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 ā¢ 1:33AM…
Speaking at a defence and security event in London, he said: āThe 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.ā
Calling on British industry to lead the way on developing new sources of energy for the military, he added: āThe 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 ā¦ 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 employerās environmental credentials.ā
…
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.
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” ā 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 ā 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 ā it is a smokescreen for the financial and political objectives of scoundrels and their imbecilic acolytes.
* Reference: āCarbon Dioxide Is Not The Primary Cause Of Global Warmingā, 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 Gulfāsurrender immediately to the Iranians and apologize for being there. The Army has seen what works and is looking to follow the navyās 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 strategyāarming 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 š 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 š
I think they surrendered some time after the Falklands War. Sad.
āYUPā, they surrendered a long time after the Falklands War, ā¦. it tāwas when they joined the EU and gave the āunelectedā Brusselās bureaucrats political power to dictate whatās best for them.
And the liberal Socialists in GB are intent on letting the EU dictate their future, which wonāt be worth bragging about, ā¦ā¦ 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. š
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 itās 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. š
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!
Itās okay to blast and burn the countryside for miles around with every explosive known to mankind but gee, donāt 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 š
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 āLogistical Dragā .
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 couldnāt 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 donāt 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 theyāll 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 employerās environmental credentials.ā
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.
I see ‘rapid deployment’ solar panels and wind mills becoming part of the British arsenal. Unfortunately, neither the physical items nor the ‘virtue signaling’ will shield a single soldier from any enemy threat.
Wonky ‘sustainable’ green methods are incompatible with the unyielding realities of warfare …. if you want to defeat your enemies and live, that is.
The same chuckle-headed genius that brought us charging machine-gun nests in WWI. The Brits never learn.
But some had revolvers and sticks.
Blackadder: “Ah. Would this brilliant plan involve us climbing out of uour trenches and walking very slowly towards the enemy?”
Captain Darling: How could you possibly know that Balckadder? It’s classified information.
Oh we did …
We invented the Tank, the creeping barrage and all arms tactics and we kicked those nests in the ass in the 100 days that lead to the German collapse in Nov 1918….
Mike….
You can thank an Australian for combined-arms tactics. John Monash. First used in any scale at the Battle of Hamel….. and when subsequently adopted by the Allies, resulting in the breaking of the German defences in August 1918.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamel
Not that our military commanders are any better than yours, these days. They are rejecting qualifying male recruits because they donāt meet diversity targets.
Sorry PeterW, but that claim is unfortunately bollocks.
Monash was an engineer. What he brought to the battlefield was a project manager like view of organisation. Rather than just assuming that the various arms were going to work together, he made SURE they were going to work together.
He developed very little that wasn’t already in place. The artillery planning was largely done by a British officer – who’s name stubbornly refuses to submit to either memory or searches at the moment – using methods that had already been developed and established. The battle itself was basically Bite and Hold, which was pretty much the accepted tactic by this stage of the war as from painful experience it was nearly impossible to achieve breakthrough in an offensive.
(By this stage of the war the ‘front’ was about 9 miles deep. The trenches closest to the enemy were usually relatively lightly manned, because if you put too many troops that close to the enemy they only ended up being slow shelled and gassed to pieces. Normally there were three dedicated lines of defences. To reach the green fields beyond you first had to get through the mud and blood of these defenses and to suppress the enemy you needed to use literally hundreds of guns at a time, not only to shell the trenches you were trying to capture, but also the enemy guns to suppress them during the battle, the flanks, and the expected path of advance for any counter attack. Artillery was a science. It was also range dependent and if you tried to advance faster than your guns could redeploy you got mauled.)
Bite and Hold was the idea that you picked a spot, attacked with overwhelming force, captured it and then stopped advancing. The Germans would either then be forced to counter attack (which was factored into the plan of the attack by ensuring there were enough guns to counter this) or yield ground. Both were good results from the allied point of view as by this stage of the war allied forces were regularly taking less casualties attacking relative to what they were inflicting. (Still taking casualties. The fact you were talking ‘less’ was no doubt wonderful news to the soldiers that actually were those casualties…) Part of the reason the Germans were forced into the Kaiserschlacht offensives was they could not afford to be slowly ground down defending against constant Bite and Hold attacks. (WW1 was very pragmatically brutal. The idea that ‘they’ would run out of troops first was actually completely valid. Brutal, but valid.)
In real terms Hamel was not a big battle (division sized attack) and developed no new revolutionary tactics. What it DID do was, via Monash’s ‘project management’ skill, do everything VERY well.
Also remember that Hamel was 4 July 1918 (date selected deliberately because US troops were included in the planning) and Amiens was launched just over a month later on 8 August.
To claim that a divisional sized attack with limited (realistic – remember, Bite and Hold) objectives was studied, conclusions drawn, conclusions documented, agreed on, distributed, procedures changed and practiced and battle plans modified in 35 days for an offensive 20 times larger than Hamel is… bold…
Monash is – justifiably – very well regarded in Australia with great chunks of the country named after him. Bean (Australian official historian) respected him (and why wouldn’t he? Monash did his job extremely well) and AJP Taylor described him as “the only general of creative originality produced by the First World War.” Jolly good stuff but it also needs to be remembered that Taylor was openly a socialist who spent most of the 30s arguing against British rearmament in case a strong military Britain started picking on the Soviet Union. By promoting Monash he was also by extension smearing the largely conservative British military establishment because they were not marxist enough for him. Being endorsed by Taylor for being better than all the establishment British is like having Greta endorsed by CNN for being Greener than everyone else. Yes it’s an endorsement, but yeah, we expected them to say that.
Monash was good. He wasn’t a god. To claim otherwise fails to understand the topic.
Mike….
You can thank an Australian for combined-arms tactics. John Monash. First used in any scale at the Battle of Hamel….. and when subsequently adopted by the Allies, resulting in the breaking of the German defences in August 1918.
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Battle_of_Hamel
Not that our military commanders are any better than yours, these days. They are rejecting qualifying male recruits because they donāt meet diversity targets. They spend more time in sensitivity training than on the range.
Every major war has found us under-prepared and we have suffered the consequences. I have far more sympathy for those commanders trying to deal with new modes of warfare and enemy tactics (nobody had an obvious solution to trench warfare ) than those who put their political careers before the lives of soldiers and the security of the nation they are sworn to serve.
Nuts! Totally effing nuts!
Next up will be a fully automatic unicorn fart-firing machine gun which will ‘happy’ the enemy to death. “Tag! You’re it”! What’s next, two-handed touch** warfare?
A country’s armed forces job is to break things and kill the enemy. If the best means of accomplishing that happens to be rolling up a few tankers of oil, flooding the enemy’s position and tossing a Zippo lighter, then that’s what needs to be done.
Bringing ‘green’ into the equation is just nucking futs.
** As kids, we’d play American football in the street with no tackling, so you ‘tackled’ someone by touching them with two hands below the waist and they were ‘down’ at that spot.
By all definitions we are at war. With an enemy:
-Disrespectful of human life to the point of claiming that only 1 billion should populate earth
-With deep penetration in worldwide financial / business
-Running a well organized internal relational communication system
-Able to buy government protection at the highest level
-Untouchable by what it enforces as politically incorrect criticism
-Manages / owns media, worldwide
-Has a deep penetration in scientific circles with enough relational power to control results
-Has first hand Marxism/socialism theoretical & practical knowledge up to the point of weaponizing it against prosperity
-Possesses structures able to provide underground financing/support/payola when and where needed
-That cultivates a strong sense of self-superiority
-Would benefit from the total annihilation of oil extraction and trade and the ensuing reversal of wealth flow patterns
-Has the mindset and ability to monetize generalized poverty
Inefficient armies and disarmed, weapon free masses is just par of the master plan.
It’s just that much easier to abuse someone unable to defend himself.
My post from the army rumour service :
“Looking through some of the advertised material… Electric power offers obvious benefits in military vehicle design
e.g
Max torque at zero revs
Fully independent each wheel drive allowing significant maneuverability gains
Vastly reduced noise
Potentially much lower silhouettes
Potentially better service life and availability
There are still some basic problems
The net Energy density of Batteries is about 1/20th of Gasoline/diesel
Fuel Cells are a crap idea ( Why hydrogen fuel cell cars can’t compete with electric cars )
Recharge times are currently significantly longer than refuel times.
Faster recharge creates issues with accelerated internal resistance increases and heat dissipation
These issues realistically require fundamental breakthroughs in both physical theory and engineering application to solve. At a guesstimate we are a minimum of 20 years away.. It’s simply too soon for the military to be placing any strategic focus on obtaining electric vehicles
One thing he said I found problematic….
“a move toward clean energy would be beneficial logistically ”
If he actually thinks supporting electric vehicles and providing infrastructure in the field is easier than tanking petrol and Diesel then he’s a cretin.”
I’d say imbecile – but we are talking about the same thing
Let him test-fly an electrically powered military grade aircraft equivalent to modern jets ? Report filed, clean-up done, case closed.
Rupert the Bear and friends frolicking in Nutwood??
Sign me up now!
“These issues realistically require fundamental breakthroughs in both physical theory and engineering application to solve. ”
Worse than that. If you are thinking of batteries they require changing basic natural law. There simply isn’t any element with enough valence electrons vs. weight to approach the energy density of gasoline.
OK, there may be some completely new way to store or produce electricity, but you are right, it will require some fundamental breakthrough in physics first.
Well, there used to be a lot of vehicles that were powered by “woodgas”, which was obtained from wood by heating the wood just enough to release the gas which is then funneled into the intake of an internal combustion engine.
So, I guess British General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith could rig up one of his battletanks to pull a long trailer which would be filled with wood and the woodgas generator and see how that all worked out in field exercises. One good thing about this method is you should probably have plenty of fuel available. As much as you can chop and split.
No chopping or splitting required by the British troops. Just bring wood chips or pellets from North America as they do to fire the Drax power plant.
“charging machine-gun nests in WWI” .. with bag pipers leading the way.
I love the Pipes!
Nothing but crap, more virtue signaling from someone that doesn’t’ understand what they are talking about.
The problem is many believe this wishful thinking is possible in the near future because it’s coming from people with “authority” yet those people don’t have a clue what they are talking about.
Compost is eco friendly…
Good luck recruits!
Battle strategy now will also include calculating carbon credits.
Well no… if an actual war breaks out peace time greasy poll climbers will be replaced by result deliverer’s hopefully with a tolerable casualty level in between….
Two goldfish are in a tank and one says to the other,”Do you know how to drive this thing?”
Tanks for that.
While the UK and Europe wrestle with such important issues as eco-friendly weapons of war, the US should be busy getting out of NATO so that UK/EU can defend themselves in an appropriate green manner.
Grow up… the US has been rife with military leaders pandering to virtue signalling..
https://www.nap.edu/catalog/12897/national-security-implications-of-climate-change-for-us-naval-forces
https://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/2017/october/war-plan-orange-climate-change
https://climateandsecurity.files.wordpress.com/2019/07/implications-of-climate-change-for-us-army_army-war-college_2019.pdf
http://www.airforcemag.com/Features/Pages/2019/April%202019/DOD-USAF-Bases-Most-At-Risk-From-Climate-Change-Threats.aspx
Actually, NATO is necessary to U.S. national security. We don’t want to pull out of NATO, we want to improve and streamline NATO.
The EU’s plan for a separate army is a direct threat to NATO. I think its formation is an effort by some in NATO like France and Germany, to separate themselves from the United States. Europe’s enemies, like Russia, will see this as an opening for them to weaken the NATO defenses arrayed against them.
The U.S. will survive with or without NATO. I can’t say the same thing for Europe.
“The U.S. will survive with or without NATO.”
Then it’s not necessary, is it?
NATO is about the US government taking money from poor Americans and spending it on defending Europe and Canada so Europeans and Canadians can spend less on their military and more on their welfare state.
It’s literally a transfer of wealth from American taxpayers to foreign welfare recipients. It’s harmful to Americans and to those countries which have become reliant on US money.
“I donāt think British Gen Sir Mark Carleton-Smith who gave the speech had nuclear power in mind, he wants something renewable and eco friendly.”
To be fair he probably had in mind defending his budget at the next Treasury meeting against Pol’s and civil servants who wouldn’t recognise national interest if it bit them in the ass…
This UK release is just another reason why I think that April 1st is now bobbing up regularly throughout the year these days.
Well the Canadian army is transitioning to LED lighting in armored vehicles. Maybe that would help …
To be fair, LEDs have actual advantages: (1) they are far more durable and longer-lasting than any other lighting technology, (2) draw significantly less energy, (3) are more compact, and (4) are brighter. It is a technology that makes sense because of its utility, with the added side effect of shutting up the eco-communists.
And full of mercury….
LEDs do NOT contain mercury. That is one of the big advantages over the twisty flourescents.
I Thi k “longer lasting” is the biggest advantage for the military. I always joke about the intention is to reduce the carbon footprint.
And missile guidance systems are being designed to home in on the particular wavelength of light emitted by LED’s. ??
No more than any other lighting system.
Horses!
And when they are shot by the enemy, you can eat them!
Plus, of course, we need carbon-free explosives for all those guns and shells and land mines and bombs. What else? Lead-free bullets?. Iron-free steel (get rid of emissions from all those blast furnaces)? Submarines powered by
solarwind? Sustainable (i.e. without uranium) nuclear weapons? Wind-powered fighter aircraft?Battles will be won by making the enemy troops feel such guilt and self-loathing about their carbon footprint that they will
retreatsurrendercommit mass suicide.“Lead-free bullets?”
The EU is talking about banning lead bullets. I don’t know whether that applies to the military too, but if the civilian market goes lead-free they may have trouble finding someone making enough lead bullets for the army.
Some small tactical drones are powered by batteries or fuel cells. Armored vehicles, not so much.
Yes. War needs to be sustainable. LOL. We have fallen so much since George Patton.
Obviously Gen Sir Mark Carleton-Smith has been promoted due to expertise at strategic but senseless virtue signalling.
Totally delusional. Any such practical energy solution is so far away that the current batch of eco-warriors will be far beyond recruitment age.
Any of the ecofriendly snowflakes to whom Sir Mark is referring would be totally useless in the field so his afforts are totally useless.
However, it may win him some friends at the next home county garden party where he can snog on cucumber sandwiches with the rest of the cultural elite.
I just hope that they provide enough toilet options so that he can seek relief with confidence.
I like the idea of hand cranked tanks, like the old Model T cars.
Or perhaps giant hamster wheels attached to the side of the tanks, with those “eco friendly” recruits running to make the tank go. The scareder the recruit, the faster the tank runs.
I think the Brit armed forces have entered Monty Python territory…….
Imagine the charge time on a electric tank lol The 2/3 miles per charge it would give verses the weight of the batteries and charge time is utter madness. This “carbon” is killing the planet talk has gone to far now, its scaring people and gives nothing but anxiety to those who do not know the truth (that its a scam)… Finally, I don’t think the uk can afford to convert all tanks, jeeps, planes, helicopters, cars, motor bikes, quad bikes, and other vehicles to electric power, as Afghanistan, Somali etc etc doesn’t have tesla fast chargers LOL
I look forward to the establishment of a new “Green Beret” UK army unit; 1 st ERAR (Extinction Rebellion Armoured Regiment). They will volunteer in droves, glue themselves to the tank interior, after mounting a solar panel on the turret top and filling the fuel tank with algae soup. And if any Greenpeace foot soldier objects to such trivial matters as carbon-assisted production of Chobham armour or steel tracks, they will recycled on the spot, if the crew can get the wind turbine going.
“I look forward to the establishment of a new āGreen Beretā UK army unit; 1 st ERAR (Extinction Rebellion Armoured Regiment).”
Lol ! Stop it! Stop it! “Green Beret” is a good one! š
āThat gives the British Army considerable operational benefits, such as reducing our logistical drag..’
Which is exactly what the US armed forces have been doing now for a decade: reducing logistical drag by replacing diesel generation with solar units and by installing solar power at fixed bases.
The UK armed forces are in fact following the US military here: finally an area in which the US is actually still setting the technological pace.
https://solarfeeds.com/us-marines-embracing-solar/
Couple of well placed smoke grenades and the base has no power. Brilliant.
yeah plus PV has to be out n exposed
whereas fuel bunkers can be well buried and safe, and hidden
and pv would be useless in a pommy winter with or without snow/ice as well
I note that the article you reference mentions 2 installations both in either permanent locations and expressly does not:
do any cost comparisons between the technology used and alternatives
mention capital expenditure or return on investment
quantify the installation and maintenance effort required
quantify the logistics effort required to move the FOB installation and compare that to the effort required for alternative systems
explain whether the FOB installation is inside or outside the defensible perimeter of the base or whether that perimeter needed to be expanded to accommodate it. i.e whether it increases risk and manning requirements.
whethet the FOB installation has fossil fuel back up for dark windless nights or when the enemy bombs it
Or in short fails to support in any way the things you said in your post.
“in short fails to support in any way the things you said in your post.”
In other words the archetypal Griff post.
Nuclear powered tanks! Awesome, doubly awesome!
Yes. I have often wondered why we have yet been able to scale down nuclear power to produce small sealed units suitable for transport vehicles, home energy etc.
I expect there are very many reasons, including having to get rid of the GreenBlob.
You do realize that in war, tanks get blown into itty bitty pieces ? Do really want radioactive itty bitty pieces ?
Well – you know that in a whole raft of institutes in the UK a ship may no longer be refereed to as “she” ?
Not sure what the navy’s stance on it is though
I’v got about 10 years left on this earth I recon. You are welcome to it. Every day I see so much BS. I lived in good times.
M
“Iāv got about 10 years left on this earth I recon. You are welcome to it.”
I wish I had a hundred more lifetimes … to achieve what I’d like to achieve.
For a start, I’d love to be alive in 100 years time to say “I told you so” about global warming. I’d like to see the beginning of the next ice-age … not because the cooling will be fun … but it is one of the biggest questions in climate and we still don’t know what drives the ice-age cycle. I’d like to have the time to unpack & sort out those boxes still in the loft from when we moved here several decades ago.
So, I’d be very happy if you and perhaps a 100 other people with a spare ten years could donate them to me.
I suggest they go the whole hog, with eco-friendly, non-sexist, LGBTA..Z & diveristy aware, non-coloured, visually impaired friendly weapons.
I rather suspect this is a General seeking a “Please sod off” retirement package.
Rational behaviour, and a good entry to the Ecoloon industry as a consultant.
But hugely funny.
As an illustration, an Abrams T1 carries 1850 l of fuel – 18.5 Mwh of energy. A battery of that capacity would currently weigh over 92 metric tonnes and a Tesla supercharger would take over 6 days to charge it! Doesn’t the MOD have anyone with a pocket calculator?!
If I multiply Lithium by 2, I get Carbon.
Modern tanks have 2000+ horsepower gas turbines. They need to have enough fuel to operate for a day or two in battle at full power. They can be refueled in a couple of minutes. There is no viable alternative.Why not ban munitions too………
Tim the coder is close, its got to be a joke.
No Lt. General would have got there if they thought like that.
Perhaps some Civil servant, i.e. government clerk, is pushing the idea of a
Green Army, and the General choose to highlight the logical consequences
of such nonsense.
The UK Military is way ahead of the EUI military, all the more reason
that the EU autocrats in Brussels are so determined to make them stay in
the EU.
M JE VK5ELL
Not to cast aspersions at the General but…
I think he has been in the Rear with the Gear for too long.
Suspect Major General Carleton-Smith has mad cow.
In other words they are planning for horse drawn carts with cannons.
I give you.. the Royal Corps of Virtue Signals..
The magic fuel already exists. Feed the tank crews beans and power the tanks from the flatulence.
“The humanising of war? You might as well talk about the humanizing of Hell!…… The essence of war is violence! Moderation in war is imbecility!”
Jacky Fisher, 1st Hague Peace Conference, May 1899
The essence of war is deception.
Sun Tsu
If this is the standard of thinking at the higher levels of the British Army then, to use a phrase from a much loved UK comedy series, ” we are all doomed”.
“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 …”
OMG! Who would ever think of taking a nuclear reactor into a battle?
Oh yeah … the US Navy. They’ve been doing it for over six decades now.
And as we know, stockpiles of gasoline, diesel, and kerosene (jet fuel) never burn or explode or spray burning material all over the place. /sarc
Nuclear ships and submarines are different then front line tanks, tanks are much easier to hit, imagine a reactor exploding near a town or being attacked in a base?
…Water, land, water, land, water, land, land, water, land, water, land….can you see the difference ?
The US Army tried to develop a small, simple reactor for military applications back in the 1950’s.
In the event it proved to be a bit too simple:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SL-1
‘attract ecofriendly recruits’
The existing recruits will be fine with that. The general will sacrifice the 99% to gain the 1%.
A tacit admission that the armed services in the UK can no longer rely on recruiting enough folk from the economic dead end parts of Britain, to fill what are a dwindling number of seats ?
As things stand today, war with an industrialised nation is pretty much impossible, simply because the only two likely potential adversaries have the power to initiate a chain of events that will make for a very bad day.
That only leaves the prospect of what used to be termed ‘Police Actions’ which involve operations against Rag Tag and Bobtail. Consequently the services have shrunk dramatically and no doubt seeing further shrinkage on the horizon, have made a move towards recruiting computer gamers, the gender fluid, and the environmentally aware.
No doubt the good General will be hoping for just enough hairy arsed recruitment to keep a viable potential pool for the Special Forces mob ? Given that they are all that are required these days to give a dose of the ‘Nasty Stick’, and that the aforementioned recruitment pool of the Woke is unlikely to present useful fodder for Selection. š
“As things stand today, war with an industrialised nation is pretty much impossible, simply because the only two likely potential adversaries have the power to initiate a chain of events that will make for a very bad day.”
That’s what they believed before WWI. The global economy was so intertwined that no-one could afford to go to war. And that really worked out, didn’t it?
In reality, there’s more chance of global war today than there has been at any time since WWII. Precisely because the global economy is again so intertwined that everyone is reliant on everything working perfectly.
On the plus side, no-one has a competent military any more, so it’s likely to be more Monty Python than Ypres.
U.S. military can put a hurt on you.
“U.S. military can put a hurt on you.”
If you can’t fight back. And if the stories I hear from inside the US military are anything to go by, even that won’t be true for much longer.
Can you imagine going back a few decades and telling sailors that the US Navy would be crashing into other ships because a couple of crew members had a spat and stopped talking to each other?
Bitches be crazy.
Yep, what ever happened to the scorched earth theory.
When you’ve got that shot at the 8 ball, ya gotta go all in, throw empathy to the wind.
And I would suggest the Ypres is an excellent example of what an incompetent military can accomplish….
Incompetent leaders with a competent military. An incompetent military wouldn’t even be able to manage the logistics required to get that many men into a battle.
I don’t know whether it’s true, but I’ve heard that the US military is having a hard time even getting spare parts for some of the equipment that’s worn out after decades chasing goat herders around the desert.
Would “ecofriendly” troops be willing to blow stuff up?
I doubt if having your troops glue themselves to stuff would be an effective battle strategy.
They would be shocked by what happens on exercise, let alone a battle. We cut down forests worth of saplings to rivet our trenches and roof bunkers. We dug miles of trenches and anti-tank ditches, buried tonnes of food when we were done that we couldn’t take back with us. Huge tankers refueled our trucks, not even turning the nozzle off when they went from vehicle to vehicle. We created roads just by driving hundreds of vehicles over open country. We left tons of brass tons of lead at the ranges. We blew shit up. There was smoke everywhere. The land was marked with foul ground signs from where the shitters were. This was from just one exercise in Wainwright Alberta, RV-83.
“…that next generation of recruits that increasingly make career decisions based on a prospective employerās environmental credentials.ā
In business, if you propose something expensive, you’d better have some data to back it up. You don’t just smoke some pot and make stuff up about what you think might be important to people who might join the military. I’m guessing that the millennial crowd whose primary consideration in an employer is their environmental impact is not going to be joining the army, even if the tanks run on magical unicorn sharts.
Bring back those tall, bearskin hats! Coupled with squads of pipers, the effect is to scare the carp out of the enemy. They will run away! War over, mission accomplished, and 100% eco-friendly. Plus, gives lots of jobs to pipers, an added benefit. Win-win-win!
Why can’t they just ride into battle on invisible unicorns with rainbow flames streaming from their rectums.
Or their Quidditch brooms.
The left wing does not understand why countries need armies as they have created their own imaginary worldview that is removed from facts and unbiased analysis.
This is interesting and is an example of why military is require.
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-saudi-aramco-fire/houthi-drones-hit-saudi-oil-heartland-sources-say-crude-flows-disrupted-idUSKCN1VZ01N
Houthi drones hit Saudi oil heartland, sources say crude flows disrupted
The pre-dawn drone attack on the Saudi Aramco facilities set off several fires, although the kingdom, the worldās largest oil exporter, later said these were brought under control.
Two sources close to the matter said 5 million barrels per day of crude production had been impacted ā close to half of the kingdomās output or 5% of global oil supply.
And there was this
https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-6549273/amp/British-Armys-new-recruitment-drive-targets-millennials.html
“Charge of the Light Brigade” will have a new meaning in the future; Charging the batteries of the cavalry’s solar (sunlight) panels.
“Charge up the Light Brigade”?
“Crawl of the Light Brigade”?
I considered doing a parody of that famous poem but don’t have the time.
But this part would not need any changes:
So they have nuclear powered subs and an aircraft carrier. Triple count that if you need to virtue signal.
Eloi
When your education system is flat out teaching your children to despise your nation and itās achievements, do not be surprised when they donāt consider it worth defending.
All you have left to offer is gimmicks and career opportunities.
One suspects that this Perfumed Prince – whose life will never depend on the technology and policies that he advocates – has concluded that he has reached the limits of a career based on military competence and is putting his money on political correctness.
I vote this the funniest thread EVAH on WUWT–you guys totally win the Interwebz for today!
What about carbon free gunpowder? Back to bows and arrows?
Steam Catapults.
Please… energy does not equal fossil fuels! Electricity is a perfectly good alternative, and it can be generated with near to zero carbon emissions using wind, solar and nuclear generators that already account for a sizeable proportion of the world’s energy mix and is rapidly becoming cheaper than oil, gas and coal. Even if you do not believe in 97% of scientific papers on this subject, make the switch for economic reasons alone!
That’s the most hilarious post I’ve read in years. How do you make this stuff up?
But … but … wouldn’t all those extension cords crisscrossing the battlefield pose a trip hazard for the ground troops?
PS I don’t think David Drake’s “Hammer’s Slammers” books, though good, count as “scientific papers”.
That’s Data laughing at Elementary Physics.
Electricity is a wonderful *theoretical* energy source for military and fighting vehicles… But without a breakthrough in both physical theory and engineering technology to improve it’s net energy density it will remain impractical.
Per British Army propaganda about this vehicle, which is not actually a tank but an “infantry fighting vehicle”, it is supposed to be able to deploy into a combat situation and remain effective for 48 hours “without replenishment”. Current power plant is a 550HP diesel giving a power/weight ratio of 22HP/Ton. The diesel’s output corresponds to ~450Kw. 450Kw X 48 ~ 20,000KW hours (NB with no recharge). That’s gonna be some battery and some recharger. It’s going to need its own fire extinguisher, which will probably be bigger than the vehicle, for those times when the battery just magically catches fire. Plus a generator equipped service vehicle needed for units that aren’t able to leave the field under their own power. I sense an opportunity here for Tesla to restore its finances.
After reading this, all I could think of was George Patton’s Operation Fortitude — the fake Army of cardboard and rubber set to lead the invasion of Europe.
Well if the eco friendly recruiting drive is as successful as hoped
they can hand push the tanks .
So green the other side will likely surrender their rainbow flag in support .
On the other hand just get all countries to agree future wars will be fought with bows and
arrows .
I think he took the term “Social Justice Warriors” a little too literally. Someone needs to tell him that they’re not actual soldiers…