Guest essay by Eric Worrall
According to CNN, the Pentagon is in a position to kickstart the USA’s green transport revolution through its enormous procurement needs.
Key player in war on climate change? The Pentagon
Opinion by Michèle A. Flournoy
Updated 1818 GMT (0218 HKT) October 26, 2020
Michèle A. Flournoy is managing partner of WestExec Advisors, a strategic advisory firm, and former Undersecretary of Defense in the Obama administration. The opinions expressed in this commentary are those of the author. View more opinion on CNN.…
The Department of Defense has a critical role to play in this effort. It also has a strong interest in doing so.
…
Gradually replacing older vehicles with new hybrid or electric vehicles would not only be more fuel efficient, it would also grow the market for a nascent US industry. Similarly, retrofitting military facilities with green materials and technologies would make buildings more energy efficient, while also growing high-paying manufacturing and construction jobs.
Scaling investments in alternative energy like solar would lessen demand on local energy grids and help drive down the cost of renewable energy nationwide. By leveraging its procurement power to create large-scale demand, the DoD can accelerate market growth, helping green technologies become more viable and affordable for widespread use while enhancing American competitiveness.
…
Obviously if the US army is going to start running around remote battlefields in tanks which only have a few miles range, someone is going to have to install a lot of EV stations in some pretty inhospitable locations. It might also impact battlefield readiness if US tanks have half the range of opponents, take at least half an hour to recharge, and have to sacrifice armour to be lightweight and energy efficient.
I guess US soldiers could ask enemy combatants to refrain from attacking for half an hour per day, while the tanks are on fast charge, and for the sake of the planet to please refrain from firing RPGs at the fragile base solar panel array and wind turbine systems.
damn fools
Part of the next four years can be devoted to draining the Pentagon swamp.
W O W…
Electric Tanks…
20 minutes later the war is over, lost, TIMEOUT-we need to recharge overnight
Electric Tanks?
No Tanks
It’s not my impression that anyone is suggesting electric tanks or other frontline vehicles. At least from what is quoted here.
I would imagine that the Pentagon probably has a fleet of about a million vehicles for administrative staff which never leave US soil and are not involved in combat.
The best thing to do would be to clad the visible upper layers of the Pentagon bldg with styrofoam. This would protect them from attack by magical Pakistani acrobatic pilots at the same time as saving the planet.
“I would imagine that the Pentagon probably has a fleet of about a million vehicles for administrative staff which never leave US soil and are not involved in combat. ”
But during a major war- those cars and trucks might need to drive long distances in a hurry.
By definition, when you need your military or emergency services to function, lives are on the line. Peolke die if you operate at less than maximum efficiency. That includes logistics, not just combat, and having multiple fuel requirements and vehicles with reduced duty cycles are two really obvious ways to create inefficiency.
That is before we even start on the idea of inefficient purchasing of more expensive, less effective, less fit-for-purpose equipment from limited budgets. Contrary to myth and legend, the military is not over-funded and if any organisation needs the best available bang for their buck, it is one in which people die if they don’t get it right.
Really long extension cords.
Or solar panels? Its why they were invented, because the extension cords to the satellites would kill birds.
A hit in the right place would incinerate the tank, using only the battery. A cheap fix for the enemy.
The Germans quickly found the weak point of the Sherman during WW2 and called them Tommy Cookers and the British troops called them Ronsons after the ad for the lighters which was “Lights First Time Every Time”.
James Bull
That was until the British 75lb gun was fitted (Far too late of course).
That’ll be the 17lb 75mm .
We referred to tanks in military jargon:
“Coffin, metal, green with yellow markings”
When Brits got Grants and then Shermans in Africa, it was gamechanger for them. Sherman was best medium tank by far whole ww2. Survivability of Sherman crews was best in medium tank class.
Logistic and strategic/tactical mobility of family of Sherman vehicles was far superior to any other tank in ww2.
http://www.missing-lynx.com/articles/russia/rpt34/rpt34.htm
Read ‘Death Traps’, by Belton Cooper before you declare that the Sherman was the best medium tank. It was not.
One person’s opinion Lee.
lee: belton would have even worse opinion of any other medium tank. T-34 especially, for tendecy blow up and killing escaping crew.
He shouldn’t expect heavy tank protection in medium tank.
sherman was reliable, easy to maintain, mobile, with good features and good ergonomic.
pz 3 and 4 were worse, t-34 was worse.
only panther was better on paper, but was unreliable and too heavy. its should be in heavy tank class.
Oh course what people usually don’t mention about the Germans relative to the Sherman is that in 42 when they first encountered them in North Africa they were screaming about this massive new powerful American built tank they were suddenly expected to fight against.
The problem with discussing the any tank in WW2 is that you really need to place it in context of its service dates. The Germans for example encountered British Matilda ‘heavy’ tanks during the Battle for France and were very cautious about it for the next year and a half because nothing the German Army (note careful choice of words there) had as direct fire weapons could destroy it.
Does that make the Matilda the ‘Best Tank of the War’?
Well by late 41 it was slow, no longer immune to Panzer weaponry and undergunned. So by those judgements, NOPE, not a good tank. Early 40 – easily one of the most powerful tanks in the world.
Tank development in WW2 was rapid (as was nearly everything else) so context is everything when judging equipment.
Personally I feel the Sherman was a good tank that didn’t age well. The British recognised it was lacking firepower and went to great effect to develop the Sherman VC variant (V is the model of Sherman because the vehicle was made by so many different factories there were significant variations, and C defined that it had a different gun. The Sherman V was the M4A4 from memory under US naming convention).
The US developed the 76mm upgunned version and COULD have invaded France with them. Instead US command said it was too close to the invasion date to train troops on a brand new gun and delayed bringing them into service. This, in my opinion, was a mistake.
We digress.
T-34? Horrible tank. Build quality is rubbish. C&C is rubbish. Vision is rubbish. Not a fan. Yes the Russians built them in GREAT numbers but take the production number and compare it to the total amount of tanks the Soviets still had operation by VE Day. Thousands were built. Thousand were destroyed in combat. Again, not a fan.
(KV-1 on the other hand? Those things are huge. Remember seeing one in the flesh for the first time and being gobsmacked at how impressive they are. Not saying they are a wonderful tank, but grud they are impressive to look at!)
But – we digress – the important thing here is none of the tanks mentioned ran on sodding batteries!!! 😀
Chit Not News
Simple solution. Draft Michèle A. Flournoy as a tank driver for a combat battalion.
She is former Undersecretary of Defense in the Obama administration. Her Bachelor of Arts degree makes her an authority in all things technical and military.
She learned while serving under BOb that electric vehicles run on Unicorn farts rather than coal fired power plants and as Unicorns are so plentiful, we may never run out of power to fight a ground war.
I don’t think CNN understands how the Army works.
I don’t think CNN understands (fill in the blank).
FIFY.
Having equipment that is robust and tough is much to masculine for her. The military has to tone down their inherent toughness to suit her pantywaist needs.
Toxic masculinity is a bad thing in the military.
The Clown News Network living up to its name.
Their liberals, they don’t want the army to work.
Inner city elitists, who have no idea about how reality works, will probably think that this is a great idea.
I swear, nobody should ever be allowed to graduate with a science degree unless they do at least one year of engineering.
And no-one should hold any government office associated with technical matters without a science or engineering degree.
Oh no, we couldn’t do that. They would have to learn Mathamatics. And Matamatics is a tool of white supremacy don’t you know? (that was saracasm for those SJW’s who can’t recognize saracasm)
That’s right. Numbers are the first thing the cultural marxists go after (political polls, covid deaths, global temps, etc, etc), which is why don’t want education in math. Don’t believe ANY number(s) they put out there — it will be a lie.
The two years of Aero Engineering I did were very useful in my Science career. That is observational evidence to support your assertion. Geoff S
No need for a degree.
The child soldier or farmer soldier without any formal schooling will be able to work out how to defeat theses battery tanks.
All those tanks would have to tow around trailers with diesel generators constantly running in order to power the tanks that have to tow trailers with diesel generators and the fuel need to run them constantly… Makes more sense to have the diesel engine and fuel protected inside the tank in the first place.
“DonK31 October 27, 2020 at 6:26 pm”
While tanks didn’t have to tow their own fuel about with them, fuel supply chains were an easy targets which crippled tanks. No fuel = no go = no war.
Patrick.
All forms of supply have vulnerabilities…. but it’s easier to protect a tanker in one place than a power line stretching 1000 miles. It’s easier to hide that tanker than major electrical infrastructure. ….. and that’s before we start considering the inherent vulnerabilities of electric vehicles, the design compromises that have to be made and the potential inefficiencies of having vehicles requiring different energy supply requirements.
There are good reasons why the military likes to standardise where it can.
If your tank is 1000 miles away, and out of fuel, what do you do? Duck?
Patrick… Don’t be silly.
To reiterate. All power sources are vulnerable. Electrical power sources are more vulnerable than most. Electricity does not solve that problem. It makes it bigger.
@ur momisugly Patrick MJD
You fly in a spare battery using a battery powered drone, of course.
(Some people just got no imagination. :))
If your tank is 1000 miles away from the nearest fuel source, then your supply officers need to be court martialed.
You don’t really get how this supply thingy works, do you.
If my tank was 1000 miles away and out of fuel, I am likely grateful that I am 1000 miles away. (although it could be that my tank is still at the base and I am the one in the middle of nowhere … in either case, I see no benefit to ducking).
What if your electric tank was 1000 miles away from the nearest power plug?
Solar panels on each tank for running in day time.
I could actually see a diesel hybrid, like a train locomotive, for heavy vehicles. With the constant speed diesel generator, you would get very good mileage. I just don’t know how feasible it would be, or how practical.
I thought about that, but more things to go wrong. My guess is there might be room for electric assist in some cases, say to give a very brief burst of extra speed, but the assist device better be something a soldier in the field can remove with a hammer.
Keep thinking, young Eric, military hybrids are real and have been for years.
Submarines. Or at least conventional submarines. Or Diesel-Electric submarines. Diesel on the surface. Electric underwater. Why? electric don’t make nasty fuels and is quiet. Why the diesel? Batteries run flat.
Hybrid drives in tanks. Real engine makes electricity. Electric motors drive the tracks. Advantage is you no longer need a gearbox. Disadvantage is the massive amounts of copper needed and the fact they tended to burn out because tanks are heavy buggers that need lots of power to move. The Old Gang (yes, it is what they called themselves) in the UK tried to put this drive in the TOG tank (a massive experimental vehicle that was… well… largely pointless) during WW2 and Mr Porsche over in Germany kept trying to put it in his designs (which is why the Tiger tanks ended up being built to someone else’s design).
Current military hybrids – as far as I am aware – are centred around the stealth aspect. Lower noise. Lower thermal while the engine is not running. There seems to be significant interest in developing recon vehicles using this tech.
‘Green’ only enters into the discussion because tanks are sometimes painted that colour. Making latte drinkers content does not.
(Australian tanks are not green. They are Tan, Olive and Black. Not green.)
Fair point 🙂
Desiel electric subs are the most stealthy subs out there when they are on battery. Not so very when charging.
Modern submersibles use air independent systems some of which are not D/E
https://nationalinterest.org/blog/buzz/5-most-deadly-stealthy-aip-submarines-planet-earth-35767
Still a type of desiel electric. I didn’t realize how hard to find subs were until I got involved in finding them when I was in the Navy. Once I did I was glad that our battle groups were always shadowed by 1-2 of our subs to watch out for the ‘unfriendly’ subs. Once one of our ‘friendly’ subs popped a periscope up between the carrier I was on and a destroyer a mile behind us. No one noticed it except for the weather observer-go figure. In my opinion subs are the scariest Naval vessel there is.
As far as I remember, the newest German subs use fuel cells to generate electricity. No batteries to talk of, can swim under water for a very long time and extremely low noise.
You can put your ear to the main electric engine and still not hear it is running.
Diesel anything would be out of the question without Fossil Fuel exploration, drilling, extraction and refining though. Without OIL, hybrids are just Low Range EVs
Some heavy equipment is electrically powered. My favorite is the dragline.
They dwarf tanks by around two orders of magnitude.
When was the last time your life depended on the ability of your dragline to manoeuvre at speed across rough terrain?
Weight is not just an academic issue for military vehicle operators. Some of the comparisons here are downright thoughtless.
Where are the batteries for the dragline excavator? /sarc
Diesel-electric has advantages for large equipment. That said, it looks like the idea has never made it past the prototype stage for military vehicles, tanks included. link I’d love to know why.
As I said above, the lives of most heavy equipment operators do not depend on their ability to operate at speed across rough and highly variable terrain. Military vehicles are always a compromise between speed, weight and carrying capacity. It is pointless having a tank so heavy that it cannot use standard bridges, bogs every time it leaves a hard road and is so slow that it cannot deal with an agile enemy.
Make your armoured fighting vehicle (AFV) too large and you pay the penalty of requiring more HEAVY armour to keep it relatively safe in a hostile combat environment.
The common factors in AFV power-plants are compactness, a high power-weight ratio, a common and easily available fuel and rapid refuelling. It’s one reason why turbines are so popular in modern Main Battle Tanks.
Past the prototype?
Well ignoring recent developments/proposals, hybrid electric drive tanks have been developed over the years and sorta technically went into production.
Back in the earlier days the Germans put word out to their major tank manufacturers and basically said “What we need is a Tiger Tank. Go and design one for us”.
So Porsche and Henschel went off and designed their own versions of the hull while the turret was always intended to be a common design from Krupp no matter who won. The hull that did end up winning was Henschel, but Porsche was so confident his design was awesome he went and started manufacturing at risk.
Now in context of what we are discussing these hulls used twin air cooled V-10 petrol engines each linked to an electric generator which in turn drove an electric motor on the final drive sprocket of each track. A hybrid so to speak. No batteries in the modern sense of hybrids with brake energy recovery (or whatever they call it) but lots of copper and an unproven design.
So the Germans said ‘look, there is a war on, we need the copper for the U-boats and we don’t want our new big scary tank breaking down all the time, so… NO.’
However Porsche had built about 100 of these hulls so eventually so they were not a complete waste they were converted into the Ferdinand heavy assault gun by changing the engines (still with electric drive), adding more armour to the front, a big armoured box on the back and an even bigger gun than the Tiger.
It was an… okay vehicle. Not 100% successful. Big, nasty, broke down and was hard to recover.
So technically it was an electric drive tank that made it into production, but only because Porsche decided to start building them at risk. Technically they were never ORDERED into production.
I think the heavy tanks are all turbine. The tanks are so heavy and they can move over 50 miles a hour so it takes more power than a reasonable sized diesel can provide. If done correctly, the turbines are not as picky about fuel so if it burns, they can probably use it. I know somebody who flew on B47s and while they normally used jet fuel, occasionally they would hit a tanker full of gasoline because that was when the air force was transitioning from propeller to jet. The engines ran a bit hotter and it clean the carbon buildup out of the engine.
The other advantage of turbines is the cooling system. All the heat goes out the exhaust so no radiator to be puncture. Some of the WWII tanks were air cooled and that worked reasonably well however they didn’t put out nearly the horse power todays tanks require.
Electric tanks would probably be a sitting duck and one shell fragment in the battery compartment would really ruin your day.
The big advantage of turbines is that they really don’t care what they burn, as long as the temps coming out of the combustor is in the right range. The problem with turbines is that they need a lot of airflow, so filtering can be an issue, and they’re thirsty. From all I’ve seen, the next-gen designs are all diesel-based, as they’re more fuel-efficient, especially at low power settings.
I believe that when we were looking to replace the Leopards a study was commissions to compare fuel consumption between turbines and diesels.
As I had it very briefly explained to me was in real terms it evened out. Turbines idled badly, but delivered power well, while diesels sort of just ate fuel at the same rate regardless. Either was you were going to need a LOT of fuel to operate modern armour so just accept it.
So then the US gave us a better deal with training (we could break their M1’s instead of ours) and now we use own and operate GD’s finest. Pity, cause I like Challenger but there you go.
Only Abrams is turbine. Modern German, British and Russian main battle tanks all use diesel engines.
Russian T-80 is turbine powered too.
True, but it flopped disastrously in Chechnya, and has never been used in combat again. By Soviet/Russian standards, fewer than 6000 T-80s produced is a negligible numbers. Replaced by diesel T-90.
The Germans in WW2 tried D/E tanks, they didn’t work. Probably would these days with small, high powered electric motors, but for land based vehicles, why bother? Try driving a 70+ tonne armoured vehicle around on battery power alone see how far you get.
Or how large would the tank have to be in order to be a hybrid? The main motors are usually just enough power to operate, not to go 70 on a motorway. And no matter what any electricity generated would have to be fossil fuel generated. Is there an electric motor that can move 84 tons at a speed of 45 mph?
Is reminded me of the joke about Napoleon’s plan to invade England on the weekend because there would be no defence
Thought I had read the dumbest things ever.
But no
Beware.. there is MUCH DUMBER, still to come. !
Who knows what DEPTH OF DUMB these people are capable of !!!
A battle tank full of lithium cells. ???
What could possibly go wrong ! 😉
Ha, ha, ha. When did CNN go into competition with The Onion and Babylon Bee?
I think the Onion and Bee were created to compete with CNN
Calls for “implied face palm”
Where is Dave?
Dave’s not here.
No, man – I’m Dave!
HAL has locked Dave out.
Haven’t heard of anybody talking seriously about this stuff at work, though hybrid designs do potentially have tactical advantages – running on batteries for short distances would be much quieter than running a diesel all the time, allowing you to sneak up on the bad guys, but once the shooting starts the diesel would fire up and provide the main power. Future Combat System (FCS) was supposed to be diesel-electric drive system, and there have been some experiments with fuel cell vehicles, but as far as I know nobody is seriously considering a battery-powered combat vehicle. We already have enough issues keeping batteries charged for any robotic assets being used in the field.
M1A1 and M1A2 Abrams main battle tanks do not run diesels. They run gas turbines. You should delete your post, not even close….
Challenger 2 uses multifuel diesel.
Most tanks use any “fuel” they can get.
JP-8
Thanks again Eric for posting a chuckle-fest article.
Even in peacetime exercises, deployed frontline mobile weapons platforms have to scrounge fuel sources to reup at every opportunity.
Imagine a lineup of tanks, apcs etc etc waiting in a 6-hour queue to recharge their conveyances.
May as well regress to horse-drawn canons.
Where do the numpties that propose battery-powered military platforms come from?
(Don’t tell me – universities)
Interesting that none of the reasons stated for using electric weapons systems have anything to do with the purpose of those same weapons.
Nor do any of those proposing such changes, expect their lives to rely on the capabilities of those vehicles. Academics and journalists with No. Skin. In. The. Game.
FCS was going to have a diesel-electric drive, but it never made it out of the early prototype stage before the Obama administration killed it.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Future_Combat_Systems_Manned_Ground_Vehicles
Where to start with how daft and vapid this article is. Send all your money to the UN now so they can save us from any sanity we have left!!
Green technology of the Obama administration continues. Undersecretary of Defense. Give her some slingshots. Just as effective as a dead tank. Super Genius. Where is Wild E Coyote when you need him?
I can see the USAF using electric vehicles on the flight line and saving fuel for troops in the field. But really, ridiculous.
What I always find entertaining it listening to senior military personal speak and comparing the words selected and the sentence structure with say political types, media and managers.
Recently had the opportunity to hear the now retired former head of the RAN talk. The topic was future shipbuilding here in Oz and he summed up the three most important thing for a naval platform.
– Lethal
– Available
– Sustainable
(in that order)
He went on to explain the points. A warship needed to be lethal so it can destroy our enemies. That was it. Clear and to the point. No woke waffle about conducting the nation’s interests in parallel with our values and traditions in an inclusive manner. It’s a warship. We use it to either threaten to kill our enemies, or to actually kill our enemies. If it can’t kill our enemies it should be replaced with a platform that can.
Lethal = a core design requirement.
He further expanded that Availability was vital because (my words) you can’t wait for the wind to blow the right direction and Sustainability, in context, was making sure it worked over the entire life of the platform.
That is what Sustainability means in the real world. I want to be able to keep it operational today, tomorrow, next week, next month, next year up until I take it out of service and replace it.
Woke has nothing to do with it.
…”tanks which only have a few miles range…”
Eric You are too kind. Model S Tesla has a 1200lb battery pack. Motor plus battery is ~30% of the total vehicle weight. A 65t military tank would comparatively need a ~ 20t unit – probably much heavier for very rough off road use. The explosive to destroy the tank would be the battery itself. High voltage weapons might do the job.
Best post ever! Our enemies would love to build the charging stations for us! With very little monitoring effort they would have pinpointed targets
Great idea! Electric tanks firing electric rail guns. What could go wrong? (Besides an EMP attack.)
The Peoples Liberation Army must be very enthusiastic
about the battery powered combat vehicles for the US.
Everyone will love the electric armored vehicle’s performance in extreme weather too.
Those batteries work so well in ice cold conditions
and temperatures above 100 degrees F
Don’t worry….
The brilliant military experts and environmental/PC engineers at CNN have thought of everything.
When our tanks run out of battery power, a separate backup battery kicks in, raises a big white flag that waves like crazy, and speakers pop out of the gun turret playing Sister Sledge’s “We Are Family” to boost troop morale..
Change the title to, “Friendly Military Vehicles”. Instant world peace.
Each passing day bring some new insanity from the morons that manages to top all that has proceeded from the mouths of these Idiots.
Eric
You have got the electric battle tank concept all wrong! They will pull a diesel generator behind so that they will always have ready access to re-charging. Indeed, the batteries could be kept up to full charge all the time by running the diesel generator continuously. Oh, I forgot, hitched to the generator trailer, will be a supply tank of diesel fuel to run the generator. Of course, it may require some change of battle tactics. I don’t think that any foot soldiers would want to be anywhere near the caravan of targets.
You forgot the solar panel covered version that recharges during the day.