Senku's declaration that he would build a tank sounded like something that would turn the Stone Age's understanding of the world upside down.
In reality, he was not planning to reproduce a top-of-the-line modern main battle tank in full.
Modern tanks relied on vast quantities of rare alloys, refined steel, precision industrial machine tools, and micron-level machining equipment. They were formidable weapons built upon a mature industrial system.
But Ishigami Village currently had nothing, let alone precision forging equipment. The only way to make a working combat vehicle was to reproduce its essential structure using substitute materials.
They only needed to preserve a tank's two most essential features-armor protection and main-gun firepower.
Those two things were the true backbone of a combat vehicle.
Li Xiang stood quietly beside the smelting workshop, listening as Senku broke down the manufacturing principles one by one.
True tank armor steel had to combine extreme hardness with exceptional toughness.
Modern industry's process for making armor steel was complex and precise.
First, the purity of the molten steel had to be strictly controlled. Repeated filtration removed impurities, while a simulated vacuum degassing process expelled as many bubbles as possible, ensuring the material was uniform and free of flaws.
Then, thousands of rounds of hot rolling and forging turned the steel ingots into heavy armor plates hundreds of millimeters thick.
High-end combat vehicles even used composite layers, embedding homemade ceramics and lightweight aluminum alloy plates within the steel body to create a protective structure layered like a mille-feuille.
Compared with armor, forging the steel for the gun barrel was even more difficult.
Gun steel had to withstand the extreme chamber pressure and sudden high temperatures of firing. Ordinary steel would deform and crack with a single shot, rendering it useless.
Modern methods required ultra-high-pressure forging presses to