Reborn In 17th century India with Black Technology-Chapter 1248: WW1: New equipment, preparations complete

March 1708

The attack on the Polish-Lithuanian Kingdom commenced, while the preparations to launch the war on the western front of the European continent were almost complete.

Agni, who was sent back under the disguise of the Emperor of the Bharatiya Empire, his father, was still carefully maintaining the disguise, with not more than a handful of people knowing the actual situation, and that included the Cabinet ministers of various states and even the chief ministers. It was only the important ministers of the central government and the prime minister who knew.

Interestingly enough, for the last two to three years, since the war started, the Naya Samrat multipurpose military vehicle had been continuously produced and put into use on the European battlefield, but that did not mean research in other areas had stopped. The production of a war tractor was like Pandora’s box that opened all sorts of imaginations in the minds of the military designers, and the development of the Haridwar 100 multipurpose bike did the same for civilian automakers.

In fact, after the development of Naya Samrat, there were proposals to build a better one only four to five months down the line, but the military logistics department simply rejected them because the investment into the Naya Samrat was already too large, and they were unwilling to build an entirely new multipurpose vehicle and waste all the investment made in the previous one. Besides, Naya Samrat was working as intended, so why change it so quickly?

Not to mention, even the improved model only brought forward iterative improvements in speed, torque, and range, nothing too groundbreaking. At most, they accepted any new developments under the condition that the proposed additions would still fit and integrate with the current Naya Samrat, which was more of a platform than a vehicle.

The rejection of a new generation of Naya Samrat meant that the research for a new generation of an armed vehicle that would directly participate in battle, and the multipurpose mobility vehicle, the bike, was greenlit almost immediately, and the result that came out of a design competition, held in a form quite similar to the one for the Naya Samrat, was the birth of two different vehicles and systems.

One was a tank, a new-generation war tractor that was in a league of its own called the Agni Ratha, the flame chariot, and the other was the second generation of the Haridwar motorcycle, the Haridwar 200.

The tank and the motorcycle could only come out after the invention, or rather further development, of internal combustion technologies. After the development of the twin-cylinder engine, the Dvidhara Mk1, in 1704, the research continued, and finally, three years later in 1707, the four-cylinder engine, following the same naming convention and aptly named Chatushchakra Mk1, the four stream, was born under the supervision of Vedanth Devaraya and the participation of several top engineers like Mahasanga Pati and others.

This engine was purpose-built with power and durability in mind, so it was constructed using materials developed by Devaraya Institutions, the Bharatiya Institute of Military Sciences, and Heyram New Materials, with the cost of the materials alone being enough to buy a civilian automobile.

Chatushchakra was an inline four-cylinder engine, vertically inclined, with a 180-degree firing order, and it had eight valves, with each cylinder having a single intake and a single exhaust valve. The engine was a 3060cc unit, with each cylinder sharing the same capacity as the elder Dvidhara, 765cc, and it was air-cooled.

In fact, water-cooling, a new concept, was put forward by one of the young researchers from the Institute of Military Sciences, but there was no way to make the new technology as reliable as the proven one, so air-cooled technology was still used, and the lubrication system used a shared sump with four oil galleries.

With four cylinders, it was able to put out over 28.4 horsepower and a maximum torque of 180 khanda meters, with an RPM range of 218 to 900. One more interesting thing was that, despite adding two more cylinders, since the two extra cylinders still shared the same oil sump as well as the fuel inlet, the weight did not actually double. The predecessor weighed over 248 kilograms, but the Chatushchakra simply weighed 100 kilograms extra, bringing its weight to 340 kilograms, making it still somewhat capable of being handled by a pair of engineers.

As for the new engine for the bike, the Sangapati engine, it was still a four-stroke single-cylinder engine with a side-valve cam-actuated valve system, but all its technologies had been improved, with the compression ratio increasing from 4.5:1 to 5.0:1.

Talking about power, it had seen an improvement of 42%, going from 5.9 horsepower at 660 RPM to 8.4 horsepower at 800 RPM, and the same applied to torque, which saw a 24% improvement, going from 25 Khanda meters to 31 Khanda meters at 460 RPM. The operating RPM range had also improved, previously from 220 to 770, but now its limit was at 900 RPM.

Improved and cleaner combustion led to lower vibration and increased the overall lifespan, and there were other improvements in fuel intake and combustion as well, with the thermal efficiency increasing by over 30%. The operating hours had also gone up significantly, from a maximum of seven hours to now over 10 hours, and all of that somehow without changing the overall weight of the engine, which still remained at 167 kilograms.

With these two engines approved by the military, the vehicles to host them were officially put on the agenda over a year ago, around 1706, probably at the time when a political exchange was made between the Bharatiya Empire and the Russian Empire. As always, the design competition was very efficient; it lasted a month, and the winning model was immediately put into manufacturing as swiftly as possible.

Predictably, the competition was much more fierce because now the engineers knew what the military wanted. The design of the Naya Samrat was right in front of them, so most top manufacturing companies formed a consortium of a kind and competed against one another. In the competition, there were actually only two or maybe three teams competing, not the 10 to 20 teams like those that had participated in the earlier competition to design a truck for the military that gave the Empire the Naya Samrat.

Agni finally set foot on the land of South Africa and entered Cape Town after so many years, and he felt like a lot of things had changed: the roads, the drainage systems, and even the skyline. Everything had got a facelift, and it no longer looked like a city in Africa devastated by war and destruction, but looked like a modern metropolis.

Unfortunately, he did not have the luxury to walk around the city, which he dearly wanted to do. Still, as he travelled in his car escorted by a convoy of military vehicles, he saw the blend of cultures. The people in the streets were of all kinds, Bharatiyas, Europeans who had been left behind, and sub-Saharan Africans, all coming together like a melting pot.

It made him very happy.

The first place he visited was naturally the barracks, and he gave a rousing speech to over a million troops that had assembled under his command. Naturally, he couldn’t gather all the people in the same place, so he had to give the same speech multiple times in different places. The whole thing took several days, but in the end, he was able to gauge the morale fundamentally of his troops, and he had to say it was very satisfactory. The troops that were mobilised this time were not monopolised by the Bharatiyas like the previous time. In order to maintain the secrecy of the mobilisation, most of the troops were recruited from vassal kingdoms or even from various kingdoms and vassal states in the African continent.

So even though the vast majority of the army still looked brown with a rich shade of black, it was a coalition force brought together from different nationalities, and it was further demonstrated by the appearance of soldiers with unique East Asian features or unique American features.

"How did they perform in their training?" he asked after all the speeches he had given. In response, the group of commanders who would be serving under him resolutely beat their chests and promised that they had personally taken over the responsibility of training a quarter of a million troops each. They declared that they had trained the troops to the bone and that the troops would resolutely follow commands, no matter what may come.

Agni had no way to verify this claim for now, since practically speaking, how would one even test an army of a million troops without putting them in an actual battle? So he simply chose to trust the commanders for now and look at how the troops would perform in battle.

After meeting all the commanders and after making sure the Navy was up for the challenge, he finally started to inspect the equipment, the multipurpose Naya Samrat jeeps, the artillery, the soldiers’ kits, the ordnance, and finally the two new additions to the inventory, the Haridwar 200 and the Chatushchakra.

"How fast does it go, how long can it operate, and what fuel does it take?" he asked, concise and to the point, directly wanting to know the core specifications of the bike.

"It can reach a maximum speed of over 50 kmh, Your Majesty, while its normal cruising ranges between 30 and 40 kmh, and it has been graded at a sustained 25%, which will allow it to maintain its power output even with a load on its back. As for how long it can operate, it can operate as long as the engine can put out power, 10 hours, my liege." Agni did not ask for the range, but the officer knew that range was also a key indicator, so he decided to fill it in anyway. "With a fuel tank of eight litres, it has a range of 220 kilometres, and finally, it uses petroleum distillate."

Agni nodded, his body language nearly mirroring his father’s, not raising any doubts in the mind of the officer.

"What about this big guy?" he asked, keeping the most exciting equipment for last, pointing at the large metal beast with a gun sticking out of its centre.

"This, as you know, is the new generation of our tractor, the Agni Ratha, Your Majesty. It is an armoured war tractor with the main purpose of assault and a secondary purpose of obstacle suppression."

"It has a speed of 14 kmh on firm ground, but during combat it has a speed of over 10 kmh. It has an operational range of 120 kilometres per fuel load, around 85 litres, a gradeability of 30%, and a runtime of over 12 hours."

"It is protected by a 90 mm plate on the front, 45 mm plates on the sides, 25 mm plates on the rear, 15 mm plates on the roof, and 12 mm plates on the floor, making it the most defensible vehicle we have ever built. As for the armour protection of the gun, it has 100 mm of high-strength cast iron."

"Now, coming to the main attraction of the vehicle, the large gun, it is a full-sized breech-loading rifled howitzer manufactured by the Himalayan Group, with a caliber of 4 inches and an effective range of over 600 meters, and the vehicle can carry over 24 rounds while also carrying a secondary armament of two machine guns, with the men operating it able to stash their military-issue rifles as well."

Agni tested it firsthand, the result of the test being an iceberg-like face showing a hint of a smirk.

"Let the troops mount the ships; the time for battle has arrived."