be saved was saved, and the time that used to produce one tank could now produce two or even more!

But now, no one can quite tell how much fighting power these tanks still possess. They look more like targets meant to attract Tang Army’s firepower, purposely set up to deplete Tang Army’s ammunition.

If tanks are already like this, then armored cars were even more compromising to an extreme: where thin steel plates could be used, thick armor was absolutely unnecessary, and where iron sheets could be used, thin steel plates were absolutely not used.

Since the weight was very light, even the engines could be civilian versions, hence indirectly saving fuel, almost perfect.

As for cars… Qin Army’s subsequent armed units looked like an automobile exhibition, with cars from all over the world and various models visible within the military.

Senior officers rode in some of the better civilian cars from Tang Country, regular officers in high-class cars from other nations, while ordinary soldiers had to ride on buses and agricultural trucks.

Despite this, the troop heavy weaponry in Qin Country’s subsequent formations remained terribly insufficient, and most were merely light infantry. Even the paper used for these soldiers’ identification was more inferior than the paper used by the Qin Army a year ago…