Guest essay by Eric Worrall
h/t Breitbart; Over to industry, to develop new environmentally friendly sources of energy which can be used on operational deployments.
Army could phase out fossil fuels to attract ecofriendly recruits, senior general says
Dominic Nicholls, defence and security correspondent
13 SEPTEMBER 2019 • 1:33AM…
Speaking at a defence and security event in London, he said: “The Army is leading defence on sustainable energy solutions, both at home and when deployed overseas. We may be at the inflection point of how we power our next generation of vehicles. Our current equipment programme is possibly the last to be dependent on fossil fuel.”
Calling on British industry to lead the way on developing new sources of energy for the military, he added: “The challenge, and genuine commercial opportunity, is to aim high and lead the world in the development of military equipment which is not only battle-winning but also environmentally sustainable.
“That gives the British Army considerable operational benefits, such as reducing our logistical drag, and also puts the Army … on the right side of the environmental argument, especially in the eyes of that next generation of recruits that increasingly make career decisions based on a prospective employer’s environmental credentials.”
…
Read more: https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/09/13/army-could-phase-fossil-fuels-attract-ecofriendly-recruits-senior/
Fine words, but that new source of energy doesn’t exist.
The US Army invested money into “project dilithium“, a plan to deploy small modular 10MW nuclear reactors to the front line, but there is a lot of skepticism. Those reactors would be very high value targets, if an insurgent attack managed to rupture the core and spray core material all over the base, you’d have to immediately evacuate or die horribly, maybe in the middle of a firefight.
In any case, I don’t think British Gen Sir Mark Carleton-Smith who gave the speech had nuclear power in mind, he wants something renewable and eco friendly.
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They think they can produce the power of Dilithium without mining its crystal deposits from remote star systems? Fascinating but quite illogical, captain.
Without fossil fuels, the British Army will have to run on unicorn energy.
It is magic – like the fiction that “atmospheric CO2 drives climate” – also known as “the future drives the past”.*
The catastrophic human-made global warming) hypothesis states that atmospheric CO2 is the primary driver of global temperature – that is false nonsense, contradicted by abundant evidence that has been known for decades.
In reality, CO2 changes LAG global temperature changes at ALL measured time scales, from approximately (~) hundreds of years in the ice core record to ~9 months in the modern data record. The future cannot cause the last, certainly not in our existing time-space continuum. That observation is an absolute disproof of CO2-driven global warming alarmism.
Even the global warming alarmists have known this reality for over a decade, but they continue to deceive the populace to achieve their covert political objectives.
The global warming/climate change scare-scam was never about the climate – it is a smokescreen for the financial and political objectives of scoundrels and their imbecilic acolytes.
* Reference: “Carbon Dioxide Is Not The Primary Cause Of Global Warming”, January 2008
http://icecap.us/images/uploads/CO2vsTMacRae.pdf
Well then, the British army may as well just surrender now.. : )
Eco-friendly recruits … driving tanks …to do what exactly? I doubt they were sent to plant flowers in enemy territory.
Eco-Friendly WAR…what a concept
A few years ago, the British navy showed how to fight an environmentally friendly war in the Persian Gulf—surrender immediately to the Iranians and apologize for being there. The Army has seen what works and is looking to follow the navy’s lead.
The British Army should check out the Star Trek episode “A Taste of Armageddon” for a truly Eco-Friendly war concept.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Taste_of_Armageddon
What a jerk. You really think that is why you are having trouble recruiting? Oh, I was going to sign-up to defend my country, travel the world, bomb and kill people. But I couldn’t possibly do that if I thought my “employer” was not respecting the environment.
FFS.
Isn’t this the same upper class twit who recently made a pythonesque video of him giving a really stern ticking off to his troops for shooting at an image of the leader of Her Majesty’s Opposition , J.Corbyn.
Yep, that’s him:
https://news.sky.com/story/army-releases-unprecedented-video-after-corbyn-video-and-sex-assault-allegations-11685789
With goofs like this in charge of our armed forces , we really are in trouble.
Think about this. Many greens hate humanity. They will be armed with the means to reduce the number of parasitic humans on the planet. Since the ends justify the means, a little fossil fuel and CO2 are not important. It might actually be a great strategy—arming those who hate humanity to destroy part of humanity.
The could simply follow the lemmings.
Much tidier for everyone!
With military minds like this, they deserve to be defeated.
Military Minds? James these people have lost their minds.
I looked him up. He was born in Bielefeld, West Germany (I knew it well), which was the headquarters of 1st British Corps, British Army Of the Rhine (BAOR). His father (major general) and grandfather (Lt Col) were army officers. He went to Cheltenham College Junior School (roughly ages 8 to 13) and then Eton. I went to Cheltenham College, and we had a strong military history.
He had a good record as a junior officer and even spent time in SAS and commanded a SAS regiment.
So far so good. So what went wrong? He went to Durham University (it’s a good one) after Eton, sponsored by the army, to study politics and modern history. Reasonable for an army officer. He got a 2.2 honours degree. He was either not very bright or he wasn’t studying hard. The army sponsored young, newly commissioned officers at a few other universities. The ones I met at Trinity College Cambridge were very bright. Maybe it was Eton. Eton has some very strange people. Could be any of that. Or it could be that his wife is a greenie.
He’s a dead ringer for Arnold Judas Rimmer, BSc., SSc. (Bronze Swimming Certificate, Silver Swimming Certificate) of Red Dwarf fame.
https://reddwarf.fandom.com/wiki/Arnold_Rimmer
It’s the perennial problem of having infantry officers in command rather than those from technical arms that know about the ‘immutable laws of physics’ as well as von Moltke’s dictum that ‘No battle plan survives contact with the enemy’.
We might be a bit biased, having a father with a physics degree 🙂 The argument always was, of course, that generals in command of fighting troops should have experience leading troops in combat at a junior level. That excludes those from the technical arms who might have a much better understanding of why battles have been won and lost. Did Eisenhower have battle experience before WW2?
Being very bold and having climbed cliffs to attack the enemy or spent time behind enemy lines doesn’t qualify you to determine the strategy for a county’s armed forces.
Do you remember Bill’s theory that all battles are fought at the corners of four maps?
RichardX, by the way, is my totally cloaked user name. The X makes sure that nobody could ever guess my name. I think that I might have blown it 🙂
I think they surrendered some time after the Falklands War. Sad.
“YUP”, they surrendered a long time after the Falklands War, …. it t’was when they joined the EU and gave the “unelected” Brussel’s bureaucrats political power to dictate what’s best for them.
And the liberal Socialists in GB are intent on letting the EU dictate their future, which won’t be worth bragging about, …… like the “bombing” in WWII.
Ah – I think you’re getting us confused with the French army…
PARIS climate accord anyone? If you start to follow the Frenchies, you may become like them eventually. Has that eventuality occurred?
Hush………
This is obviously just a bit of disinformation to confuse the enemy…..
Isn’t it?
We’re stuffed
“ecofriendly recruits” I wonder will they want to use a weapon that they do not consider “ecofriendly”?
Apparently you missed the memo. Killing humans IS “ecofriendly”, by definition.
There is no such thing. Ecofriendly equals pacifists. They ain’t going to war!
The Propaganda Ministry in the west has gone mad trying to dupe the great unwashed into buying into their Climate Hysteria.
Takes testicular fortitude to engage in war. Y’don’t get that from soybeans, mate. Just sayin’.
Carbon Tax and Cap and Trade
Both gambits are too complex, too political, too gamable, and too inefficient for a world of limited resources and poverty.
How delightful to see the machines of warfare signalling virtue!
More evidence great “Britain” is DEAD and GONE.
General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith might be interested in approaching Kentucky Fried Chicken and McDonalds to conduct tests on how well the Warrior Infantry Tank would run on used cooking oil.
NWT
How about hydrogenated Soylent Green? That is “renewable and eco friendly.”
That is a good idea. Direct inject diesel engines can run on vegetable oils. There was a farmer that ran his tractor on used KFC oil and said that the exhaust made him hungry. I ran a diesel engine on some old corn oil and it reminded me of tacos. There must be hundreds of gallons (Imperial) of old oil from fish and chips that could be useful. You should get a reward for this!
You could use corn oil for fuel, and heated-margarine for lubricant. A low-cholesterol fighting vehicle that stays trim and healthy. 😉
Actually, most tanks, certainly the older tanks like the Chieftain, will run on anything that is used fat/oil. They are designed exactly for that because during a war, supply lines are usually the first target to be hit usually from the air.
If memory serves, the engine in the Chieftain, a Leyland product, was a constant source of trouble throughout the service life of the vehicle ?
The latest MBT seems to be powered by a Perkins V12 Diesel, with the company making scant mention of ‘Multi Fuel’ .
Yes most modern tanks use electronic fuel management systems which require lubrication from the fuel as well as very fine particulate filters and filers (Or additives) that remove moisture and any bio-contaminants and their waste from fuel that you will find at the bottom of a still fuel tank. If left long enough, the “microbes” extract oxygen from the water and then “crap” in the diesel resulting in a pretty nasty sludge. Older engines managed to burn pretty much anything if you didn’t have regular fuel with resulting fuel line problems.
Anything that came out of Leyland, or Scammell or anything TBH, was riddled with reliability problems. Nothing new there. During my time serving with REME (Early 80’s, Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers) we got to see what happens to engines (All equipment in fact) after “Squadies” were left to their own devices.
There was a time when using used cooking oil in you oil burning road going vehicle was illegal, and if you were caught you were heavily fined (Govn’t revenue from taxes on fuels and all that). Same with using agricultural red diesel on in road vehicles. I now understand that you can driver up to 2000 miles free of charges/taxes on used cooking oils but you have to keep a log book record of the usage.
The Warrior isn’t a tank, it’s an IFV, Infantry Fighting Vehicle, like the Us Bradley series.
What Jeff said.
An ‘Infantry’ tank was a British line of thinking for heavily armoured tanks designed for direct support of infantry when assaulting enemy positions. In the context of what they were designed for they were actually pretty effective. In the context of designing two rather different types of tanks (Infantry, as mentioned, and Cruisers, for fighting the ‘mobile’ parts of a battlefield) and then maintaining them, and then trying to make sure you had the right tanks at the right part of the battlefield… yeah…
Hence when they developed the Centurions the idea of the ‘universal’ tank was pushed, which then more or less evolved into the Main Battle Tank concept still followed today.
Warrior? Not A Tank.
The Warrior is IFV it’s designed to carrier troops into combat and then provide support. Not a tank.
Warrior? Not A Tank.
Well that explains it. It carries enough personnel that “eco-friendly” fuel means there’s enough soldiers to get out and push the vehicle along. 😉
Or maybe all the fish and chip shops around the place! What a Stupid Lt. General.
He’s a full general, 4 star, which makes it worse.
Didn’t they try that sort ofthing for local bus companies in towns to reduce pollution? IIRC, people just complained about feeling hungry every time a bus went passed because of the smell ofcooking oil!
gotta beat the stink of LPG buses we run in Aus.
you have nutters bitching about someone smoking a cigarette or vaping nearby
at the same time the stinky buses and the other traffic fumes are wafting all over them.
I smoke but the foul air in the city makes me feel very ill
Solar panels and windmills on top of tanks or just pulled along behind? ….
Watch out the British army are coming!
It’s okay to blast and burn the countryside for miles around with every explosive known to mankind but gee, don’t release CO2 for it might increase the temperature by a trillion zillion of a degree! At least the soldiers will feel better about the environment (sarc).
Perhaps they could use the excess muzzle blast from the tank gun to power a generator. The more you shot the more energy generated. That would be an incentive to get the snowflakes into battle.
Perpetual motion 😉
Must be time for fusion engines and hover tanks. Paging David Drake!
As if things in Britain aren’t bad enough already, this takes the prize. I wouldn’t want an Army of snowflake eco-bedwetters, quite frankly.
Virtue Signaling is the very definition of a high “Logistical Drag” .
The military lives and dies by logistics. There is always interest in new technologies that will simplify logistics. example
From the article: “Army could phase out fossil fuels to attract ecofriendly recruits, senior general says”
Oh yeah, that’s just what we need, ecofriendly recruits. I bet those would be some really tough fighters. The thought of this must scare Russian and Chinese leaders to death.
It sounds like this general is turning the British military into a joke. Jokes don’t serve very well as deterrents to enemies. In fact, just the opposite. If your military acts and looks like a joke, you are more likely to be attacked.
This general seems to think there is something out there that can be used as a substitute for fossil fuels, but he doesn’t name anything because nothing fits that bill as of today, so he must be doing some wishful thinking about fossil fuel replacement. It’s not good when one of your generals, in charge of deciding serious matters, has bouts of wishful thinking. That looks like a recipe for disaster.
Nah, I couldn’t bomb the enemy, guv. There was a tree in their midst.
The British military has been a joke for a couple of decades now. And, if Brexit doesn’t happen, it will soon be part of the EU military anyway; the idea apparently is that if you take a dozen countries that don’t want to spend money on defence, you’ll magically get a military capable of defending the whole of Europe.
And the idea of an eco-friendly war is funniest joke I’ve seen in weeks.
funny how the mil effeort using all the toxic chem and DU etc doesnt get a mention??
and didnt I read a few yrs ago the brits sold off their tank storage land for housing(and cos they were a bit skint n needed the cash) and their Tanks are stored in Germany?
…What a complete plonker. Mind you if he could just harness the energy of unicorn fa*ts and pixie dust….
When you have air superiority, anything on wheels or even (tank) tracks are just sitting ducks.
Space Force !!
Interesting. I wouldn’t place too much hope in the UK producing a Space Force any time soon.
How many space ships and rockets has the UK launched. Well about 75% of one, Black Arrow which sent a small satellite into LEO. You don’t get full credit because the Aussies launched it for you.
And surely you aren’t intending to threaten the Russians with Skylon. You cannot defeat an enemy with powerpoint slide presentations that will never fly.
Like we quip in the industry, “There are two groups of counties, those that use the metric system and those that have put men on the moon.”
Pretty sure he was referring to the US space force proposed by Trump.
By the way, you can’t have TRiUMPh without Trump!
The current crop of Democrats will be in the recycling bin on the day after Election Day, 2020!
Should make some juicy Soylent Green. . .
The UK makes up 5% of the global space industry with manufacturing being the main engine for growth.
We aren’t useless.
Link:
https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/774450/LE-SHUKSI_2018-SUMMARY_REPORT-FINAL-Issue4-S2C250119.pdf
M Courtney,
In no way did I intend to demean British engineers (nor Scots) and I am sorry if I have caused offense. I have worked with many fine engineers from the UK and around the world. (as a group we are eerily similar)
My dig was at the lack of real social or national drive behind staying on the cutting edge of exploration. When a state stops driving onward, it drifts backwards. The Dutch used to be a world power house, then they stopped exploring.
Space is infinite, so there is no reason to stop looking for something new.
Not useless, dangerous.
https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-20781625
Maybe the British army should replace Generals with computer models of Generals. The decision making process would still be subject to the same erroneous beliefs but the Gov’t would not have to pay a pension to the computers.
Of course it will work.
An advancing army would only have to plug into the nearest supercharger. It would only take a week or to charge up a full armoured battalion. Naturally being sporting chaps, the enemy would leave power connected. Or am I being silly.
I think chivalry went with the dodo bird….
I don’t understand why the comments are so sarcastic.
If Global Warming is the worlds greatest security threat, why would we not/b> want to have, like, an eco friendly military.
It doesn’t matter if China, Russia and the entire Middle East don’t feel the same; we can’t expect them to change if we don’t lead the way.
As the Spartans said to Phillip II, “If”.
What if global warming *isn’t* a security threat?
Since China is a much bigger emitter of greenhouse gases,
and a much worse polluter, than the UK, and has a
historic grudge against the UK, why would you expect
them to follow the UK in *anything*?
When they see the UK “leading the way”, they point and laugh.
Now there are some kinds of eco-friendly that make sense for
the military. If you are conquering a territory, or defending
one, you want it to remain habitable afterwards. This goes
back to Deuteronomy 20:19. “When you’re building siege
works, don’t cut down fruit trees, you idiots. You want to
keep them for food.” (Paraphrase.)
Something that *is* a threat to security is trying to attract
snowflakes into your armed forces.
Easy! Put a windmill on every tank.
A sail might work better. It just takes longer to attack enemy positions into the wind, as you have to tack.
I was thinking of pedals. That way the occupants could get some exercise to keep them healthy!
Josh should do a tank with Fred Flintstone’s feet sticking out of the bottom of it.
I wouldn’t want to be in a fox hole with any eco friendly recruit stupid enough to believe that fossil fuels need to be done away with. I just pray that we don’t end up with a commander in chief that is that stupid…..again.
We’d do best to regard such a commander in chief as a domestic enemy.
First you would have to get the eco-friendly one to disturb the soil. Except if under fire of course. That could lead to a “Road to Damascus” moment.
This is a sad case of failing to think outside the box. Electric rechargable tanks, APC’s and lorries are perfectly doable. Each then tows a diesel generator to recharge the battery between skirmishes.
I’ve got that proposal submittal form around here somewhere…….
It is called “diesel-electric drive” and has been tried several times for military vehicles since the 1940’s but has never gone into actual service as far as I know. However the diesel is normally kept inside the vehicle, not towed.
It is common for ships, locomotives etc.
It gives very good fuel economy but tends to be heavy.
The Germans experimented with it on their ultra heavy development tanks because traditional transmissions simply would not have worked. This too was dropped as being impractical and unreliable. I am sure today it would work.
Just add pedals and let those new “green” recruits huff-and-puff and blow the enemy down.
Remember this bit of stupid?
https://www.washingtontimes.com/news/2016/feb/7/pentagon-orders-commanders-to-prioritize-climate-c/
Or how about the fact that the German Navy can’t afford maintenance on its U-boats although Germany is flushing billions down the drain on the useless energiewende programs.
https://www.realcleardefense.com/articles/2018/02/19/can_the_german_navy_be_saved_113075.html
When all our fossil fuel supplies are depleted, it is very likely we will have to manufacture liquid hydrocarbon fuels due to their advantageous energy density, relative safety, and the advantages of storing hydrogen by attaching it to carbon atoms. A pound of gasoline mixed with air has as much energy as a pound of dynamite, yet we don’t worry much about having 100 pounds of it in our garage. A battery or super capacitor with the same energy storage as that 100 pounds of gasoline is a serious safety hazard.
A hundred pounds of diesel is even safer, which is the reason the military have tended to shift from gas to diesel since the 1940’s.
Looks like they’ll be bringing back sailing ships and horses. Crossbows and swords are more eco-friendly than guns and bombs. Perhaps he should include them in his plans.
Longbows, mate, longbows.
Longbows were highly efficient weapons, but required years of regular training to use effectively, which is why they were replaced by crossbows and muskets, both with considerably shorter range and lower rate of fire, but which anyone could learn to use in a few weeks.
The UK recently become the 3rd or 2nd largest weapons manufacturer in the EU, and the Army is worried about CO2?
“The challenge, and genuine commercial opportunity, is to aim high and lead the world in the development of military equipment which is not only battle-winning but also environmentally sustainable.”
You stop making weapons in that case. Fire as many DU tipped shells as you like but don’t run fossil fuels, it destroys the environment don’t ya know!
Next the Air Force will build wooden aircraft coated in hemp driven by rubber bands and solar panels.
Ecofriendly recruits?? Why in the world would the want ecofriendly recruits??? They won’t fight! No way would they fire a weapon in any circumstances that would harm the environment (which is all circumstances).
Maybe the British army has given up warfare and is now just doing parades.
Dirtman,
You suggest,
“Maybe the British army has given up warfare and is now just doing parades.”
I suggest you don’t upset members of the SAS or SBS.
Richard
“…especially in the eyes of that next generation of recruits that increasingly make career decisions based on a prospective employer’s environmental credentials.”
The only decisions you are making in combat, is how to get your A$$ out of combat in one piece.
The only thought I ever gave to fuel was, how much is there and where is it.
A pilots saying:
The only time an aircraft has too much fuel on board is when it is on fire.