The ministers have approved constructing and manning the necessary radio towers for communication improvements, at the cost of delaying our other ongoing construction projects by a month or two. This includes delaying the arc furnace systems. While most of the construction is complete, there has been some testing and delays for building out the large graphite rod production facility to use as the electrodes. If that facility was only being designed to build the rods for exactly the arc furnace, it probably would be done, but the chosen design is actually meant to consolidate our other graphite rod production that we use as electrodes in our sodium hydroxide production line. It's also being left with the room necessary to produce more sizes or shapes of graphite that we might need in the future.

Considering the delays in other projects that would consume the iron we're planning to make, it shouldn't be much of an issue. Especially given the sheer scale of ore that should be able to be smelted in a day. Being conservative, it might take the arc furnace 3 hours to fully cycle a batch of ore. That would mean they could process about 800 tons of ore a day. Now, you don't get all of that back as iron, but it's still a huge increase in how quickly we can produce it. It also means that we'd need fewer smelting facilities compared to floatation separation. Considering construction is our chokepoint currently, that'll pay dividends down the road.

I also have some notes on data we've collected for aircraft that confirms old data I collected in the distant past, along with some estimations I made. Indeed, the atmosphere here is somewhat denser than Earth, by about ~20%. Further gravity is about 8% weaker. That means that the atmosphere actually stays denser for longer as you increase in altitude, which explains why, despite the altitude at the top of Kembora, I wasn't so winded that I passed out, despite making a direct climb to the top multiple times. It's noticeably thinner, but not so much as to cause extreme altitude sickness. I'm sure my body is adapted for a generally thicker atmosphere meaning my lungs are either less efficient or are smaller in comparison, which might exaggerate the effect that the thinning atmosphere has on my body.

In either case, that does lead to interesting effects. It should actually make our aircraft have a much easier time flying. A thicker atmosphere means more lift, even if there is a downside of higher drag at higher speeds. The lower gravity also means that there is less weight that needs to be lifted overall. I've never really sat down and thought about it directly, but that slight decrease in gravity really has made a lot of things possible that probably shouldn't have been as easy as they've been. From building and cave stability, to hauling materials, the lower gravity has probably given us quite a bit of free wiggle room I didn't really consider for many things.

It does have an effect on artillery ranges that I wasn't really considering either, though our data from range tables reflects the change. Smaller artillery has much shorter ranges since drag has a higher proportional effect, given the shell's mass to drag ratio. The larger the shell, the smaller this ratio, and the lower the effect drag has. What we've seen as a result is that increasing the shell size up to the massive 16-inch shells has resulted in significant range increases. While I don't think the 16-inch guns are outranging earth guns yet, hypothetically larger ones might after a certain size point, we're also lacking in true optimization of our designs for artillery, which would improve range somewhat as well.

We haven't heard any news in the last 10 days about what is happening with the rebellion, but I expect that will change soon, I'd expect the situation is rapidly developing, but no news is hopefully good news.

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I'm being stretched quite thin with all the different hats I'm wearing: minister, teacher, academy head, and researcher. I'm taking daily trips back and forth to Kembora to handle everything I'm in charge of. We got a preliminary report yesterday on the situation on the mainland. Fighting hasn't yet reached any of the port cities themselves, but some of the captured ships have been patrolling their coast area, and have been seen firing on tanks.

It seems that our estimate that they're using black powder is correct, as they still produce significant amounts of smoke when fired, they also have quite a long reload time from what we can tell. It could be due to inadequate training, but might also be partially by design. Their warships have twice as many guns as ours, which could be to compensate for their slower reload times.

The rebels have also voiced their dissatisfaction that we aren't actively helping them, and instead are only observing the situation. I can't blame them for being frustrated though. We're essentially camping ships off their coast, which could be helping them, but instead they're sitting idly by and observing. Though the counter argument is that we have no obligation to help them.

We've already seen some valuable bits of military info from this observation, and we're hoping to see more. It's clear from what little we've seen that despite their number of tanks, they do have to keep them somewhat spread out to maintain decent speeds. If they're too grouped up, they slow down enough that it'd be easy to hit them with artillery. That means that natural chokepoints are going to be extra effective at stopping them. Unfortunately for the rebels, they're on a coastal plane and lack those sort of natural defenses.

I've managed to make the necessary replica circuits for the four planned additional radio towers, and drafted the rest of the designs for the radio facilities. Thankfully, radio towers are actually fairly simple beyond the electrical parts. Since we are planning these as relay facilities, we're not going to try to build the Drazvok tower on it's peak. Instead, this tower will be on a side coast where it isn't blocked from either neighboring island. The reason simply being ease of access for construction.

Sixteen days since the last update from the mainland, but the new one was quite full of information. The rebels have lost one of their coastal cities. While tanks were used to breach some of the walls, and quite a few were destroyed by ships, they weren't actually utilized for taking the city over. Once fighting made it into the city itself, the enemy still utilized foot soldiers. They seem to be utilizing the equivalent of flintlock weapons. Producing primer is a difficult thing to do, after all, and they don't have a good grasp on electricity either, by the looks of things.

Their were still quite a few high level human soldier that participated in the fight, utilizing self-enhancement magics and combat magics to fight. If our technology and armies are between world war 1 and world war 2, theirs are closer to the Napoleonic wars. Similar to the soviets, however, they have significantly more bodies and arms to throw into a war, which means that we aren't guaranteed any wins.

We weren't sure what they'd do about their captured ships, but we watched a naval battle between the two types. They didn't seem to have any qualms about sinking them. The report detailed two ocean skirmishes at the remaining two rebel cities, resulting in the rebels no longer having ships there.

We haven't observed any elves on any ships or in any combats, but we have observed that despite their centralization, the northern alliance still keeps their individual country flags and coat of arms on their tanks and uniforms. Other than the ship battles, the groups participating have been entirely from nearby countries. The ships, however, are all from the northern most region, save for the rebel captured ones.

We haven't observed anything that would qualify for brutality really. They haven't even shelled the captured cities. I was concerned that if fighting was tough, that the enemy might deploy silver fluorite to wipe out the rebels rather than let a city stay independent, but once the walls are breached, it seems like the high-level soldiers completely outclass the rebels. I doubt the remaining two cities will last more than a few weeks at this rate.

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