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.
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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.
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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.
Next you know, they’ll be asking for “carbon-free non-polluting” explosives.
It would not surprise me.
sodium azide?
NaN3: highly toxic!
Are tanks really any use given modern anti tank weapons? These now have an 8km range, warheads which defeat reactive armour… some are ‘fire and forget’
Anyone seen the footage of tanks being destroyed in the recent Azerbijan flare up?
Those are Russian tanks, with ammo in an autoloading carousel under the turret. leading to the classic “lollypop” effect, with turret embedded in the ground by the cannon barrel.
Your knowledge of military affairs is on a par with climatology.
Modern weaponry is even more effective against light armored and thin skinned vehicles. So should we give up on vehicles altogether and go back to marching, horses and oxen?
The tanks in Azerbijan may be, but then we also have the Israeli experience in Lebanon – and nobody has tested NATO vehicles against the latest Russian and Chinese designs.
Wrong again!
Merkavas in Lebanon were MkIII and earlier versions. Twenty were kocked, but only 15 crew were killed.
Some Turkish German Leopards were destroyed in Syria, but had been used improperly. One US Abrams was knocked out by a Russian ATGM in Iraq, but the crew survived.
Tanks have always been vulnerable to one weapon or another.
Now come along all you sceptics. I am surprised they only suggested battery powered tanks. What about wind powered battleships. As I recall that Nelson chap seems to do OK with just wind power in the sails.
Then again the Greens could have gone all out, and suggested a wind turbine on each tank! That way, the chance of recharging the battery could be done at night, as well as via the solar panels on its outer skin during the day. Well providing the wind decided to blow of course.
Oh the mind boggles at the opportunity for Green warfare.
I have always thought how much better I would feel, if the incoming shell about to terminate me, was fired from a eco friendly tank…..
It’s OK to have Wind Powered Battleships so long as your enemies are limited to the same technology. Tanks with a 50 mile range and a 22 hour recharging cycle are also OK as long as your enemy is limited to the same tech. Fight wars for 2 hours per day and R&R for 22 hours a day.
Just have to invent that ‘Lectrick rocket engine for the Nukes
The UK, luckily, still has a wind powered battleship berthed at Portsmouth…
Lets get Serious…
These are the equipment scales for a US Army Armoured Brigade Combat Team effectively a WW2 Panzer Division…
Once it starts kicking Asses and taking names it requires daily thousands of tons of Ammunition, Food,Water,Spares and whatever provides it’s Motive power. Reinforcements need to go up, bodies, wounded and prisoners need to come down. Broken Vehicles and equipment need to be recovered, Repaired/Replacement need to move up…
An Abrams Tank weighs about 70 tons And has an energy supply of 64,000 Mega Joules as about 2000 litres of Turbine fuel which will take it about 275 miles at economy cruise.
Specific energy of Lithium Ion Batteries is best case 0.8 MJ/KG so same energy would require 80,000 Kg of batteries… Lets be super kind and assume the electrical drive train is 5 times more efficient that’s still 16 tons of battery per tank as opposed to between 2-3 tons of fuel and fueltank…
Repeat the same calc for all the other driven vehicles….
It’s a bollocks idea…..
That’s before we get into the difference in time between pumping turbine fuel from a bowser and recharging a 16 ton battery. Or the fact that standard infra-structure will be damaged in battle or deliberately destroyed by the enemy… Now the Army has to plan generating capacity and power transmission to replace it’s liquid fuel…
The stupid really does burn…..
There is no real evidence that CO2 has any effect on climate and there is plenty of scientific rationale to support the conclusion that the climate sensitivity of CO2 is zero. So even if all the countries in the world zeroed out their military CO2 emissions, the effort would have no effect on climate. The military needs to have an all weather capability so even if all their vehicles were battery powered they would still need portable changing stations that would run on fossil fuel. The real fossil fuel guzzlers are aircraft and I doubt that battery powered military aircraft will become available any time soon.
My freshman assignment as an infantry officer was as the XO of a Mechanized Infantry Company; we had maybe 18 M 113A1s; the full battalion must have had about 60-70 tracked vehicles (this is from memory from 1967). The full brigade must would have had three infantry battalions; three brigades made up the infantry portion of the division. I forget what the tank and cavalry complement of vehicles was (maybe 2 tank battalions and 1 cav squadron plus an aviation battalion); add in the division artillery (at least three artillery battalions and maybe a battalion or two of really big artillery guns) and then all the logistics vehicles. One would need a lot of Megawatts to keep all those vehicles charged and running.
I know that we had an SOP for a daily top-off while in the field. Don’t know how you do that if you need a lengthy charging time. A field power station; one per battalion?
Maybe every division could have its own solar and mobile wind factory brigade or two. That’s it. And some hand cranked generators for back up.
Where does on get the idea to not give the military, military grade equipment?
I think horses and mules would be a greener and wiser choice. Oh, and the Navy can go back to sailing ships. Maybe sailing submarines. And the Air Force? If they need fossil fuels just do without air superiority or long range bombing.
Where do we find these people. No one should have a job at the Pentagon (especially civilians) who have not done 4 years on deck or in the mud
I agree. But even some officers with field experience buy into biodiesel.
ToE of the Americal Division, 1967:
No organic tank battalion, but had armor in its brigade cavalry troops: 9 M48A3 tanks, 16 execrable M114 scout vehicles, six M113 APCs and three M106 mortar carriers. The little M114s were soon replaced with M113s.
Three infantry brigades meant a divisional organic total of 27 M48A3s Pattons, which maintained the original 90mm main armament, upgraded to 105mm in M48A5 and M60. Of course, a tank battalion could be attached for offensive ops.
In the ’50s, tank battalions in infantry divisions still had 70 tanks, as in WWII, while those in armored divisions had 53, in three companies rather than four. Dunno about 1967. In WWII, medium tank battalions had a light tank company, but I think new M41 Walker Bulldog light tanks (replacing M24 Chaffees) were restricted to cavalry units in the ’50s and ’60s.
By the 1970s, US tank battalions had 54 tanks in four companies, each with 14 instead of 17, ie platoons of four rather than five. This organization allowed easy cross-attachment of tank companies to four-company mechanized infantry battalions, which would lend the tank battalion a mech company in return, forming brigades of two tank and one mech battalion or one tank and two mech.
Now we field combined arms battalions in Armored Brigade Combat Teams, with one or two (Abrams) tank companies and one or two mechanized (Bradley IFV) companies.
They should power it with a portable windmill powered by climate alarmists blow hot air.
(Like the Al Gore – Arnold Terminator cartoon where the Terminator is powered by a windmill with Al Gore blowing hot air.)
That’ll work, you betcha! Come the day when there is a battery that can support 4 or 5 days worth of use. And tanks or Semis?
The Mother Earth News offers plans for a hybrid vehicle,using technology available when the first electric vehicle was built and sold. It works, I’ve seen two little pickup trucks whose owners had modified their PUs using the MEN plans. One of them was using a three phase motor for motive power and a small diesel generator to power the system.
Neither owner was happy about how many batteries it took to power their motors, and the guy with diesel replaced and added to his batteries in ’91. He had driven from Sacramento to Eureka in ’92, and had modified his Toyota 4wd in ’88.
Just about the only way an affordable electric vehicle can be had, and will stay that way UNTIL battery technology is improved and made affordable.
I haven’t read this whole thread so someone may have said this. Way back in my misspent youth I worked for a major defense contractor who made military vehicles. I was at an AUSA (Association of the US Army) convention/show and we had a prototype of a diesel/electric light armored vehicle. The drive train was essentially copied from a standard diesel electric locomotive. It had a diesel generator that powered traction motors at each wheel. It was lighter, less complex, and more maneuverable than the same vehicle with a conventional drive train. And it had more range. As I recall the traction motors were OTS motors used in electric buses in Switzerland. So, in some applications a “hybrid” could work.
A Belgian APC used electric transmission. Not a terrible design.
But not really an EV.
I searched the comments for “Toobin” and was disappointed 🙂
– CNN seem to be obsessively pleasuring themselves – a la Guardian / Bloomberg
I think many people on different teams are pleasuring themselves instead of searching for the truth, which exposes oneself to many contradicting arguments, studies, pieces of data, models, simulations… which can be exhausting. Many people only look for confirmation and accept obvious untruths and that’s the case in the “climate skeptic” groups which tend to reject any argument about the abject risks and unproven benefits of many vaccines. On the (so called, fake) “conservative” side, the benefits of vaccines is axiomatic, even on TheDC, even when Tucker Carson is the one and only host in all mainstream media that suggests that “provax” is religious not scientific!!!!
The efficacy of vaccines is a scientific fact, ie an observation of nature.
“Author’s impression of the Battlefield of the Future”
The photoshop not nearly as ugly and pathetic as the one of the Russian BUK missile in Ukraine that is “proof” that Russia is the responsible for the downing of the MH17 (which is probably the case).
An abjectly bad BUK launcher photoshop that managed to convince the French most known and respectable “peoples” news magazine: “Paris Match” (usually called just “Match”).
https://www.parismatch.com/Actu/International/EXCLU-MATCH-Un-camion-vole-pour-transporter-le-systeme-lance-missiles-577289
Well, they say their own reporters “photopgraphie” it. They meant photographié ou photoshopé?
https://www.government.nl/ministries/ministry-of-foreign-affairs/news/2020/07/10/the-netherlands-brings-mh17-case-against-russia-before-european-court-of-human-rights
Hold the rush to batteries!
https://www.msn.com/en-au/news/world/new-coral-species-discovered-on-seabed-prized-for-mining-potential/ar-BB1auubY
Watermelons strike unpleasant tradeoffs with diminishing returns as demand is ramped up. When did Big Battery know is the burning question? We need Moore Mike onto this.
I thought this thread was about electric tanks…. but whatever…
Has anyone heard of the EMP generated by battlefield nuclear weapons? All the electrics in each army will disintegrate. So Green bonus.
Not really. Tactical nukes don’t do much in the way of EMP.
Greens will have to earn their civilization destruction the hard way.