NATO wants Carbon Neutral Tanks. This is Fascism and Here’s Why
We’re good people so “low emission wars” sound silly to us. Wars are bad and should be short. But our leaders are Nazis who think wars are good and should last forever.
The senior leader of NATO recently suggested that our battle tanks should be solar-powered. This is actually an interesting idea, but there are problems, and the worst problem has nothing to do with the tanks themselves.
Our multi-national leaders in the West have openly embraced fascism. That’s why they want green eco-friendly tanks, and it makes sense that fascists would like the idea. You might ask “what the heck do low emission tanks have to do with fascism?” Well, Dear Reader, read on and I will explain.
In New Ideas for NATO, an online seminar (it literally took a plague to convince senior leaders to stop holding in-person meetings that should have been an email), General Secretary Jens Stoltenberg made a novel suggestion.
“NATO should do its part to look into how we can reduce emissions from military operations,” Stoltenberg said. “We know that heavy battle tanks or fighter jets and naval ships consume a lot of fossil fuel and emit greenhouse gases and therefore we have to look into how we can reduce those emissions by alternative fuels, solar panels or other ways of running our missions.”
I doubt Stoltenberg envisions battleships and jet fighters sporting windmills (but you never know) and he specifically mentioned solar panels, so let’s assume that’s the alternative energy source he wants to focus on.
Here’s a list of the problems I will be discussing. The last problem is the most severe. Stoltenberg isn’t stupid. He has a logical reason for wanting environment-friendly tanks, and it should terrify any rational person. A neo-nazi resurgence has so completely and utterly taken over every piece of high ground in our culture, they’re just laughing at us now. Anyway, here’s the agenda of my semi-daily rant:
- It would be really hard to build a solar panel that’s large enough to be worth attaching to a tank, and it must also be portable.
- A lighter tank has never been invented, and never will be.
- A solar-powered tank would be a logistical nightmare. It would also be a death trap.
- Reducing army pollution makes sense if you think war is like driving to work. This is classic corporate thinking, and also the same logic Nazis used to justify their policies, including the Holocaust.
A quick introduction, and understand this man is not dumb.
Dear Reader, please don’t poo-poo Stoltenberg’s idea too quickly. I think there’s a human tendency to laugh at new ideas without fairly analyzing their merits. Many conservatives have an irrational fear of renewable energy and do everything they can to hinder it.
My favorite example is when Ronald Reagan tore down the White House solar panels to own the libtards. A skeptic might ask why our president would waste taxpayer money tearing down solar panels that weren’t hurting anyone, but I’m sure he had his reasons. Maybe they were communist solar panels. Maybe he was playing 12-dimensional chess. After all, the Soviet Union collapsed less than ten years later. Coincidence? I think not!
Then in 2010 Barrack Obama installed new solar panels to clap back at conservatives. Maybe that’s his “carbon offset” for all the new illegal wars he started.
Before you ask, yes, “clap back” is a thing that liberals actually say. I hate it.
Anyway, when I first read about this notion of solar-powered tanks, I didn’t recoil like a Republican congressman exposed to a Bible renewable energy. I recognized the merits behind Stoltenberg’s proposal. I have personally participated in lightning warfare, 21st Century style. Whizzing around the Afghan desert in armored Humvees sounds like quite the adrenaline rush, and it is. 5% adrenaline rush. The other 95% is baking in the sun, doing absolute jack shit. Our vehicle fleet does a whole lot of nothing for hours, days, or even weeks in between movements, so it makes sense to put that time to use.
Stoltenberg’s statement evoked a mental picture of our heavy battle tanks, mine-resistant vehicles, Strykers, Humvees, and everything else in between all rolling up to the assembly area for a glorious intervention across the Atropian border. If you don’t know what Atropia is, don’t worry, it’s really stupid. If you absolutely must know, Google it. Jesus, alright fine, I’ll tell you. Next article. I promise.
As I was saying, everybody is sitting at the border waiting for a signal, but it’s anybody’s guess when that signal will come. Generals are scheming and politicians are lying, and the whole world is swirling in uncertainty far above our pay grade. The assault could happen in days, weeks, months, or not at all. Nobody knows, and even if someone did know, he wouldn’t spill such a sensitive secret to us ground-pounders.
In that tedious situation, human troops are bored, and it’s even worse for our wheely mechanical friends. When iron juggernauts can’t kill or cause a ruckus, they just collect dust. Why not unfold some solar panels and let the beasts soak up sunlight while we play ping-pong, watch Anime, and invent things to complain about?
Solar powered genocide maneuver warfare is exciting. Unfortunately, it can’t pass the five minute rule. It can’t pass the five second rule. In no time at all, many, many problems sprang up in my head. The more you think, the worse the problems get. I’ll list them off, each problem more severe than the previous.
It would be really hard to build a solar panel that’s large enough to be worth attaching to a tank, and it must also be portable.
When I first visualized these cool solar-powered thingies, I pictured a big contraption that crewmen (sorry, persons) could deploy outside the tank, then quickly fold up when they need to go somewhere. That technology already exists. You can buy a handy-dandy solar panel to charge your phone, which is helpful when you’re enjoying nature and need to stop for a game of candy crush.
That looks fine and all on paper, but there’s an immediate problem noticeable just by inspecting the tiny charging station needed to keep playing your favorite Chinese malware. A foldable solar panel is no big deal to carry in your knapsack, but demands vastly more surface area than the phone it’s charging. Now consider that a tank is not only many times heavier than a phone, it’s really, really dense.
Even a soft-skinned manned vehicle, like a palletized load system, is much heavier per square inch than your car, and of course it’s vastly more so than your phone. That means a military solar panel wouldn’t be a simple case of “humvee thirty times bigger than phone, therefore make solar panel thirty times bigger” – no. a panel would have to be bigger by many orders of magnitude.
There are only two factors I can think of which would make this challenge remotely manageable.
- Massive improvements in the alloys used for armor plating and the guts of the vehicle itself.
- Equally massive improvements to solar energy.
New alloys that are lightweight yet still durable is not as preposterous a concept as it might seem. Nor are such breakthroughs unprecedented. The first generation of tanks in World War I shared the same predicament as our hypothetical iron friend. Their feeble engines couldn’t quite muster enough horsepower required of a proper battle tank, and metallurgy of the time was primitive. As a result, early models were slow, got stuck on rough terrain, broke down all the time, and were still vulnerable to high-caliber weapons. In other words, they could barely perform any of the basic things a tank is supposed to be good at.
Despite technological limitations, British Mark I tanks terrified German defenders. Or I should say eventually terrified them because these things were slower than a chap walking his dog. Nonetheless, the Mark I apocalypse-bringers made it to the trenches and trundled over them like they were supposed to.
Imagine being a driver in one of those things. It’s great to watch the miserable Germans scatter before you, then for some weird reason, your side gunners go silent. You snap over your shoulder “What the hell you lot doing? There’s a war on, or did you stupid bastards forget? You bloody well better quit shagging each other and get back on your guns!” They don’t answer, and that’s mighty insubordinate of them. They’re also dead, which is considered a valid excuse in most military tribunals. Of course they’re dead! This battle was going too well for there not to be a catch.
Everything had gone according to plan up to this point, but British tank crews now became aware of an alarming flaw that really should have been caught earlier. While the front of the Mark I was bulletproof, the sides weren’t. Apparently, it didn’t occur to anyone involved with the design and construction of the Brits’ war-winning game changer to test for this. “Uh, Harry ol’ chap, I noticed that the specified side plating is thinner, so maybe we should shoot that too, just to be sure?” I guess not.
A funny joke needs a good punchline, right? Like everything else in World War I, this encounter was a big, unpleasant shit show for all participants.
On a related note, British Warrior-class ironclad ships of the previous century were okay, but completely vulnerable at the bow and stern. So if an opponent ever thought to shoot there, the ship would pretty much just sink instantly. Yes, it’s possible for enemies to shoot you from different directions and galaxy-brained British imperialists seemed to forget that a lot.
Improvements in the alloys used, more powerful engines, and design innovations like sloped armor all contributed to the tank eventually becoming the apex predator of the battlefield. I should also mention that the tank’s early failures were partially tied to doctrine. Generals love making things comically larger than they need to be. A few people eventually calmed down and developed the Renault FT, the basis for tanks as we know them. It was small, wielded a proportionally large turret-mounted gun, and only needed two operators, not seventeen.
To briefly touch on a related example, look at firearms. Even if people of past centuries thought of modern gun designs, it would have been impossible to build them. The most basic features we take for granted like cased cartridges and a cycle of operations more complicated than “snap, bang, boom” were all unattainable until the Industrial Revolution.
Consider one of the most profoundly simple modern firearm designs, the 1911 “winner of two world wars” that boomers don’t ever shut the hell up about. Look at the Soviet TT Pistol. Just kidding, it’s actually the 1911 again, except more durable and easier to mass-produce. The USSR shamelessly stole everything they could and it’s beautiful. One of my humanities professors, an unabashed communist, discreetly distributed PDF copies of all assigned reading so we didn’t have to buy the books. “Copyright laws are capitalist nonsense!” he informed us. Yet as simple as the 1911 and TT pistols might be now, they were still far beyond the abilities of even the best gunsmiths in past eras.
I don’t have much to say about solar power innovations except that, for what it’s worth as a layman, I’m skeptical it can improve much. I would be surprised if it develops anywhere close to the same extent as internal combustion engines.
Gasoline releases the same amount of energy in a new engine as an old one. A new engine simply harnesses it more efficiently and that’s exactly the problem with solar. A gas engine is kinetic and a solar panel is by definition passive. It can’t grab more sunlight. While I don’t doubt future solar collection and distribution systems will be much more efficient and have a lot less waste, there are hard limits, and I would be impressed if solar power, a painfully dispersed energy source, can ever be concentrated enough to be useful for a military vehicle, or any vehicle larger than a NASA rover (and solar energy works a lot better on Mars, thanks to its thin atmosphere).
Solar-powered or not, tanks will continue to improve, which leads me to the next problem…
A lighter tank has never been invented, and never will be.
Modern tanks have vastly more powerful engines and better armor than their ancestors a hundred years ago. We could easily make tanks lighter, but that would make no sense. When engineers invent better armor, they don’t make tanks lighter. They add more armor. When engineers invent a better engine, they pile on even more armor.
Tanks are one of the most misunderstood weapons in modern war, and that’s largely due to a romanticized belief that a tank’s value is measured in its ability to fight other tanks. There are two big reasons why this is wrong. First off, a tank must be a jack of all trades, otherwise, it’s a large and annoyingly high maintenance vehicle that’s useless most of the time. Secondly, it’s better to avoid engaging enemy tanks with your own. There are lots of alternatives, like tank destroyers, aircraft, infantry anti-tank weapons, and even mines. All of these things are preferable to tanks.
In war, there are high priority targets; enemy assets you want to destroy when presented with the choice. Then there are high value targets; assets that the enemy wants to preserve. A tank is both. In a tank versus tank battle between two relatively equal opponents on a level playing field, they’ll destroy each other shot for shot. Obviously, it’s better to destroy enemy high value targets while minimizing the loss of your own.
And there you have it; a good tank design favors survivability above all else. That’s especially wonderful because survivability doesn’t contradict the other two crucial qualities of a tank; practicality and ease of manufacture. A good tank can perform a wide range of tasks in a wide range of environments and take a lot of punishment.
Smug people love to bash the M4 Sherman tank. In reality, the Sherman was an excellent tank. American crews were mostly content, and Soviet crews who received Shermans through Lend-Lease praised it too. If the Sherman was half as terrible as armchair generals claim, it wouldn’t have been used by multiple countries for decades after WWII ended.
Critics howl all kinds of foolish things, their biggest and dumbest complaint being that the Sherman’s gun wasn’t powerful enough to smoke heavy tanks with one shot. Who cares? The main gun was good enough for most situations, and even when outclassed, Shermans could win through strength in numbers. Yes, attrition isn’t the preferred path to victory, but I already said tank-on-tank battles should be avoided.
Someone reading this might point out that the Sherman was indeed lighter than, say, a Tiger tank. Yes, that’s true, but weight is proportional to size. The Sherman was as well armored as it could be without overtaxing its horsepower and torque.
Nobody has ever said “let’s make this tank lighter skinned so it’ll burn less fuel.” That would be stupid and completely defeat the point of a tank. In fact, no military vehicle has ever sacrificed protection for better gas mileage. Who would be stupid enough to start a war without first securing a reliable source of oil? Oh, right, the Nazis.
Despite overwhelming evidence, we’re constantly barraged with silly lies about how the Sherman was an awful death trap. Because, you know, the Allies were baddies who sacrificed their own soldiers like tissue paper. Notice how the media loves to play this game of moral relativism? “Yes, the Nazis did some bad things, but… look over there! Bad American tanks! Bad Soviet human wave attacks!”
Our leaders always dance around saying anything overtly negative about Nazis, and when they are forced to admit the Nazis did something bad, they twist it into a conditional reverse-compliment sandwich. “Yes, it was kind of wrong for Hitler to try to sterilize half the planet, but FDR imprisoned Japanese Americans and Stalin personally executed a hundred billion people with his bare hands!”
Why do Western elitists try so hard to justify Nazism? I sure hope it’s not because they’re Nazis. More specifically, how does this weird fetish for reducing our army’s carbon footprint tie in with fascism? A fair question, but I’m not quite done with my rant about solar power yet.
A solar-powered tank would be a logistical nightmare. It would also be a death trap.
Stoltenberg claimed “We know that one of the vulnerabilities in any military operation is the supply of fossil fuels along vulnerable supply lines … so if we can make us less dependent on that we are reducing emissions, but at the same time increasing military effectiveness.”
That’s a hilarious thing to say because not only would solar-hybrid tanks fail to trim down the supply chain, it would accomplish the opposite. Every vehicle fleet, whether it’s armored vehicles or aircraft, is required to maintain a certain percentage of readiness (I don’t remember what those percentages are and don’t care), and it’s already difficult to keep up readiness as it is. Newer vehicles get progressively more complex and nightmarish to maintain.
For example, the V-22 Osprey took forever to stagger out of development and went way over budget. It has racked up an impressive number of kills, but randomly crashing and killing everyone on board doesn’t count. It would be too embarrassing for our favorite science fiction tilt-rotor fratricide monster to be a failure this late in the game, so the Marine Corps fudges the numbers. They let Osprey units cannibalize everyone else’s spare parts to keep enough airframes outside the maintenance hangar.
With things as precarious as they are already, imagine if military vehicles also had to be solar hybrids. Keeping them combat-worthy would be even more disastrously complicated.
But it gets better, and this is my favorite part about Stoltenberg’s solar-powered tank idea. See, a modern armored vehicle is pretty sturdy, so an enemy rocket or anti-tank mine won’t usually kill you. No, you’ll be just fine. Except you won’t be, because the vehicle is filled with lines running every which way up and down the passenger compartment, and a lot of those lines are filled with nasty, highly flammable fluids. After impact, those fluids are now all over the compartment, and they’re all over you. There’s also on fire. Now you get to burn to death. Hurray!
Even if solar panels were lightweight and collapsible, where would they go? I can’t imagine they could be tossed onto the back of the vehicle with your backpacks and other garbage; those million-dollar panels would have zero chance of surviving a bumpy ride while being coated with dust and debris. That means they would have to go inside of the vehicle. You would be sitting next to what might be best described as a giant fragmentation grenade. Hurray!
Reducing army pollution makes sense if you think war is like driving to work. This is classic corporate thinking, and also the same logic Nazis used to justify their policies, including the Holocaust.
Now here’s the explanation for my clickbait headline. It’s entertaining to beat up on Stoltenberg for rambling about sun-powered tanks, but remember, he said that during a seminar. One can’t know for sure without watching it, but I wager this wasn’t a prepared speech. He has a speechwriter (all leaders this senior have speechwriters), and a speechwriter’s job is to make you sound smart. Saying that there should be big solar panel thingies mounted on top of missile launchers and stuff doesn’t sound smart. The idea popped up in his head and rolled out of his mouth. It sounds a little silly, but can anyone claim to not have said anything silly ever?
His idea of an eco-friendly armed force is plausible, and the reasoning behind it is terrible. By “terrible” I don’t mean dumb like Captain Planet tanks. I mean “terrible” as in this is Nazi ideology at work. A normal person thinks of war as a necessary evil that is ended as quickly as possible. But Nazis in the highest seats of power in the USA and Western Europe disagree.
“Nazi is not a euphemism here. In my previous article, I discussed how Hitler looted his own economy and initiated war mobilization so his corporate buddies could make money. Corporations and Nazis love war for the same reason. Endless war brings endless corporate profit.
Since Nazis want warfare to be endless, it makes sense that they would prioritize keeping pollution from war as low as possible. Nazis view genocide as a daily routine like driving your car to work. Therefore, genocide must have smog filters, just like your car.
Granted, a single day of California commuter traffic probably causes more pollution than the combined military ground vehicle fleets of every nation for a whole year. Wanting to reduce military emissions requires a spectacularly bad understanding of scale, but that’s a defining characteristic of Nazis. In WWII, they thought it made sense to gas people five or six at a time in a moving van. They also thought a war waged by millions of soldiers could be won by individually converting captured Soviet submachine guns to 9mm. Yes, they actually did this and it’s as stupid as it sounds.
I cannot explain how otherwise smart Nazi leaders could be so staggeringly ignorant about basic facts of logistics and war production. That’s possibly the single biggest and most painfully self-inflicted reason they lost.
Modern Nazis seem to share the same weakness, as they’re demonstrating now with this brazenly dumb initiative to reduce military pollution. But that is a small glimmer of hope for us. The Nazis have a weakness, and that weakness could potentially play a significant role in the effort required to beat them.
Ian Kummer
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What a silly essay! I urge the author to take a course in basic English. A decent essay begins with a statement of the essay’s thesis. Next, it presents the arguments in favor of the thesis. Then it presents arguments against likely counterarguments. It concludes with a summary of its arguments and restates its thesis.
This piece is a rambling stream of consciousness. It makes wild claims, offers little in the way of evidence to support any of its claims, and has no logical structure. I urge the author to step back and learn how to write clearly.
Hello Chris,
I welcome any feedback on any of the points made, which I’ll restate here:
It would be really hard to build a solar panel that’s large enough to be worth attaching to a tank, and it must also be portable.
A lighter tank has never been invented, and never will be.
A solar-powered tank would be a logistical nightmare. It would also be a death trap.
Reducing army pollution makes sense if you think war is like driving to work. This is classic corporate thinking, and also the same logic Nazis used to justify their policies, including the Holocaust.
The title of your essay promises to explain why carbon neutral tanks are fascist. It does not do so.
As to the matter of utilizing solar power for military applications, you present a straw man argument based on preposterous assumptions. No, the idea isn’t to bolt solar panels onto tanks. I won’t explain the technology here, but I will suggest that you look up how diesel-electric locomotives work.
I spelled this out in the article. Again:
Since Nazis want warfare to be endless, it makes sense that they would prioritize keeping pollution from war as low as possible. Nazis view genocide as a daily routine like driving your car to work. Therefore, genocide must have smog filters, just like your car.
Granted, a single day of California commuter traffic probably causes more pollution than the combined military ground vehicle fleets of every nation for a whole year. Wanting to reduce military emissions requires a spectacularly bad understanding of scale, but that’s a defining characteristic of Nazis. In WWII, they thought it made sense to gas people five or six at a time in a moving van. They also thought a war waged by millions of soldiers could be won by individually converting captured Soviet submachine guns to 9mm. Yes, they actually did this and it’s as stupid as it sounds.
“Since Nazis want warfare to be endless”
Please document this claim. I recall no such statements in any of the documents authored by prominent Nazis.
“it makes sense that they would prioritize keeping pollution from war as low as possible.”
Please document this claim. I cannot recall a single instance of Nazis expressing concern for the environment impact of their activities.
“Nazis view genocide as a daily routine like driving your car to work. ”
Please document this claim. My understanding of the Nazi approach to genocide is that it was not finalized until the Wannsee Conference in 1942.
“Therefore, genocide must have smog filters, just like your car.”
We know that there were no environmental protections used on either the ovens used to burn bodies in the death camps or for the evacuation of the gas chambers in which they killed many Jews.
Moreover, your logic is nonsense. The fact that one party shares an attribute with another party does not imply that the first party is identical with the second party. Mother Teresa wore clothes; Adolf Hitler wore clothes; the conclusion that Mother Teresa is a Nazi is silly.
I think you’re possibly being a little deliberately disengenous here.I’m pretty clearly referring to 21st Century fascism, not the Hiterlite WWII variety.
I lay out the whole idea in this previous post here:
https://readingjunkie.com/2021/02/13/nazis-take-over-america-and-establish-a-new-reich/
I am genuinely surprised at your statement regarding 21st century Naziism, as the most common reference of the term “Nazi” is to the German Nazis. Naziism in the 21st century is a political nonentity. Even the term ‘fascism’ is merely a slur, not a reference to any significant political movement or philosophy.
Fortunately, by defining your term as a nonexistent entity, you render your headline unobjectionably meaningless. I retract my objection to it.
There are flourishing fascist and neonazi movements all over the world. You would have to have extremely thick ideological blinders to be unaware of this.
Electric/gas hybrids are an amusing idea, but locomotives are not even remotely comparable to military vehicles.
False. The two most difficult engineering problems with any vehicle are 1) startup torque and 2) top speed. The first is determined by the torque of the engine; the second is determined by the power of the engine. Internal combustion engines have low torque but high power per unit weight. This is why all modern locomotives are diesel-electric. The electric motors have the high torque necessary to get the train moving.
Armored vehicles are heavy and therefore suffer from high torque requirements; this in turn requires exceptionally powerful engines. An armored vehicle with a hybrid engine system would do just as well with a small internal combustion engine. This is precisely how hybrid automobiles (which don’t have as severe a problem with torque) are able to operate with higher fuel efficiencies.
Logistics is a major consideration in military operations. Providing adequate fuel for mobile operations is a major challenge, and fuel transports and dumps are vulnerable to attack. Reducing fuel requirements would improve overall security and reduce constraints on operations. No, we’re not talking about bolting solar panels onto tanks. Instead, solar panels would be transported separately with every unit and set up to charge batteries and feed other operations requiring electrical power. This would reduce fuel demand by the unit.
The goal is to REDUCE fuel requirements, not ELIMINATE them. Remember, most armored vehicles spend most of their time stationary; this means that there’s plenty of time for solar panels to collect energy.
You are welcome to be amused by electric/gas hybrids, but more serious operators are making billions of dollars on the technology. And the transition to exclusively electric vehicles is already well underway. If battery technology continues its dramatic pace of improvements, we might well see electrically powered aircraft. For now, aircraft and armored vehicles remain at the outer limits of possibility for electric power. But we can be certain that the planners at the Pentagon are not so foolish as to refuse to explore and fund research into such possibilities.
I am not a mechanical engineer, or an engineer at all for that matter, so I will concede that you may know more on this subject than I.
However, military vehicles face a myriad of challenges not faced by a civilian vehicle, and fuel efficiency is not one of those challenges. Fuel efficiency, as I stated in the article, is irrelevant. Unless the need for diesel and avation fuel is eliminated, which it can’t be, making engines more fuel efficient is pointless and accomplishes nothing.
Even if an Abrams, Bradley, Humvee, Stryker, etc., were more fuel efficient by many orders of magnitude, this would not have any logistical benefit. Transporting bulk fuel is one of the easiest demands on a supply chain. Logistical difficulties are caused by complexity, not bulk.
Furthermore, it is important to keep military vehicles easy to mass produce and easy on maintenance requirements. Demanding they have hybrid engines is detrimental to both of those concepts. Even civilian hybrid cars are vastly more expensive than “traditional” models. It’s still an immature technology.
It is disheartening that a senior leader, the head of NATO no less, has such an egregiously poor understanding of maneuver warfare.
Also, you do need to address my largest point in the article – wars don’t cause that much pollution. I have no idea where this idea came from that there is some huge carbon footprint from the miniscule number of army vehicles in theworld.
What a silly essay! I urge the author to take a course in basic English. A decent essay begins with a statement of the essay's thesis. Next, it presents the arguments in favor of the thesis. Then it presents arguments against likely counterarguments. It concludes with a summary of its arguments and restates its thesis. This piece is a rambling stream of consciousness. It makes wild claims, offers little in the way of evidence to support any of its claims, and has no logical structure. I urge the author to step back and learn how to write clearly.
Hello Chris, I welcome any feedback on any of the points made, which I'll restate here: It would be really hard to build a solar panel that’s large enough to be worth attaching to a tank, and it must also be portable. A lighter tank has never been invented, and never will be. A solar-powered tank would be a logistical nightmare. It would also be a death trap. Reducing army pollution makes sense if you think war is like driving to work. This is classic corporate thinking, and also the same logic Nazis used to justify their policies, including the Holocaust.
The title of your essay promises to explain why carbon neutral tanks are fascist. It does not do so. As to the matter of utilizing solar power for military applications, you present a straw man argument based on preposterous assumptions. No, the idea isn't to bolt solar panels onto tanks. I won't explain the technology here, but I will suggest that you look up how diesel-electric locomotives work.
I spelled this out in the article. Again: Since Nazis want warfare to be endless, it makes sense that they would prioritize keeping pollution from war as low as possible. Nazis view genocide as a daily routine like driving your car to work. Therefore, genocide must have smog filters, just like your car. Granted, a single day of California commuter traffic probably causes more pollution than the combined military ground vehicle fleets of every nation for a whole year. Wanting to reduce military emissions requires a spectacularly bad understanding of scale, but that’s a defining characteristic of Nazis. In WWII, they thought it made sense to gas people five or six at a time in a moving van. They also thought a war waged by millions of soldiers could be won by individually converting captured Soviet submachine guns to 9mm. Yes, they actually did this and it’s as stupid as it sounds.
Electric/gas hybrids are an amusing idea, but locomotives are not even remotely comparable to military vehicles.
"Since Nazis want warfare to be endless" Please document this claim. I recall no such statements in any of the documents authored by prominent Nazis. "it makes sense that they would prioritize keeping pollution from war as low as possible." Please document this claim. I cannot recall a single instance of Nazis expressing concern for the environment impact of their activities. "Nazis view genocide as a daily routine like driving your car to work. " Please document this claim. My understanding of the Nazi approach to genocide is that it was not finalized until the Wannsee Conference in 1942. "Therefore, genocide must have smog filters, just like your car." We know that there were no environmental protections used on either the ovens used to burn bodies in the death camps or for the evacuation of the gas chambers in which they killed many Jews. Moreover, your logic is nonsense. The fact that one party shares an attribute with another party does not imply that the first party is identical with the second party. Mother Teresa wore clothes; Adolf Hitler wore clothes; the conclusion that Mother Teresa is a Nazi is silly.
False. The two most difficult engineering problems with any vehicle are 1) startup torque and 2) top speed. The first is determined by the torque of the engine; the second is determined by the power of the engine. Internal combustion engines have low torque but high power per unit weight. This is why all modern locomotives are diesel-electric. The electric motors have the high torque necessary to get the train moving. Armored vehicles are heavy and therefore suffer from high torque requirements; this in turn requires exceptionally powerful engines. An armored vehicle with a hybrid engine system would do just as well with a small internal combustion engine. This is precisely how hybrid automobiles (which don't have as severe a problem with torque) are able to operate with higher fuel efficiencies. Logistics is a major consideration in military operations. Providing adequate fuel for mobile operations is a major challenge, and fuel transports and dumps are vulnerable to attack. Reducing fuel requirements would improve overall security and reduce constraints on operations. No, we're not talking about bolting solar panels onto tanks. Instead, solar panels would be transported separately with every unit and set up to charge batteries and feed other operations requiring electrical power. This would reduce fuel demand by the unit. The goal is to REDUCE fuel requirements, not ELIMINATE them. Remember, most armored vehicles spend most of their time stationary; this means that there's plenty of time for solar panels to collect energy. You are welcome to be amused by electric/gas hybrids, but more serious operators are making billions of dollars on the technology. And the transition to exclusively electric vehicles is already well underway. If battery technology continues its dramatic pace of improvements, we might well see electrically powered aircraft. For now, aircraft and armored vehicles remain at the outer limits of possibility for electric power. But we can be certain that the planners at the Pentagon are not so foolish as to refuse to explore and fund research into such possibilities.
I am not a mechanical engineer, or an engineer at all for that matter, so I will concede that you may know more on this subject than I. However, military vehicles face a myriad of challenges not faced by a civilian vehicle, and fuel efficiency is not one of those challenges. Fuel efficiency, as I stated in the article, is irrelevant. Unless the need for diesel and avation fuel is eliminated, which it can't be, making engines more fuel efficient is pointless and accomplishes nothing. Even if an Abrams, Bradley, Humvee, Stryker, etc., were more fuel efficient by many orders of magnitude, this would not have any logistical benefit. Transporting bulk fuel is one of the easiest demands on a supply chain. Logistical difficulties are caused by complexity, not bulk. Furthermore, it is important to keep military vehicles easy to mass produce and easy on maintenance requirements. Demanding they have hybrid engines is detrimental to both of those concepts. Even civilian hybrid cars are vastly more expensive than "traditional" models. It's still an immature technology. It is disheartening that a senior leader, the head of NATO no less, has such an egregiously poor understanding of maneuver warfare.
Also, you do need to address my largest point in the article – wars don't cause that much pollution. I have no idea where this idea came from that there is some huge carbon footprint from the miniscule number of army vehicles in theworld.
I think you're possibly being a little deliberately disengenous here.I'm pretty clearly referring to 21st Century fascism, not the Hiterlite WWII variety. I lay out the whole idea in this previous post here: https://readingjunkie.com/2021/02/13/nazis-take-over-america-and-establish-a-new-reich/
I am genuinely surprised at your statement regarding 21st century Naziism, as the most common reference of the term "Nazi" is to the German Nazis. Naziism in the 21st century is a political nonentity. Even the term 'fascism' is merely a slur, not a reference to any significant political movement or philosophy. Fortunately, by defining your term as a nonexistent entity, you render your headline unobjectionably meaningless. I retract my objection to it.
“Fuel efficiency, as I stated in the article, is irrelevant.”
That is certainly not the opinion of the experts in the field. You are welcome to your own opinion, of course, and this is a good place to present your opinion, but I doubt that it will attract attention from serious workers in the field.
“Furthermore, it is important to keep military vehicles easy to mass produce and easy on maintenance requirements. Demanding they have hybrid engines is detrimental to both of those concepts.”
False. The larger an internal combustion engine is, the more complex it becomes and the more difficult it is to maintain. Compare the engine in an Abrams tank with the engine on your string trimmer or chain saw. Anything that reduces the size of an internal combustion engine simplifies it and makes it easier to maintain. And electric motors are far more reliable than internal combustion engines.
“Even civilian hybrid cars are vastly more expensive than “traditional” models. It’s still an immature technology.”
I wouldn’t say “Vastly”. The MSRP of the Toyota Prius is $24,525; the MSRP of the Toyota Camry is $24,425. The price of the Toyota Corolla is $20,025. Of course, it’s very difficult to compare automobiles rigorously. The lifetime cost of the Prius is reduced by its superior fuel efficiency.
Fuel costs for an armored vehicle are difficult to estimate, because the cost of delivering the fuel to the vehicle are highly variable. I suggest that you read this piece on the fuel requirements of an armored force:
https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/54-30/Ch8.htm
It will put to rest any misconceptions you have about the fuel requirements of military vehicles.
“Also, you do need to address my largest point in the article – wars don’t cause that much pollution.”
That may have been what you deem to be the “largest” point of your article, but you did not devote a lot of space to that topic. In any case, you offer no evidence to support your claim; you offer only your opinion. Assessing the environmental effects of military operations would be a large and complicated task, as it must include not only energy consumption but also the effects of explosives and burning of combustibles.
And by the way, your claim that you are not referring to German Nazis is contradicted by the many references in your article to the actions of Germany during World War II.
“And by the way, your claim that you are not referring to German Nazis is contradicted by the many references in your article to the actions of Germany during World War II.”
Being a little disingenuous there, are we?
“I wouldn’t say “Vastly”. The MSRP of the Toyota Prius is $24,525; the MSRP of the Toyota Camry is $24,425. The price of the Toyota Corolla is $20,025. Of course, it’s very difficult to compare automobiles rigorously. The lifetime cost of the Prius is reduced by its superior fuel efficiency.”
That is interesting. I hadn’t realized the gap narrowed that much in ten years.
“Being a little disingenuous there, are we?”
No.
"Fuel efficiency, as I stated in the article, is irrelevant." That is certainly not the opinion of the experts in the field. You are welcome to your own opinion, of course, and this is a good place to present your opinion, but I doubt that it will attract attention from serious workers in the field. "Furthermore, it is important to keep military vehicles easy to mass produce and easy on maintenance requirements. Demanding they have hybrid engines is detrimental to both of those concepts." False. The larger an internal combustion engine is, the more complex it becomes and the more difficult it is to maintain. Compare the engine in an Abrams tank with the engine on your string trimmer or chain saw. Anything that reduces the size of an internal combustion engine simplifies it and makes it easier to maintain. And electric motors are far more reliable than internal combustion engines. "Even civilian hybrid cars are vastly more expensive than “traditional” models. It’s still an immature technology." I wouldn't say "Vastly". The MSRP of the Toyota Prius is $24,525; the MSRP of the Toyota Camry is $24,425. The price of the Toyota Corolla is $20,025. Of course, it's very difficult to compare automobiles rigorously. The lifetime cost of the Prius is reduced by its superior fuel efficiency. Fuel costs for an armored vehicle are difficult to estimate, because the cost of delivering the fuel to the vehicle are highly variable. I suggest that you read this piece on the fuel requirements of an armored force: https://www.globalsecurity.org/military/library/policy/army/fm/54-30/Ch8.htm It will put to rest any misconceptions you have about the fuel requirements of military vehicles. "Also, you do need to address my largest point in the article – wars don’t cause that much pollution." That may have been what you deem to be the "largest" point of your article, but you did not devote a lot of space to that topic. In any case, you offer no evidence to support your claim; you offer only your opinion. Assessing the environmental effects of military operations would be a large and complicated task, as it must include not only energy consumption but also the effects of explosives and burning of combustibles. And by the way, your claim that you are not referring to German Nazis is contradicted by the many references in your article to the actions of Germany during World War II.
There are flourishing fascist and neonazi movements all over the world. You would have to have extremely thick ideological blinders to be unaware of this.
"And by the way, your claim that you are not referring to German Nazis is contradicted by the many references in your article to the actions of Germany during World War II." Being a little disingenuous there, are we? "I wouldn’t say “Vastly”. The MSRP of the Toyota Prius is $24,525; the MSRP of the Toyota Camry is $24,425. The price of the Toyota Corolla is $20,025. Of course, it’s very difficult to compare automobiles rigorously. The lifetime cost of the Prius is reduced by its superior fuel efficiency." That is interesting. I hadn't realized the gap narrowed that much in ten years.
“That is certainly not the opinion of the experts in the field. You are welcome to your own opinion, of course, and this is a good place to present your opinion, but I doubt that it will attract attention from serious workers in the field.”
How interesting. Who are these experts? I’ve been in a fair number of units in both Iraq and Afghanistan and fuel was never once a problem. Of course fuel CAN be problem, but it’s much lower on the list than you seem to think it is.
“False. The larger an internal combustion engine is, the more complex it becomes and the more difficult it is to maintain. Compare the engine in an Abrams tank with the engine on your string trimmer or chain saw. Anything that reduces the size of an internal combustion engine simplifies it and makes it easier to maintain. And electric motors are far more reliable than internal combustion engines.”
What? In any war with a near-peer opponent, there will be heavy attrition. I have no idea why you think there wouldn’t be.
“That may have been what you deem to be the “largest” point of your article, but you did not devote a lot of space to that topic. In any case, you offer no evidence to support your claim; you offer only your opinion. Assessing the environmental effects of military operations would be a large and complicated task, as it must include not only energy consumption but also the effects of explosives and burning of combustibles.”
I didn’t need to spend much time on it because it’s a stupid thing to say. How large is the entire world’s military vehicle fleet as a percentage of fossil fuel consumption? 1%, being extremely generous? They don’t even operate in any sort of meaningful concentration most of the time.
The idea that military pollution is a problem is based on the idea that war is continuous and widespread – which is an inherently Nazi (or fascist, if you prefer) position. No one else on the political spectrum embraces war to this degree.
Chris,
I have reflected on your points here, which you do present well, incidentally. I’m always happy to listen to conflicting viewpoints, and modify my own when given new information, or when my assumptions are proven wrong. However, I think I am somehow not conveying my message here clearly.So I’ll clarify a bit more.
-Military and civilian vehicles of course share shared traits – but after a certain point are no longer comparable. For example, a train zooming along the tracks or a commuter car on a freeway enjoy the advantage of being able to focus on a specific set of features. Torque at startup is of course important, I won’t dispute that, but the ability to simply roll along and maintain momentum is not something a military vehicle is always able to do. It’s not something a military vehicle is even able to do most of the time.
A tank more closely resembles a bulldozer than a commuter car. A tank’s movements is mostly a series of small movements and turns with frequent stops in between. By all means chime in if I’m mistaken here, but my understanding of a hybrid engine is its ability to alternate between burning fossil fuel and simultaneously charging the battery during these periods, and switching to the battery when able. That’s of course useful to an individual, like me, so I don’t need to throw away as much money at the gas pump. But there’s no advantage for a military vehicle, since there’s no advantage from “saving money” from burning less fuel, and it doesn’t coast along the freeway anywhere close to as much as a private citizen.
Furthermore, the vast majority of the time a military vehicle is in action is when it’s actively engaging in maneuvers, the vehicle won’t be on the freeway. Yes, when operating in industrialized countries like Iraq, it is advantageous to use the enemy’s own freeway system against him, but these are still somewhat short tactical movements. Long movements are usually going to be administrative; during administrative movements, all tracked vehicles (and often wheeled vehicles too) are going to be loaded up on a flatbed truck or train, so their gas efficiency doesn’t matter.
-When I speak of versatility, ease of production and maintenance demands, that essentially boils down to the need for most military vehicles to be a “jack of all trades,” like the Sherman tank. That’s largely building on my previous point above about the jerky movements a military vehicle will be engaging in most of the time. Bulk fuel is an annoying logistical demand, but it’s pretty low on the list of annoying logistical difficulties. Even in Afghanistan, where our land supply lines stretch all the way to ports in Pakistan, supplying fuel has never been a problem.
Also, in a war with a near-peer opponent, atrition is going to be a problem. Even in our current asymmetric wars with opponents who are badly equipped, we still suffer materiel attrition from extended use. Simple wear and tear which is further compounded by operating in harsh environments. We have to assume a large percentage of our existing vehicle fleet would be destroyed or rendered inoperable in the opening salvos of such a maneuver war, making it extremely urgent to be able to rapidly manufacture replacements. Not just replacing tank for tank, but increasing the size of the force ten or even a hundredfold.
There’s one more advantage from fossil fuels. The argument I’m seeing in favor of hybrid and 100% electric engines is less dependence on supply lines. I find that argument debatable for the reasons stated above, but diesel fuel can be stolen. In fact that’s commonplace in major wars (See the Germans seizing Soviet refineries in WWII).
On that same note, in ideal circumstances, it should be possible for our maintainers to loot captured and salvaged enemy vehicles and cannibalze them to keep our own up and running. The best case of this I can think of is in North Africa, also during WWII. Rommel’s tank units were thoroughly depleted, but his crews were able to keep up and running much longer than they should have thanks to gathering up the large number of British tanks they had destroyed or disabled and use the parts for their own. I don’t think even that is possible anymore, though I don’t know that for sure. I find it hard to imagine that a modern Abrams or Stryker could be repaired in any meaningful way by salvaging parts from a Cold War era Soviet hand-me-down used by most or all of the regions we would likely be operating in.
The key point here is that hybrid systems utilize electric motors to provide the torque required for getting the vehicle moving, while the internal combustion motors provide the energy required for moving at constant velocity. When you use just an ICE on a vehicle, you must oversize it to provide enough torque for getting moving. A hybrid system enables you to use a smaller ICE, which in turn is lighter and burns less fuel. The recovery of energy from coasting that we enjoy with civilian vehicles is not applicable to military vehicles.
Pure electric vehicles have a number of advantages over ICE vehicles. They are quieter and more energy-efficient, and they have plenty of torque. Their great weakness is the limitation imposed by batteries. As yet, we don’t have battery technology that’s good enough to power heavy equipment, but we’re seeing dramatic improvements in battery technology. Tesla already has an operational electric heavy truck. Research into battery technology continues to demonstrate opportunities for improvements. Very roughly speaking, the energy density of batteries has been increasing by about 5% per year since about 1990. For the moment, we must confine our considerations to hybrid designs, but for the long term, pure electric systems are obviously the way to go.
Maintaining and repairing electric drivetrains is much easier. A Tesla has 20 — I’m not kidding, just 20 — moving parts in its drivetrain. The Tesla has no transmission, just a single gearbox. That’s because an electric motor has an almost flat torque curve. Diesel engines, by contrast, have very narrow torque curves, which is why big rigs have 15 gears. An ICE car has hundreds of moving parts in its drivetrain, and a big tank — well, that’s even worse. Maintenance costs for this huge complicated machine are enormous. By contrast, electric drivetrains require no maintenance. Tesla no longer recommends annual maintenance checks. Where an Abrams tank requires three hours of maintenance for every hour of operation, a Tesla requires almost nothing. Almost all the maintenance on hybrid vehicles is for the ICE, not the electric components. If you want durability, reliability, and low maintenance requirements, you definitely want to go electric.
I doubt that cannibalization of parts plays any role whatsoever in military operations. You can’t use any parts from a Ford on a Chevrolet, and you certainly couldn’t use parts from a T-90 in an Abrams tank.
“How interesting. Who are these experts?”
We can start with the Secretary General of NATO.
As regards the issue of environmental impact, my understanding of the Secretary General’s comments is that he is not primarily concerned with the environmental footprint of the military (although there is some political credit to be gained there), but rather with the vulnerability of military units to disruption due to their high fuel requirements. As you point out, this is not a problem in small-scale operations where the NATO forces would enjoy strategic superiority. But in larger conflicts with less secure logistics, the high fuel consumption of military units could prove to be a serious vulnerability. Here’s the relevant quote:
“We know that one of the vulnerabilities in any military operation is the supply of fossil fuels along vulnerable supply lines,” Stoltenberg said, “so if we can make us less dependent on that we are reducing emissions, but at the same time increasing military effectiveness.”
I agree that the environmental footprint of military operations is not an important consideration. I reject your claim that war is an inherently Nazi behavior, as you have not presented any evidence to support the claim.
"That is certainly not the opinion of the experts in the field. You are welcome to your own opinion, of course, and this is a good place to present your opinion, but I doubt that it will attract attention from serious workers in the field." How interesting. Who are these experts? I've been in a fair number of units in both Iraq and Afghanistan and fuel was never once a problem. Of course fuel CAN be problem, but it's much lower on the list than you seem to think it is. "False. The larger an internal combustion engine is, the more complex it becomes and the more difficult it is to maintain. Compare the engine in an Abrams tank with the engine on your string trimmer or chain saw. Anything that reduces the size of an internal combustion engine simplifies it and makes it easier to maintain. And electric motors are far more reliable than internal combustion engines." What? In any war with a near-peer opponent, there will be heavy attrition. I have no idea why you think there wouldn't be. "That may have been what you deem to be the “largest” point of your article, but you did not devote a lot of space to that topic. In any case, you offer no evidence to support your claim; you offer only your opinion. Assessing the environmental effects of military operations would be a large and complicated task, as it must include not only energy consumption but also the effects of explosives and burning of combustibles." I didn't need to spend much time on it because it's a stupid thing to say. How large is the entire world's military vehicle fleet as a percentage of fossil fuel consumption? 1%, being extremely generous? They don't even operate in any sort of meaningful concentration most of the time. The idea that military pollution is a problem is based on the idea that war is continuous and widespread – which is an inherently Nazi (or fascist, if you prefer) position. No one else on the political spectrum embraces war to this degree.
Chris, I have reflected on your points here, which you do present well, incidentally. I'm always happy to listen to conflicting viewpoints, and modify my own when given new information, or when my assumptions are proven wrong. However, I think I am somehow not conveying my message here clearly.So I'll clarify a bit more. -Military and civilian vehicles of course share shared traits – but after a certain point are no longer comparable. For example, a train zooming along the tracks or a commuter car on a freeway enjoy the advantage of being able to focus on a specific set of features. Torque at startup is of course important, I won't dispute that, but the ability to simply roll along and maintain momentum is not something a military vehicle is always able to do. It's not something a military vehicle is even able to do most of the time. A tank more closely resembles a bulldozer than a commuter car. A tank's movements is mostly a series of small movements and turns with frequent stops in between. By all means chime in if I'm mistaken here, but my understanding of a hybrid engine is its ability to alternate between burning fossil fuel and simultaneously charging the battery during these periods, and switching to the battery when able. That's of course useful to an individual, like me, so I don't need to throw away as much money at the gas pump. But there's no advantage for a military vehicle, since there's no advantage from "saving money" from burning less fuel, and it doesn't coast along the freeway anywhere close to as much as a private citizen. Furthermore, the vast majority of the time a military vehicle is in action is when it's actively engaging in maneuvers, the vehicle won't be on the freeway. Yes, when operating in industrialized countries like Iraq, it is advantageous to use the enemy's own freeway system against him, but these are still somewhat short tactical movements. Long movements are usually going to be administrative; during administrative movements, all tracked vehicles (and often wheeled vehicles too) are going to be loaded up on a flatbed truck or train, so their gas efficiency doesn't matter. -When I speak of versatility, ease of production and maintenance demands, that essentially boils down to the need for most military vehicles to be a "jack of all trades," like the Sherman tank. That's largely building on my previous point above about the jerky movements a military vehicle will be engaging in most of the time. Bulk fuel is an annoying logistical demand, but it's pretty low on the list of annoying logistical difficulties. Even in Afghanistan, where our land supply lines stretch all the way to ports in Pakistan, supplying fuel has never been a problem. Also, in a war with a near-peer opponent, atrition is going to be a problem. Even in our current asymmetric wars with opponents who are badly equipped, we still suffer materiel attrition from extended use. Simple wear and tear which is further compounded by operating in harsh environments. We have to assume a large percentage of our existing vehicle fleet would be destroyed or rendered inoperable in the opening salvos of such a maneuver war, making it extremely urgent to be able to rapidly manufacture replacements. Not just replacing tank for tank, but increasing the size of the force ten or even a hundredfold. There's one more advantage from fossil fuels. The argument I'm seeing in favor of hybrid and 100% electric engines is less dependence on supply lines. I find that argument debatable for the reasons stated above, but diesel fuel can be stolen. In fact that's commonplace in major wars (See the Germans seizing Soviet refineries in WWII). On that same note, in ideal circumstances, it should be possible for our maintainers to loot captured and salvaged enemy vehicles and cannibalze them to keep our own up and running. The best case of this I can think of is in North Africa, also during WWII. Rommel's tank units were thoroughly depl
"Being a little disingenuous there, are we?" No.
“There are flourishing fascist and neonazi movements all over the world. You would have to have extremely thick ideological blinders to be unaware of this.”
No, I am aware of their existence, and I am also aware of their political significance, which is nil. The Ryukyu independence movement has greater political significance than the various neonazi groups. Have you ever heard of the Ryukyu independence movement?
"There are flourishing fascist and neonazi movements all over the world. You would have to have extremely thick ideological blinders to be unaware of this." No, I am aware of their existence, and I am also aware of their political significance, which is nil. The Ryukyu independence movement has greater political significance than the various neonazi groups. Have you ever heard of the Ryukyu independence movement?
"How interesting. Who are these experts?" We can start with the Secretary General of NATO. As regards the issue of environmental impact, my understanding of the Secretary General's comments is that he is not primarily concerned with the environmental footprint of the military (although there is some political credit to be gained there), but rather with the vulnerability of military units to disruption due to their high fuel requirements. As you point out, this is not a problem in small-scale operations where the NATO forces would enjoy strategic superiority. But in larger conflicts with less secure logistics, the high fuel consumption of military units could prove to be a serious vulnerability. Here's the relevant quote: “We know that one of the vulnerabilities in any military operation is the supply of fossil fuels along vulnerable supply lines,” Stoltenberg said, “so if we can make us less dependent on that we are reducing emissions, but at the same time increasing military effectiveness.” I agree that the environmental footprint of military operations is not an important consideration. I reject your claim that war is an inherently Nazi behavior, as you have not presented any evidence to support the claim.
The key point here is that hybrid systems utilize electric motors to provide the torque required for getting the vehicle moving, while the internal combustion motors provide the energy required for moving at constant velocity. When you use just an ICE on a vehicle, you must oversize it to provide enough torque for getting moving. A hybrid system enables you to use a smaller ICE, which in turn is lighter and burns less fuel. The recovery of energy from coasting that we enjoy with civilian vehicles is not applicable to military vehicles. Pure electric vehicles have a number of advantages over ICE vehicles. They are quieter and more energy-efficient, and they have plenty of torque. Their great weakness is the limitation imposed by batteries. As yet, we don't have battery technology that's good enough to power heavy equipment, but we're seeing dramatic improvements in battery technology. Tesla already has an operational electric heavy truck. Research into battery technology continues to demonstrate opportunities for improvements. Very roughly speaking, the energy density of batteries has been increasing by about 5% per year since about 1990. For the moment, we must confine our considerations to hybrid designs, but for the long term, pure electric systems are obviously the way to go. Maintaining and repairing electric drivetrains is much easier. A Tesla has 20 — I'm not kidding, just 20 — moving parts in its drivetrain. The Tesla has no transmission, just a single gearbox. That's because an electric motor has an almost flat torque curve. Diesel engines, by contrast, have very narrow torque curves, which is why big rigs have 15 gears. An ICE car has hundreds of moving parts in its drivetrain, and a big tank — well, that's even worse. Maintenance costs for this huge complicated machine are enormous. By contrast, electric drivetrains require no maintenance. Tesla no longer recommends annual maintenance checks. Where an Abrams tank requires three hours of maintenance for every hour of operation, a Tesla requires almost nothing. Almost all the maintenance on hybrid vehicles is for the ICE, not the electric components. If you want durability, reliability, and low maintenance requirements, you definitely want to go electric. I doubt that cannibalization of parts plays any role whatsoever in military operations. You can't use any parts from a Ford on a Chevrolet, and you certainly couldn't use parts from a T-90 in an Abrams tank.
Well, Islamofascism for one. Which shouldn’t be surprising, Nazism was wildly popular in the Middle East in the 1930s (in large part due to wealthy families in Saudi Arabia and Iraq sending their sons to German univerisities).
There are active fascist movements in both Ukraine and Belarus, which also shouldn’t be surprising since they were allies of the Nazis in WWII. Stalin exterminated these fascist parties best he could, but of course it wasn’t possible to completely eliminate them. NATO propaganda efforts have also played a large role in the campaign to grow and strengthen worldwide fascism.
Neoliberalism is also a form of fascism, and every single developed nation has established neoliberal leaders in both their government and private sector. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos can both be accurately labeled as fascists. Liberal race theory, or “critical race theory” as they love to call it, is a near copy/paste of Nazi race theory used to justify the Holocaust.
However, since I penned that initial article, I have since come to realize that globalism more accurately describes this modern movement. It’s certainly an offshoot of fascism, yet distinct from the “traditional” fascism that dominated much of the world in the 1930s and well into the Cold War.
You’re welcome to read it here:
https://readingjunkie.com/2021/03/08/the-great-war-between-collectivism-and-globalism/
Well, Islamofascism for one. Which shouldn't be surprising, Nazism was wildly popular in the Middle East in the 1930s (in large part due to wealthy families in Saudi Arabia and Iraq sending their sons to German univerisities). There are active fascist movements in both Ukraine and Belarus, which also shouldn't be surprising since they were allies of the Nazis in WWII. Stalin exterminated these fascist parties best he could, but of course it wasn't possible to completely eliminate them. NATO propaganda efforts have also played a large role in the campaign to grow and strengthen worldwide fascism. Neoliberalism is also a form of fascism, and every single developed nation has established neoliberal leaders in both their government and private sector. Bill Gates and Jeff Bezos can both be accurately labeled as fascists. Liberal race theory, or "critical race theory" as they love to call it, is a near copy/paste of Nazi race theory used to justify the Holocaust. However, since I penned that initial article, I have since come to realize that globalism more accurately describes this modern movement. It's certainly an offshoot of fascism, yet distinct from the "traditional" fascism that dominated much of the world in the 1930s and well into the Cold War. You're welcome to read it here: https://readingjunkie.com/2021/03/08/the-great-war-between-collectivism-and-globalism/
I’ll get to the rest of your points this afternoon. I need to knock out the rest of my International Women’s Day content. You comment on the blog a lot, and I always appreciate an attentive reader.
You have written so much here, I am considering the idea of sharing it in its own post, an “opposing viewpoint” piece, if you will. I assume you wouldn’t object to that, since you shared to begin with, but I ask anyway.
I would string together what you said here chronologically, slightly edited for context. Or you could do it yourself, if you preferred. It’s interesting and well researched enough I’m sure it would make for a high quality post.
I'll get to the rest of your points this afternoon. I need to knock out the rest of my International Women's Day content. You comment on the blog a lot, and I always appreciate an attentive reader. You have written so much here, I am considering the idea of sharing it in its own post, an "opposing viewpoint" piece, if you will. I assume you wouldn't object to that, since you shared to begin with, but I ask anyway. I would string together what you said here chronologically, slightly edited for context. Or you could do it yourself, if you preferred. It's interesting and well researched enough I'm sure it would make for a high quality post.
Well, if you choose to define fascism to cover everything, then you are correct that everything is fascism.
Feel free to use my content in any manner you wish.
Well, if you choose to define fascism to cover everything, then you are correct that everything is fascism. Feel free to use my content in any manner you wish.
“Well, if you choose to define fascism to cover everything, then you are correct that everything is fascism.
Feel free to use my content in any manner you wish”
Fascism has a clear definition and I URGE you to read up on the subject. 😉
"Well, if you choose to define fascism to cover everything, then you are correct that everything is fascism. Feel free to use my content in any manner you wish" Fascism has a clear definition and I URGE you to read up on the subject. 😉
“I doubt that cannibalization of parts plays any role whatsoever in military operations.”
Actually, it played a role in almost every single combat operation until World War II – and even Korea and Vietnam to some extent. Interchangeability is important in war production – in large part to ease the demands on war industry, and to slim down the complexity of that supply line we’ve been discussing.
Complexity:
I have never heard a single person EVER make the claim that hybrid engines are simpler than diesel. However, I’ll take your word for it. I’m not an expert after all.
If someone invents a battery powerful enough to move a 60 ton Abrams tank over the wadis, I’m sure that will be an excellent force multiplier. It’s certainly an ambitious goal, if nothing else.
The bureaucrat running NATO is hardly an “expert in the field”. Marshall, on the other hand, WAS an expert. You would probably enjoy the Soldier’s Load and the Mobility of a Nation. Again, it is complexity that presents logistical challenges. Slimming up on simple bulk brings little or no benefit
Incidentally – I do need to comment on your earlier statement that Afghanistan is a “small” war. Not at all. It is a HUGE war. Dispersed forces are vastly more difficult to supply. Especially since for a large portion of the war we had FOBs so far out they could only be resupplied by air.
As of right now, our supply chain for fuel stretches across two countries. What theater are you thinking of that could possibly present more difficult logistical demands than our current one? I am extremely curious because that would be quite the puzzle to solve.
“I agree that the environmental footprint of military operations is not an important consideration. I reject your claim that war is an inherently Nazi behavior, as you have not presented any evidence to support the claim.”
Read up on Smedley Butler. The fascist love of perpetual warfare has been well documented since the early 20th Century. Even Orwell, who was ostenibly writing about the “Soviet” system more accurately describes fascism. Hitler’s take on it boils down to several major themes:
-Privatization of national industry and resources
-Placating the public with war mobilization and the “spoils” that come with it.
-Using identity politics, namely race theory to control and channel the public the way that suits you best.
"I doubt that cannibalization of parts plays any role whatsoever in military operations." Actually, it played a role in almost every single combat operation until World War II – and even Korea and Vietnam to some extent. Interchangeability is important in war production – in large part to ease the demands on war industry, and to slim down the complexity of that supply line we've been discussing. Complexity: I have never heard a single person EVER make the claim that hybrid engines are simpler than diesel. However, I'll take your word for it. I'm not an expert after all. If someone invents a battery powerful enough to move a 60 ton Abrams tank over the wadis, I'm sure that will be an excellent force multiplier. It's certainly an ambitious goal, if nothing else. The bureaucrat running NATO is hardly an "expert in the field". Marshall, on the other hand, WAS an expert. You would probably enjoy the Soldier's Load and the Mobility of a Nation. Again, it is complexity that presents logistical challenges. Slimming up on simple bulk brings little or no benefit Incidentally – I do need to comment on your earlier statement that Afghanistan is a "small" war. Not at all. It is a HUGE war. Dispersed forces are vastly more difficult to supply. Especially since for a large portion of the war we had FOBs so far out they could only be resupplied by air. As of right now, our supply chain for fuel stretches across two countries. What theater are you thinking of that could possibly present more difficult logistical demands than our current one? I am extremely curious because that would be quite the puzzle to solve. "I agree that the environmental footprint of military operations is not an important consideration. I reject your claim that war is an inherently Nazi behavior, as you have not presented any evidence to support the claim." Read up on Smedley Butler. The fascist love of perpetual warfare has been well documented since the early 20th Century. Even Orwell, who was ostenibly writing about the "Soviet" system more accurately describes fascism. Hitler's take on it boils down to several major themes: -Privatization of national industry and resources -Placating the public with war mobilization and the "spoils" that come with it. -Using identity politics, namely race theory to control and channel the public the way that suits you best.
This convo is 25+ now, and I can see you’re moving on to more recent posts, and I think just about every point here has been taken to its logical conclusion, however if you have any further thoughts on the topic of the RC tanks, I don’t want to miss them.
This convo is 25+ now, and I can see you're moving on to more recent posts, and I think just about every point here has been taken to its logical conclusion, however if you have any further thoughts on the topic of the RC tanks, I don't want to miss them.
My last point I want to squeeze in is that we do actually have a pretty firm grasp of the logistical demands and consumption of a unit to a fine degree of precision. At least in terms of “beans, bullets, and bandaids.”
In 2015 I wrote a fluff piece about an Army training exercise I participated in – it’s hardly a work of intellectual shock and awe, but it does include some acronyms and terminology you’ll find useful for future research. See the linked publication below, and the article titled “40th CAB goes to Warfighter at Fort Hood”
https://static.dvidshub.net/media/pubs/pdf_27457.pdf
My last point I want to squeeze in is that we do actually have a pretty firm grasp of the logistical demands and consumption of a unit to a fine degree of precision. At least in terms of "beans, bullets, and bandaids." In 2015 I wrote a fluff piece about an Army training exercise I participated in – it's hardly a work of intellectual shock and awe, but it does include some acronyms and terminology you'll find useful for future research. See the linked publication below, and the article titled "40th CAB goes to Warfighter at Fort Hood" https://static.dvidshub.net/media/pubs/pdf_27457.pdf
“Fascism has a clear definition and I URGE you to read up on the subject”
I am well-acquainted with the conventional definitions of fascism. My point is that you redefine fascism in terms that apply to a huge range of political stances.
“I have never heard a single person EVER make the claim that hybrid engines are simpler than diesel.”
For the same performance characteristics, a hybrid system is operationally simpler than a Diesel engine. The trick lies in the fact that the smaller ICE engine in a hybrid system has lesser needs with heat transfer and lubrication.
“If someone invents a battery powerful enough to move a 60 ton Abrams tank over the wadis, I’m sure that will be an excellent force multiplier. It’s certainly an ambitious goal, if nothing else.”
Yes, as I mentioned earlier, this is not within our reach as yet. However, the dramatic rate of improvement of battery chemistry makes this possibility feasible in a few decades.
“The bureaucrat running NATO is hardly an “expert in the field”.”
You’re right. He’s a politician. Thank you for correcting me. I did a little research attempting to find the sources on which he was relying but was unsuccessful. I was able to find sources pointing out that the DoD has been supplementing diesel electric generators in the field with solar-battery systems, the goal being to reduce fuel consumption, which can cost $100/gallon for remote installations.
“I do need to comment on your earlier statement that Afghanistan is a “small” war. Not at all. It is a HUGE war”
The criteria for differentiating ‘small’ from ‘large’ are entirely too subjective for a rigorous discussion. I prefer to use casualty rates to evaluate the magnitude of a conflict; you are welcome to use logistical requirements, if you choose.
I continue to reject your claim that war is inherently a Nazi or fascist endeavor. I will offer a last argument on this point: continuous war has always been an element of most human societies, long before there were any Nazis or corporations. Indeed, the incidence of warfare has declined over the last hundred years. I agree with you that we have reached the logical end of this discussion and offer you the last word.
He said continuous war, not war by itself.
"Fascism has a clear definition and I URGE you to read up on the subject" I am well-acquainted with the conventional definitions of fascism. My point is that you redefine fascism in terms that apply to a huge range of political stances. "I have never heard a single person EVER make the claim that hybrid engines are simpler than diesel." For the same performance characteristics, a hybrid system is operationally simpler than a Diesel engine. The trick lies in the fact that the smaller ICE engine in a hybrid system has lesser needs with heat transfer and lubrication. "If someone invents a battery powerful enough to move a 60 ton Abrams tank over the wadis, I’m sure that will be an excellent force multiplier. It’s certainly an ambitious goal, if nothing else." Yes, as I mentioned earlier, this is not within our reach as yet. However, the dramatic rate of improvement of battery chemistry makes this possibility feasible in a few decades. "The bureaucrat running NATO is hardly an “expert in the field”." You're right. He's a politician. Thank you for correcting me. I did a little research attempting to find the sources on which he was relying but was unsuccessful. I was able to find sources pointing out that the DoD has been supplementing diesel electric generators in the field with solar-battery systems, the goal being to reduce fuel consumption, which can cost $100/gallon for remote installations. "I do need to comment on your earlier statement that Afghanistan is a “small” war. Not at all. It is a HUGE war" The criteria for differentiating 'small' from 'large' are entirely too subjective for a rigorous discussion. I prefer to use casualty rates to evaluate the magnitude of a conflict; you are welcome to use logistical requirements, if you choose. I continue to reject your claim that war is inherently a Nazi or fascist endeavor. I will offer a last argument on this point: continuous war has always been an element of most human societies, long before there were any Nazis or corporations. Indeed, the incidence of warfare has declined over the last hundred years. I agree with you that we have reached the logical end of this discussion and offer you the last word.
He said continuous war, not war by itself.
The environmental footprint of war is HUGE. Currently, the US military is one of the biggest source of pollution in the world. In addition, armies are also heavily polluting during peace times.
Depleted uranium weapons are a big source of radiotoxicity.
The environmental footprint of war is HUGE. Currently, the US military is one of the biggest source of pollution in the world. In addition, armies are also heavily polluting during peace times. Depleted uranium weapons are a big source of radiotoxicity.