CHAPTER 1484: CHAPTER 1401: THE BUSY AIRPORT

In the bustling airport, a worker is mixing concrete, and the entire construction site is very busy, with facilities under construction everywhere.

The worker, shoveling concrete, complains to a colleague across from him about their hard work, "We just changed it a few days ago, and here we are changing it again."

This airport, originally of critical strategic importance, had just been put into use not long ago, only to be reconstructed again due to technological upgrades.

For a country that’s not very wealthy to begin with, investing so much manpower and resources into this is really infuriating.

Look at Tang Country: today they’re building a dam, tomorrow reclaiming land from the sea, the day after starting the metro project. The citizens of that country are truly fortunate, right?

Then look at the citizens of various countries on the Eastern Continent: they are all emaciated and still have to keep building various military facilities day after day, which is simply unbearable.

If it were just built once, it would be fine. Everyone could work hard and be done with it, but in reality, these airports are being rebuilt repeatedly to update multiple facilities within them.

According to the standards of the Great Tang Empire, or let’s say barely acceptable standards, these crucial wartime airports are being constructed.

There’s no choice; it’s not like the military managing these airports wants to exhaust resources, but the weapons in their hands develop and evolve so quickly that their infrastructure can’t keep up with the demand.

Earlier airports for piston-engine fighter jets and bombers were very simple; as long as the road was compacted to ensure a flat runway, the surrounding buildings were not that important.

Permanent airports merely needed a command tower built and some dormitories next to it; some buildings here and there would suffice. Even ammunition and fuel depots didn’t need to be that big, as planes themselves didn’t consume much.

Later, jet fighters demanded much more complex airports; first of all, these more sophisticated planes required stronger and more expensive runways.

The former type of airport runway, particularly the makeshift field airport runway, became unusable, necessitating renovation and redesign.

Additionally, these jet fighters needed more fuel; just fueling trucks wasn’t enough, so an adequate number of fuel depots had to be built to ensure fuel supply.

Thus, large fuel depots and ammunition depots had to be constructed on the airport periphery, and even the quality of the fuel itself had requirements, which significantly increased the project scope.

The problem has become even more severe now. While the Great Tang Empire has indeed exported a lot of new weaponry, these weapons seem to have become increasingly precise, or perhaps "picky."

Missile launching vehicles require launch sites, high-performance jet fighters need larger and more complex airports, and even the tanks exported by the Great Tang Empire have become more sophisticated and complicated.

In fact, the Great Tang Empire exported many fine weapons to other countries, such as the M4 Tank and the Panther Tank, among others.

But these tanks also became a burden for these countries. Previously, their tanks could be repaired in field conditions, but the precise Panther Tank couldn’t do that anymore.

When the Great Tang Empire used them themselves, they relied on having more logistic troops and high efficiency, so they could still ensure operational use. Other countries, like the Poplar Empire, could only fight defensive battles after purchasing Panther Tanks.

If these tanks went out for long-distance raids, they’d end up running themselves into the ground...

The same goes for fighter jets. In the past, building a shack at a field airport was sufficient for repairs, with simple tools and low environmental demands.

Now, nothing less than sealed workshops and dust-free operations is needed. Even precise screws must be handled with professional tools.

More frustratingly, corresponding engineers have to strictly follow procedures; otherwise, after each engine repair or part replacement, they might find themselves with extra screws.

Every component is extremely fine, and many faults require professional equipment for detection and repair—these issues greatly increase the army’s reliance on logistical support systems.

Besides hardware, logistical training has also become a bottleneck for improving combat power across countries: soldiers using advanced weapons aren’t casually trained.

Previously, training a soldier only required teaching them how to handle firearms, the most complex part possibly being firearm maintenance.

Now, training soldiers has become overly complex: aside from traditional light infantry, every service branch has more intricate operational modes, requiring understanding from each soldier.

Not to mention senior branches like pilots and tank operators. To develop submarine sailors, naval aviators, navigators, radar operators, communication soldiers...countries have invested considerable manpower and resources.

Despairingly, in the structure of modern armies, the proportion of such soldiers is increasing, and their roles are becoming more important.

At the same time, the cost of cultivating these troops is rising; it’s an unavoidable reality, as these high-tech soldiers today are doing tasks that are several times or even dozens of times what was done before.

Take pilots, for example. A modern jet fighter pilot now has to manage more than three times what a piston fighter pilot did. A poorly trained piston fighter pilot might at least manage to take the plane into the air; an inadequately trained jet fighter pilot might not even manage a takeoff.

Training a jet fighter pilot to engage in ground rocket strafing requires hundreds or thousands of hours of flight, each takeoff wearing down the aircraft and consuming expensive fuel.

Thus, most pilots are practically soldiers built on stacks of gold, each consuming a tremendous amount of resources growing up... of course, the biggest cost is really the time invested.

During World War II, the Lighthouse Country could supplement pilot losses with numerous glider enthusiasts, but in the jet fighter age, such practices are virtually impossible.

Therefore, a large number of pilots can only be trained pre-war; it’s impossible to rapidly supplement them during war... The problem is, playing this way requires experience and money; without them, it’s easy to collapse.

Nations that are supposedly wealthy in later generations spent heavily on advanced weaponry, only to end up relying on this equipment to fight wars in the World War II mode. A substantial reason for this was that their logistical support training models and other factors restricted them, ultimately leading their tactics to lag behind the times.