The rise of great powers: starting from military industry

I came here with anxiety, hoping and fearing that I would be disappointed in the end.

When I left, my face was full of rosy glow, and my spirit seemed to have returned all of a sudden, and my eyes were full of hope.

Ma Fengshan knew that what he had to do next was to draw up a list and reunite the Y-10 development team.

Ma Fengshan had things to do, and Liu Tao and Li Weimin had things to do.

The two discussed the final assembly plant and felt that Guifei was the most suitable.

Originally, the Magic City Aircraft Manufacturing Plant was the most suitable, but after the Y-10 was discontinued, the Magic City Aircraft Manufacturing Plant plunged into the cooperation with McDonnell Douglas Aircraft Company to produce the McDonnell Douglas 82 passenger aircraft, and was no longer interested in the Y-10.

McDonnell Douglas is a large aircraft manufacturing company with the production capacity of fighter jets and passenger aircraft. The passenger aircraft it produces are also well-known. Its passenger aircraft business is known as the three major passenger aircraft with Boeing and Airbus, and it is also the leader in the fighter field.

The current McDonnell Douglas is a super-large enterprise with assets exceeding 10 billion US dollars, and it is also a multinational company.

After the reform and opening up, as the relationship between China and the United States entered a honeymoon period, the two countries carried out a lot of military cooperation, and McDonnell Douglas was the company that cooperated the most with China.

One of the most important reasons for the cancellation of the Y-10 passenger aircraft is that McDonnell Douglas played a big role. After the Y-10 passenger aircraft was cancelled, the Magic City Aircraft Manufacturing Plant cooperated with McDonnell Douglas to produce the McDonnell Douglas 82 passenger aircraft, which is a passenger aircraft of the same level as the Boeing 737.

Liu Tao naturally admired McDonnell Douglas, because McDonnell Douglas was indeed very strong in the aviation field, and it was a master in missiles. The various aircraft it produced were also very excellent. In the passenger aircraft field, McDonnell Douglas 82 and others, from narrow-body passenger aircraft to wide-body passenger aircraft, were available, no worse than Boeing and Airbus.

In the fighter field, McDonnell Douglas occupied half of the third-generation aircraft in the United States. McDonnell Douglas developed the third-generation heavy fighter F15 ‘Eagle’ fighter of the Air Force and the carrier-based aircraft F18 ‘Hornet’ of the Navy. The AV8B ‘Harrier’ fighter used by the Marine Corps was also produced by McDonnell Douglas. The best of the second-generation aircraft, the F4, is also produced by McDonnell Douglas. The KC10 tanker in the United States is also modified from the McDonnell Douglas 10 passenger aircraft, and the C17 Globemaster transport aircraft in the United States is also developed and produced by McDonnell Douglas.

But Liu Tao knew that such important industries and core technology development must be in his own hands, and McDonnell Douglas would not be kind.

For example, the Magic City Aircraft Manufacturing Plant intends to cooperate with McDonnell Douglas to produce the McDonnell Douglas 82 passenger aircraft, so as to master the production technology of modern passenger aircraft. Liu Tao can only say that the abacus is too loud.

It is difficult for the Magic City Aircraft Manufacturing Plant to intervene, but Guizhou Aircraft is different.

Guizhou is an important aerospace base. When the Third Front was built, Guizhou was built into an important aerospace base in the country, which was a strategic backup!

At that time, countless cadres, intellectuals, workers, migrant workers and soldiers, under the call of "good people and good horses go to the Third Front", rushed to Guizhou in a mighty manner, opening up the great cause of the "Third Front Construction" of the Guizhou Plateau.

From 1964 to 1978, they worked hard for 14 years and built hundreds of large and medium-sized enterprises, technical facilities, scientific research units, hospitals and schools in the vast mountains of Guizhou, with remarkable achievements.

In Guizhou, there are 011 aviation industrial base, 061 aerospace industrial base, and 083 electronic industrial base!

Of course, these industrial bases are still there, but to meet the requirements of modern aviation industry, huge investments have to be made to upgrade them, and it can even be said that modern factories have been rebuilt from the ground up.

But there is one thing that other places cannot compare to, that is, technical workers and scientific research teams.

Liu Tao chose Guifei as the final assembly plant because Guifei can produce both passenger aircraft and military aircraft.

In addition to Guifei, there are also Chengfei and Xi'an Aircraft Corporation to choose from.

As for the final result, it depends on the final negotiation results.

Li Weimin is responsible for negotiations with the governments of Guizhou, Sichuan, and Shaanxi provinces as well as Guifei, Chengfei, and Xi'an Aircraft Corporation.

Liu Tao was responsible for visiting the Third Ministry of Machine Building, or more precisely, the Ministry of Aerospace Industry, because the Ministry of Aviation Industry and the Ministry of Aerospace Industry had merged to form the Ministry of Aerospace Industry.

In addition to visiting the Ministry of Aerospace Industry, he also had to visit the leaders above him. After all, he had to win the support of the leaders to accomplish this.

Whether it was Guizhou Aircraft, Chengdu Aircraft or Xi'an Aircraft, they were all vice-ministerial units, with the same administrative level as Panshan Group, and they were also cross-system, so the gap was very large.

In the same system, this kind of merger was very troublesome, not to mention different systems.

Even if it was not a merger, but a re-establishment of an aviation industry group, it would have to be agreed by the Ministry of Aerospace Industry and the leaders above.

After all, the Ministry of Aerospace Industry was in charge of everything in the country's aviation and aerospace, and they were the competent department.

And if the leaders agreed, then there was no doubt that things would be easy to handle.

Fortunately, Panshan Group had cooperated with the Ministry of Aviation Industry and the Ministry of Aerospace Industry before, and the relationship between the two sides was pretty good, so Liu Tao was still quite confident.

After Li Weimin left, Liu Tao drank a few cups of tea, stood by the window, and looked at the Dianchi Lake in front of him, his mind flying.

Since he wanted to enter the aviation industry, he would not only enter the passenger aircraft field, but also the military aircraft field.

From a certain perspective, the civil aviation passenger aircraft field and the military aircraft field are interconnected, and the industrial chain has a high degree of overlap.

Ordinary people only think that Boeing is a giant in civil aviation passenger aircraft, but in fact it is also a giant in military aircraft. Since the mid-1930s, Boeing has begun to develop large bombers, including the famous B-17 (nicknamed "Flying Fortress") and B-29 bombers in World War II, as well as the B-47 and B-52 (nicknamed "Stratosphere Fortress") strategic bombers developed after World War II.

Among them, the B-47 strategic bomber made its first flight in 1947, went into production in 1948, and stopped production in 1957. In almost ten years, 2,060 aircraft were produced. The design of B-52 was proposed in 1948, the first prototype made its first flight in 1952, the batch production model began to be delivered in 1955, and production was stopped in 1962. A total of 744 aircraft were produced. It is currently the main strategic bomber of the US Air Force and the only type of US strategic bomber that can launch cruise missiles.

There is also the famous KC-135 aerial refueling aircraft, which is the famous Boeing 707 in civil airliners. So far, nearly a thousand orders have been received.

As for McDonnell Douglas, there is no need to say more.

So, since he plans to enter the aviation industry, Liu Tao not only needs to stay in the field of civil airliners, but also does not want to miss military aircraft.

After all, in the future, China's military aircraft alone will require at least four or five thousand aircraft of various types, which is a very large market.

Not to mention, military aircraft have always been the highlight of the international arms market, and their share cannot be underestimated.

Maybe the domestic military aircraft market will have a relatively thin profit, but in the international arms market, the profit of military aircraft is very rich.