Rebirth of the 1980s: The Military Industry Empire

"Fishing? What is fishing?"

Nie Xiaoqian knew that this was a new term invented by Qin Yang, and a literal translation would indeed be incomprehensible to foreigners.

"Don't you understand fishing? Fish are easily caught with just a little bait, losing their lives in the process. You're using this stuff to attract me. What if I take the bait, and you suddenly grab me and send me to the Military Security Intelligence Agency? I wouldn't be able to explain myself even if I had a thousand mouths."

Hearing Nie Xiaoqian's translation, Ski Avoni and Brassi quickly shook their heads, "How is that possible, President Qin? Why would we deceive you? Haven't we been good enough these past few days?"

"Not enough," Qin Yang said bluntly.

"Then what can we do to make you believe us?"

"Unless you two can get your hands on a new piece of equipment, I will believe in your sincerity."

"What equipment?" Brassi's breathing became a little rapid.

"The guidance head technology of the Aspide missile," Qin Yang said.

Brassi was worried that Qin Yang would make a request that he couldn't fulfill. Now that Qin Yang mentioned this, Brassi immediately breathed a sigh of relief, "Okay, this technology is too simple. Give me three days, and I will find all the technical data for you. As for the price, 100 million lira will be enough."

"Okay," Qin Yang nodded, "You must guarantee that the information is complete. I will take this information back to find an expert to check it first. If there are no problems, I will come back to buy that radar technology from you. I will give you $20,000 as activity funds first."

It's done?

At this time, Nie Xiaoqian was still a little surprised. She originally thought that it would take a long time to do a lot of work, but she didn't expect it to be so simple!

The value of the lira is very small. According to the official exchange rate, 625 lira can be exchanged for one US dollar. Qin Yang gave them 20,000 US dollars, which is more than 10 million lira, one-tenth of the other party's quotation!

Receiving the 20,000 US dollars, both Brassi and Ski Avoni were overjoyed. Don't think that Qin Yang does business worth millions or tens of millions of US dollars at every turn. In fact, in the 1980s, tens of thousands of US dollars was a huge sum of money.

"If your side can get me a sample, I can add another 10 million lira to you," Qin Yang continued.

"Of course, we have samples, we can get them," Brassi nodded, "President Qin, don't worry, after three days, I will send you the information and the sample. However, do you have a way to take these materials out?"

Qin Yang nodded, "Of course."

That night.

"Two hundred thousand US dollars, and you got all this information and even the samples?" Old Lin widened his eyes, "Isn't this too cheap?"

Qin Yang smiled, "Yes, it is indeed cheap. According to the plan, I plan to invest 50 to 60 million US dollars to cooperate with Selenia Company to develop advanced equipment for the Air Force. It doesn't matter if our 960 factory spends some money. It's just that I didn't expect us to be so lucky, and we actually met their mole. It seems that I have the protagonist's halo on me."

Everyone cast contemptuous glances. President Qin is very powerful, but this self-righteous attitude is helpless: When can you be a little more humble?

Selenia Company was founded in the 1960s, formed by the merger of two electronics companies, Microlambda and Sinter. Selenia was small in scale at the beginning of its establishment, with only about 700 employees, mainly producing air traffic control radar, weather radar, and navigation radar. The Italian military's import of American Hawk and Sparrow missiles was first maintained by Selenia, and later transitioned to the introduction of licensed production.

In the 1960s, countries began to develop surface-to-air missiles, such as West Germany's "Roland" system, Britain's "Swordsman" system, and France's "Rattlesnake" system. Their independent research and development led to long research and development cycles and high costs.

Italy was not as wealthy as those countries and could only take the road of modification. They decided to improve and develop on the basis of the AIM-7 E-2 introduced from the United States in 1970, and develop a multi-functional missile that can be used for land-to-air, ship-to-air, and air-to-air and can be interchanged with the Sparrow missile. This task naturally fell on Selenia Company.

In order to save money, they originally only planned to replace the semi-active radar seeker they developed on the basis of the AIM-7 E-2 introduced from the United States in 1970. Later, they decided to use self-developed fuses, warheads, rocket engines, and rudder surface drive devices and other key components. The appearance is also somewhat different from the Sparrow.

The development of surface-to-air missiles and ship-to-air missiles went relatively smoothly. In 1977, the system was named "Albatros" and began small-scale production, and mass production began in 1978. However, the development of air-to-air missiles lagged far behind. After a test launch in 1974, there was no follow-up.

In the early 1980s, the Italian Air Force saw that its old F-104 S had to persevere for another twenty years, and it could only be retired after the European fighter jet was put into production, and decided to improve this fighter jet to F-104 ASA, the most critical of which was to match advanced medium-range air-to-air missiles.

In this way, the air-to-air missile named "Aspide" Mk1 continued to be developed, but it was still because of lack of money that it was fiddled with until it was put into service in 1988.

In the same year, the Eastern Air Force came to inspect and took a fancy to this air-to-air missile, purchasing 85 missiles and introducing related production technology, with a total cost of 55 million US dollars.

Qin Yang originally planned to spend tens of millions to invest in the Aspide project. The Italians would definitely treat him as a guest of honor, and they would definitely give him the technology after it was developed.

But now, since there is a cheaper option, of course, a new choice must be made.

"By the way, if this project is successful, will you have to come again to buy their 800 million lira air defense radar?" Old Lin asked.

"Of course not!" Qin Yang shook his head, "Our purpose this time is air-to-air missile technology, and I don't plan to buy radar at all."

"Then you are fooling them?" Old Lin widened his eyes.

"Old Lin, how can the affairs of businessmen be called fooling? It's their wishful thinking. However, I will do good things to the end. When they encounter a crisis next time, we need to extend a helping hand to rescue them from the crisis. Old Lin, this requires your arrangement. We should have people lurking here secretly, right? Just make a phone call at a critical moment and arrange a way out for them."

Old Lin widened his eyes, "Tell me your plan."

After listening to Qin Yang's plan, everyone present was speechless for a long time. After a while, Leader Dong spoke.

"That is to say, we don't need to spend money on this 800 million lira worth of technical data, and we can just wait for them to obediently deliver it to our door?"

Aspide