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.
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. 🙂
“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 employer’s environmental credentials.”
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 world’s 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 — close to half of the kingdom’s 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 it’s achievements, do not be surprised when they don’t 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.