The Rise Of Australasia

"Mr. Hermann, when can we start the testing?" Arthur seemed much calmer than the officers, gazing at Hermann with unwavering composure as he inquired.

"If Your Majesty wishes, we can start the testing at any time," Hermann nodded and spoke respectfully.

"Then let's begin. I'm also curious to see how outstanding our latest missiles can perform in the tests," Arthur nodded, indicating that the missile tests could commence.

Before the outbreak of war, the average annual funds allocated to the missile development base for research exceeded 3 million AUD.

After the war broke out, the annual research and development expenses of the missile development base had already reached around 7 million AUD, more than double the amount before.

Such high R&D expenditure already signified the importance Arthur placed on missile technology. Missiles, which can attack targets in the sea, land, and air and can also be equipped with nuclear warheads for nuclear strikes, are definitely the strongest conventional weapon next to nuclear weapons.

Arthur also understood deeply that the current investment in missile research would be Australasia's powerful trump card after the war.

Once nuclear weapons are deployed on the battlefield, countries will experience the formidable power of nuclear weapons and will desperately develop their own nuclear arsenals.

However, after each country possesses its nuclear weapons, using them becomes extremely difficult unless prepared to devastate both themselves and other countries.

Clearly, no country would be prepared to do so unless it faced the risk of national extinction.

Under the premise that nuclear weapons cannot be used, missiles become the most important conventional weapon. As long as it possesses sufficiently advanced missile technology, Australasia could secure its seat as the World's supreme ruler and fulfill the grand ambitions in Arthur's heart.

Like the previous missiles, the new generation of cruise missiles was divided into multiple series.

The mainstream among them, the version developed by Hermann, was the more traditional land-based missile.

Land-based missiles have a larger size, can carry larger warhead volumes, and thus have greater power.

But this also means that land-based missiles have difficulty hitting aerial targets, their main use being ground-to-ground strikes.

In other words, the primary role of land-based missiles is actually to attack the enemy's ground targets or to carry out nuclear strikes against enemy facilities and urban cities, etc.

Besides land-based missiles, there are also air-based and sea-based missiles.

Air-based missiles are actually a combination of the Teister missile and cruise missiles; they have a smaller overall volume, but this also means that airplanes can carry more missiles.

Compared to land and sea-based versions, the missiles carried by airplanes are the best means to attack enemy airplanes.

Last is the sea-based version. Sea-based missiles can be mounted on main warships and submarines, which are more or less the most important missile variant.

They can be used for antiair to attack enemy airplanes, or similar to land-based missile versions, to attack enemy ground targets.

Of course, they can also be the primary method of damage for main warships to attack enemy warships.

Naturally, for different types of missiles, there will be different types of testing methods to effectively test the specific performance of the missiles.

The first missiles to be tested were the current main variant of the cruise missiles, namely the land-based cruise missiles developed by Hermann.

This missile's code was H-36 land-based cruise missile, having two versions; H-36A was the short-range rapid strike missile, with a closer effective kill distance but faster speed.

H-36B were long-range, large-scale strike missiles, larger in volume and naturally having a farther strike range.

To test these two missiles, the missile research base specially designed a car that could achieve brief autonomous driving.

Of course, this autonomous driving was very simple, only capable of driving forward mindlessly.

This type of autonomous driving would crash into walls or people upon encounter, existing solely for the purpose of missile testing.

The content of the test was simple: by firing missiles, researchers would see if the missiles could hit this carefully manufactured test car to determine specific hit rates.

Since it was for testing, the missiles didn't need to be too powerful, just sufficient to confirm hitting within a certain range of the test car.

After all, if the test car were destroyed, it would delay the entire test.

The final test results were quite reasonable. The two variations of Hermann's land-based missiles, under clear and windless conditions, both achieved hit rates in the 61%-65% range, which was quite impressive.

The smaller H-36A had a slightly higher hit rate, averaging around 63% to 64%.

The larger H-36B's hit rate was a bit lower, but it could still reach 61% to 63%.

The quantity of the two types of missile tests were around 20 each, already basically reflecting the specific hit rates of the two missiles.

Of course, if the weather were worse, the hit rate would undoubtedly be affected.

For instance, the previous generation of Dove-style missiles, though capable of reach nearly a 60% hit rate in favorable weather, would see their hit rate drop to below 50 if affected by the weather.

The following tests would be on air-based missiles.

The air-to-air version of the previous Dove-style missile had performed quite excellently in actual warfare.