A bad idea was still an idea. No matter how poor its cost-effectiveness, as long as it could save lives at a critical moment, the Tsarist Government had no choice but to take it.
By the end of 1904 in the original timeline, the Siberian Railway had already opened to traffic. Though it could not operate normally, it could at least dispatch a few trainloads of cargo per day on average.
Do not underestimate those seemingly insignificant few trainloads. At critical moments, those supplies could even determine the outcome of a war.
The shortfall had to be made up somehow. Placing their hopes on smuggling was, in truth, the Tsarist Government blindly grasping at remedies in desperation.
After the Continental War ended, the air forces of every country tacitly chose to phase out airships. Apart from a small number of transport airships, the skies had basically been seized by airplanes.
The Russian Empire also had an airship force, but due to cost-effectiveness, its scale had always been very small.
After the Russo-Japanese War broke out, they had not transferred the airship force to the Far East. On one hand, it was because of cost-effectiveness; on the other, the military high command knew that their own airship force was already finished.
There was no helping it. Airships had limited service lives. If equipment was not replaced for ten or twenty years, they would not even dare casually take off for routine training.
Forget completing combat missions—even getting them to the Far East was a problem. In any case, the ancient airships equipped by the Russian Army could not fly to their destination on their own.
By comparison, the Holy Roman Empire's airship force was different. Though it had withdrawn from the order of battle, the logistics units still retained their complete