US Military Orders Less Dependence On Fossil Fuel 317
Hugh Pickens writes "The NY Times reports that it can cost hundreds of dollars to get each gallon of traditional fuel to forward base camps in Afghanistan, so with enemy fighters increasingly attacking American fuel supply convoys crossing the Khyber Pass from Pakistan, the military is pushing aggressively to develop, test and deploy renewable energy to decrease its need to transport fossil fuels. 'Fossil fuel is the No. 1 thing we import to Afghanistan,' says Ray Mabus, the Navy secretary, 'and guarding that fuel is keeping the troops from doing what they were sent there to do, to fight or engage local people.' The 150 Marines of Company I, Third Battalion, Fifth Marines, will be the first to take renewable technology into a battle zone, bringing portable solar panels that fold up into boxes; energy-conserving lights; solar tent shields that provide shade and electricity; solar chargers for computers and communications equipment replacing diesel and kerosene-based fuels that would ordinarily generate power to run their encampment."
As usual (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing spurs innovation like trying to kill the other guy.
This has to happen. (Score:2, Insightful)
Look at the loss rate on getting fossil fuels where they are needed. I want 5K gal of diesel at a far-FOB in the Afghan mountains. How many K gal am I going to burn just to get it there? It's awful. How about some compact nuke power cells a la submarines. Safe? No. Effective? Very. Generally speaking, war isn't very safe either.
Something Spurs Innovation Further (Score:5, Insightful)
Nothing spurs innovation like trying to kill the other guy.
What about trying to stop the other guy from killing you? I think the US military has the luxury of being the hunters that occasionally succumb to attrition. You can still lose that way (Vietnam) but we're not afraid of every single person in America being killed or captured. I'd argue you saw more innovation come out of World War II when we actually faced a threat of every person coming under the rule of a handful of tyrants (and really one very bad tyrant). Sure, Hitler's V1 and V2 Schneider Programs were innovative but look at what the work of the Polish and, later, British at Bletchley Park did to start us into the computer age. When you're striving to solve a problem and the fate of your entire country rests on it ... I think you forgo sleeping, eating, playing video games, etc. The guys 'innovating' in Afghanistan still go to sleep at night. The guys calling the shots probably don't live any differently than you or I and that is quite comfortably.
Seems like a good idea (Score:2, Insightful)
On the other hand, totally self-reliant (though not "renewable" by any stretch of the imagination) armies without supply lines have been done to death.
Female horses : transport, self-replicating, meat, milk and cheese. And a lot of fun at parties too*. [wikipedia.org]
Incidentally, the Afghans will probably find all about them in their history books. Well, the history books that haven't been burned (yet) by those muslims, taliban and otherwise.
* I mean mongol horse contests, not ... euhm ... muslim late-night activities.
Re:Nuclear Power! (Score:1, Insightful)
Yes. Because putting portable nukes on convoys being attacked all the time is really, really... safe.
Ya well don't knock it (Score:4, Insightful)
The US military is responsible for all sorts of amazing technology that makes like better. GPS would be a good recent example. Any civilian company would have said you were nuts to try and build a GNSS. WAY too expensive and really, how useful would it be? Not enough to justify the funds for sure. The military said "Wait we could locate every craft, every vehicle, maybe even every soldier, every bomb? Yes please." The result? The most amazing advance in navigation and location since, well, the theodolite probably. Everything is now GPS for primary navigation (and sometimes only these days). The world now navigates by GPS and is safer and more efficient for it. In fact hte EU recognized the problem in relying on a system owned by the US military and has talked about their own, but despite having already seen the need and the system working, they've yet to launch a single satellite (it was supposed to be up and running by now). For the moment, a military built system is the only option (the Russians also have a military GNSS).
In some cases, the military really gets shit done. This is in part because they have such a large budget, and are used to expensive, long term projects. They are ok with an outlay of large amounts of money for something that will take a long time to develop and deliver. That is something hard to find in the corporate world. Another useful thing is they are public, they are owned by the government. Means anything they do can be made available to everyone. Of course not everything will be, things that are national security related won't (like the weapons themselves) but something like better solar technology? Sure.
So maybe they will lead the way to better renewable power.
Re:Nuclear Power! (Score:3, Insightful)
The problem today is that the wars we're going to fight are in places that we would like to be our friend when the war is over. We're not fighting wars against entire populations, but smaller factions within that population.
You don't make friends by leaving a lot of nuclear material lying around old battlefields. If military hardware is going to contain nuclear fuel, there is going to be nuclear fuel left on the battlefield.
But for every vehicle on the battlefield, the military has many away from the battlefield. Those should be hybrid or electric, maybe powered by small reactors on military bases.
Re:Nuclear Power! (Score:3, Insightful)
True for a traditional nuclear reactor. But when one is simply wanting to supply a base with power one doesn't need a power source large enough to supply a city. Enough to supply a single family home would be acceptable. As I noted in a response to another poster, there are TWRs currently in development that are the size of a small car. While still heavy, they could be transported to an FOB if needed, and then buried in the ground and protected from capture by a ring of claymores or other HE method.
TWRs use depleted uranium as a fuel source, the same stuff used in armor piercing rounds by the military. It is minimally radioactive, just above background levels. So it's safe to use both for the servicemen, and if it needs to be destroyed by way of HE to prevent capture.
Now, for vehicles, yes. We simply don't have the technology to produce a small, safe, useful reactor for a vehicle. Yet. However I don't doubt that day is coming.
I Understand the Isolationist PoV and I Reject It (Score:5, Insightful)
I fought in WWII, and mainland America never faced the "threat of every person coming under the rule of a handful of tyrants".
Right, I'm sure that once Germany had taken all of Europe and Russia they'd have just sat on their hands contented. They wouldn't have used those extensive resources to make a push to conquer the world. Tell me, since they fought everyone around them to the bitter end, where would have Germany and Japan halted? What borders could have possibly satiated their thirst for power and resources?
I guess my understanding is 'blatantly wrong' and my opinions are 'bullshit each and every way' but I do know that there were divided opinions in America at the time. The isolationists [wikipedia.org] who thought that all Hitler wanted was to conquer a few surrounding countries and the other people who thought that Hitler would stop at nothing until he controlled the world. After reading Winston Churchill's account of the Second World War, I'm in the latter camp. It appears you're confident Hitler would have stopped had he won the Battle for Britain and overrun the Eastern front. He sure didn't stop after the Invasion of Poland and the Battle of France. The German war machine excelled at turning conquered territories into another cog in the war machine. Hitler didn't shut down all the factories producing munitions and arms once he overtook a country.
I appreciate all you did for your country and I'm sorry you are dismally appalled at my attempts to learn and understand the part of history you influenced. I'd be happy to listen to another point of view from anyone who fought in World War II but it would take a great deal of startling revelations to change my opinion on America's risk had the Allies lost.
As time goes on, each generation of youth born after 1950 adds their own layer of "understanding" to history, and usually this "understanding" is blatantly wrong. You're no exception.
And you wonder why your children and grandchildren never visit you ...
Re:Nuclear Power! (Score:5, Insightful)
Staying "hidden" isn't the issue. Protecting high-value targets IS. If your primary power source is a large, shiny, fragile (relatively speaking) object that CANNOT be disguised or hidden in any way because that would impact it's ability to function, then you have a logistical and tactical nightmare.
FOB's in Afghanistan of often involved in heavy firefights. Bullets, even small caliber ones, are VERY BAD for solar panels. And YES, they do use camo netting, sandbags, and other methods of obfuscation to make it non-obvious to the Taliban where the soft targets are in the base.
Frankly, this request sounds like it came down from some desk-jockey paper-star type who's never even gotten his boots dirty, much less had to draw his service weapon for anything other than a cleaning and shining. Nice sounding on the surface, but utterly impossible and idiotic in practice.
Re:Maybe (Score:4, Insightful)
Just a good idea (Score:5, Insightful)
Political-correctness be damned, it's just a GOOD IDEA. It's an old saying that 'amateurs discuss tactics; professional soldiers talk about logistics'.
The vulnerability of our fighting forces (or any modern military) to attacks on their fuel/supply trains is staggering, and was proven in Iraq. If the opposition in Iraq or Afghanistan was anything close to a peer-level opponent, it would have been catastrophic.
The ability to thin the supply lines also multiplies the effectiveness of the logistics assets you have, as well.
This is a great idea, and the fact that the military is addressing is extremely encouraging for our society. Not that the DoD is magical, but due to their requirements and hard field-testing, their solutions to things tend to be far more pragmatic and practical than the "political" solutions of politicians. Take "integration" as an example - the politicians talked themselves blue in the face about it for decades, but AFAIK there is no more color-blind, racially neutral employer today than the US military.
I'd argue that what the military develops in terms of robust, practical methods of reducing energy consumption will translate into civilian systems relatively quickly.
Re:Maybe (Score:2, Insightful)
Because before the automobile, we never had wars, did we?
Re:Something Spurs Innovation Further (Score:1, Insightful)
I fought in WWII....
You did, did you?
The youngest surviving WWII vet is 80 now (http://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:ArzyNNa8VhUJ:www.scrippsnews.com/node/38026+who+is+the+youngest+wwii+vet&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a).
Most surviving WWII vets -- those that enlisted "legally" -- should be 85 or older.
Interesting to know that there are 85 year olds reading /.
Now get off my lawn.
Re:Nuclear Power! (Score:3, Insightful)
Depleted uranium is a hazard beyond its radioactivity, too. It's rather unpopular with the locals due to it being used for ammunition and subsequently getting atomized and dispersed into the local environment, causing health problems.
So I can imagine the idea of burying a huge pile of DU somewhere with "blowing it up" as a contingency to prevent misuse would go over like a Depleted Uranium balloon.
=Smidge=
Re:Seems like a good idea (Score:1, Insightful)
Are you fucking kidding me? Did you just imply that Muslims routinely engage in bestiality? Take your bigotry somewhere else, asshole.
Re:Nuclear Power! (Score:4, Insightful)
you could add gobs more armour too (in a tank, adding 50 tons of extra weight means bigger engines/more fuel, if you already have that power anyway out of your little reactor, why not use it?
Hell, you could build a tank twice the size of an abrams with a dual heavy bore gun turret, weighing 200 tons or so
What happens when you need to drive your 200 ton tank across bridges that are only rated for half that weight or less? Weight isn't a zero sum game with AFV design. Even if you have the power to move that much weight around it still comes with drawbacks.
Re:This has to happen. (Score:3, Insightful)
inform the Taleban that any attempt to capture one will result in that immediate area being denied to them for the next 3 centuries
You think telling guys who believe their invisible friend commands them to kill the infidels who believe in the wrong invisible guy, that if they attack you, invisible "radiation" will strike them all down, and their children, and their childrens children too, will work?
you might as well just nuke afghanistan right now, same end-result and a whole lots less work/fuss, and you might actually get rid of the taliban (which conventional war obviously isnt working for)
Re:Maybe (Score:5, Insightful)
I agree. Too many rich warhawks believe wars should be fought by someone else's son.
You're dumb, and accidentally correct (Score:5, Insightful)
Before oil became an important resource to the Western World, we didn't give two shits about anyone in the Middle East.
I think everyone can agree that oil became important as it displaced coal as the primary energy source for vehicles, navies, and all the new military tech that depended on it. So let's set the change date at 1900.
British military interventions in the Middle East before 1900:
First Anglo-Afghan War (1839)
Anglo-Persian War (1856)
Second Anglo-Afghan War (1878)
These were part of the "Great Game" of trying to control central Asia so Britain could protect India from Russia. Before 1900, the United States had never had troops in the Middle East, excepting a few skirmishes mostly involving the protection of our commercial fleet. Most US colonial activity was directed at the rest of the mainland (wars with Mexico), Florida, Hawaii, Central and South America, and imperialism in Japan, Hawaii, China, the Philippines and other parts of the Pacific.
WWI established the West as the colonial owner of the Middle East, and the US and Britain have had troops stationed there ever since. Western powers also established political lines in the Middle East that still haunt us today, as the spoils of war from defeating the Ottoman Empire. The first deployment after the Ottoman Empire entered the war was to protect the Anglo-Persian oil pipeline - later to become Anglo-Iranian and finally British Petroleum in 1953.
Here's a snippet from a BBC piece [bbc.co.uk]:
So, no, we didn't give a shit about that particular region of the world until they had something we wanted. Unless you have resources that we want, or you present a security threat by proximity, we don't care what happens to you. Just ask any citizen of Africa.
Re:Something Spurs Innovation Further (Score:5, Insightful)
In a real war one would hang those civilian combattants and collect all local guns.
Thing is, small arms fire is near the BOTTOM of the casualty reasons in the middle east for US Troops. Roadside bombs are #1, if I remember right.
Taking away their guns would therefore be ineffective because you'd mostly be collecting the non-insurgent and non-terrorist people's guns, driving people TO the insurgents, and finally because, well, they generally suck at aiming so bad we'd prefer them to make small arms attacks.
Re:Seen and unseen (Score:4, Insightful)
The problem with technology is that people don't just sit down and decide, "We're going to build this network of satellites that beam signals to Earth where these little devices will use those signals to determine where they are. And we're also going to to have these neat little touch screens that facilitate usability and we're going to have to put together detailed maps and store them electronically."
There are tons of advancements that went into those GPS devices. Many of those advancements are fed others, but many grew out of disparate avenues of research. Some were thanks to the space program, some university research, others developed in corporations and many more developed for military applications.
The point is, we don't know where future technologies will grow out of. It isn't simply a matter of putting our minds to it. Simply throwing money at some vague idea doesn't necessarily result in anything meaningful. The vast majority of technological advancements grow out of real needs, even if it's simply to improve the functionality of an existing piece of hardware.
Even if we decided to completely abandon military spending we wouldn't be able to do it because so many countries around the world depend on American military might. They have the luxury of spending so little on their own militaries because they know that when push comes to shove the US will be there for them.
Re:This has to happen. (Score:4, Insightful)