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US Military Orders Less Dependence On Fossil Fuel
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."
Nothing spurs innovation like trying to kill the other guy.
Living With a Nerd
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.
...pedal-powered tanks!
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
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.
My work here is dung.
I've often wondered why we have compact portable atomic bombs, but no compact portable atomic generators. Perhaps now some will finally be developed! Besides, I can't imagine that solar panels would be a good idea at an FOB. I mean, big square shiny targets? Not good. And they really work poorly when disguised with that camo netting stuff.
No, I'm thinking that some portable nuke plants are in order here. Even something that has to be mounted on a semi flatbed is going to be more useful than a solar panel. At least the flatbed could be rolled into a large trench and covered with camo netting and guarded by dirt and sandbag berms.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Let's hope that, with so many other technologies developed by the military, some of it finds its way into everyday use.
There are many plans to build oil pipelines in Afghanistan, so yes, oil is a significant factor in the current conflict in Afghanistan.
Just because you are paranoid does not mean that no-one is out to get you.
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*.
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.
Yes. Because putting portable nukes on convoys being attacked all the time is really, really... safe.
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.
Good pop culture reference :) Anyway, I was thinking that maybe hemp could be used to fuel diesel machines since it grows quickly, according to Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hemp. Since I've been hearing about hemp diesel for years but have seen nothing come from it (so far), I assumed it is either burdened with legal issues or is otherwise unviable.. Does anyone know about this?
I wonder if they use this https://powertraveller.com/iwantsome/primatepower/solargorilla/. I have one of their portable batteries and it is a pretty neat piece of hardware. They say somewhere that some military are using their equipment.
Well, there are RTG designs out there that could be put onto a truck without much difficulty. A man-portable one doesn't seem very practical. The Soviets used some to power very remote lighthouses for years and years. Unfortunately, they are really heavy for the amount of power they can produce - much better suited for stationary operation. Even though the nuclear material in them cannot be weaponized, RTGs are still packed full of radioactive heavy metal, which would be a grave risk if it fell into enemy hands. It happens from time to time that a forward outpost needs to be abandoned, possibly leveled with demolition charges. You can't really abandon or demolish an RTG. I suspect a similar problem exists for just about any nuclear power option.
I've often wondered why we have compact portable atomic bombs, but no compact portable atomic generators
The answer in one word: shielding. In its passive state, all that's going on in a nuclear bomb is nuclear decay. U235 has a very long half life, so the radiation is not particularly dangerous unless you are right next to it for long periods. Typically, portable nuclear bombs are designed to be stored safely, transported for a short period, then detonated. Other than the occasional (subcritical) spontaneous fission reaction, there is no x-ray or neutron emission until it detonates. At this point, you don't care about shielding because the entire point of a bomb is to deliver energy to someone else, not hoard it.
In contrast, the fuel rods in a reactor are undergoing constant controlled fission, emitting neutrons and x-rays, and if you want humans near them then you need a lot of shielding. You also want to contain the fuel in case of damage to the reactor, which is why you don't tend to get fission power in anything smaller than a submarine. The amount of shielding required to safely operate the reactor makes it unfeasible. This is especially true for things like tanks or APCs, which are quite likely to end up scattered over the landscape in normal operation.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
The panels were on display at Modern Day Marine. Basically two standard cell panel integrated into a box that is "Marine resistant". Up to eight plug into a HD box housing the charge controller.
The problem is that personnel need electricity for their gizmos. HMMWV's have 200A 24V alternators from the factory now (which are so big the original 6.5L alternator mounting holes need extensions). If you don't have a vehicle handy, charging items becomes more interesting since you already have 80+ lbs of gear on your back [adding extra / bigger batteries usually exceeds single person weight limits]. Solar is especially nice because you don't have to ship fuel and generator parts around--a base actually becomes more self sufficient. Simply using a green alternative for dino JP-8/5 doesn't do this.
Another solution solution being heavily looked at with larger vehicles is diesel-electric propulsion, coupled with a renewable carbon sourced fuel (WVO conversion, algae, Fischer Tropsch, etc.). The hybrid drive provides electrical generation without needing a dedicated generator (stationary use) or an oversize alternator (mobile use).
- Sig
Well, considering that TWR's and Breeder reactors can be made VERY small (think smart car sized) and can then be encased in hardened concrete or some other armor and cannot "go critical" even when severely damaged or destroyed AND use minimally radioactive depleted uranium as a fuel source, I would say that transporting THAT to an FOB is a heck of alot safer than transporting a thin-skinned tanker full of explosive fuel over the same area.
That and solar panels are a REALLY stupid idea for an FOB. Big... Shiny... Targets of high value. That'll work well. Yeah...
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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.
You are welcome on my lawn.
The US military is responsible for all sorts of amazing technology that makes life better.
Sure, but at what cost. What was the opportunity cost?
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.
This is the "missing strawman" fallacy, if you will. You're comparing an actual something to a virtual nothing. Not fair. Is there not a possibility that if all those resources were spent on something else we would now have something much more life-enhancing than GPS? Think flying cars... no, scratch that... world peace perhaps?
Set your phasers on "funky"!
I've often wondered why we have compact portable atomic bombs, but no compact portable atomic generators.
From the discovery of fire it was thousands of years before we figured out how to get useful mechanical work from it (steam engine etc). Lots of problems with nukes to be solved yet.
No, I'm thinking that some portable nuke plants are in order here. Even something that has to be mounted on a semi flatbed is going to be more useful than a solar panel. At least the flatbed could be rolled into a large trench and covered with camo netting and guarded by dirt and sandbag berms.
No matter what better-than-fossil-fuel energy source they bring into battle, it's going to be of interest to the enemy. It doesn't matter if it's nuclear, solar, or hamster wheels, if it works better than what they are using now then the enemy will want it.
Based on something I read recently about the army being a bit too chubby, maybe a few human powered 'hamster wheels' might be a good idea...
FOB's are not hidden locations. Pretty much everybody that cares knows where they are located... Follow the masses of troops & trucks. And military bases of any sort tend to stick out with all the fortifications.
This may be an absolutley crazy idea, but why not bring in small (50mw) nuclear reactors into afghanistan, and wireup a small, perhaps microwave grid, with backup generators. Bury it and pour concrete over it to make it terrorist proof.
That will take care of electrical.
And as for liquid fuels, it might be possible to setup a plant based around the fischer tropsch process which takes hydrogen and carbon monoxide to create gasoline. Run it off an electrolysis station and a carbon dioxide to carbon monoxide converter. Then generate it in the field. It should be more economical than paying hundreds of dollars a gallon to truck fuel in.
If you made each fischer tropsch module about the size of a semi trailer, that's a fairly simple thing to drag into a base camp, which could then produce liquid fuels from the nuclear powered grid fairly easily.
However, as a more reasonable stopgap, research could be done into hybrid electric turbines. Being able to turn the turbine off in low power would save drastically on fuel. Having enough power to get going under a combat load and still have enough juice to start the turbine might be a bit tricky, but I think it can be done and would probably double if not triple the mileage of those tanks.
It might be that less dependence on fossil fuels would mean less dependence on war.
I realize this is going to be a minority opinion in this all-male, all-tech geek environment, but still...
I wonder how quickly the taste for war would fade in this population if there was a draft? And if you couldn't get out of it by being too fat.
You are welcome on my lawn.
Over this summer I've refitted my old car with solar panels to charge the battery when its parked and replaced all low-energy incandescent bulbs with aftermarket LED replacements. on this one car its lead to a detectable reduction in liquid fuel use. I imagine the fuel savings from even minor adjustments like this, applied to the whole service fleet, could make a noticeable saving on fuel... even before they start retiring portable generators in favour of panels.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
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.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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 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 ...
My work here is dung.
If the US Army replaced their fuel guzzling M1 tank turbines with modern diesel engines like the MTU engine used in the Leopard they would spend a lot less fuel to begin with. The same applies to the HMMWV.
If they switched to diesel-electric, the vehicles would spend even less power.
For Afghanistan this is useless, but for campaigns near the shore it would be useful to recharge the vehicles using the nuclear reactor in US Navy carriers.
If the infantry switched to caseless or cased telescoped ammunition, it would take less volume to transport the same number of rifle ammo rounds.
The B-52 uses ancient engines from the late 1950s which guzzle fuel but the Air Force cannot get Congress to pay for the upgrade because it is deemed uneconomic.
Solar can have its uses. The military could especially use flexible solar cells which could be more easily transported. However the military also needs reliability, something that works 100% of the time, which is something solar cells cannot provide.
We have come a long time since Genghis Khan. The Mongols could feed their horses by grazing and drinking water along the way. They were nomads, so they brought cattle as food supply along with them, as well as their families etc. Present military hardware requires too much power for this to be feasible anymore.
Well, the military might help to make Stirling engines cheaper. Those engines are already used for transforming solar heat into electricity and seem to have a good effectiveness into doing so. The main problem of this way of capturing power is that the engines are quite expensive to make. This could be an opportunity for the military to make the world a better place.
Nae king! Nae laird! Nae yurrupiean pressedent! We willna be fooled again!
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
Even in a total war, you generally don't want to completely obliterate the terrain. At worst, you want to kill the population and then move your own people in to exploit the resources. If you don't care about the people or the resources, you probably wouldn't be there at all.
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.
That's certainly possible. Aircraft carriers already do this, for example, containing small(ish) nuclear reactors that provide the power. If you had efficient hydrogen fuel cells, these reactors could be used to generate hydrogen by electrolysis of sea water for smaller craft. The military is currently about the only user of LiS batteries, which are another alternative. They have a higher energy density than other cells, but only last for about 30 charge cycles. This makes them perfect for things like UAVs, where weight matters and being reusable after 30 missions is a very low priority. Replacing the batteries in a vehicle after a month is probably an easier logistical challenge than importing enough diesel to keep one running.
The big problem with using nuclear power near a combat zone is that the presence of enriched uranium is likely to make the base a very attractive target. A well placed bomb or missile that breaches the containment can scatter radioactive material all over your troops. It's less of a problem for ships, because getting a boat, plane, or submarine close enough to attack an aircraft carrier is a lot harder than getting a guy with a rocket launcher close enough to attack a base on land.
I am TheRaven on Soylent News
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.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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.
Yeah maybe it's time to give up on that ideal. It's not working out too well. Our so-called friends in Pakistan for instance attack us and give aid money to terrorists to attack us.
It's funny because we had a lot of support among Afghan citizens. We had friends. We just screwed it all up by not winning and threatening to give them back to the Taliban, under Pakistani control of course.
Well I guess we're keeping our friends in Pakistan happy.
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.
-Styopa
Right, I'm sure that once Germany had taken all of Europe and Russia they'd have just sat on their hands contented.
Without US involvement, Germany still wouldn't have taken Europe - much less Russia. It's the Soviets who would have been the big winners and "liberated" Western Europe had the Americans stayed at home. Whether you think that America would have ended up at risk of coming under the rule of tyrants depends on what effect you think that this would have had on the cold war. Perssonally I don't think that even Soviets emboldened by the conquering of Europe would have tried to invade the US after Hiroshima & Nagasaki.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
You do know what FOB stands for, right?
Just in case you don't FOB stands for Forward Operations Base. It is a small, "tip of the spear" base, usually about the footprint of your average American home. It's walls, if it has them, are often dirt, wood and sandbag affairs, and they frequently take advantage of local terrain for defense.
FOBs are NOT the large "tent city" affairs that you see on the news reports.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
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=
Hey, whatever. I heard there's this unit that's relied on solar power for decades for basic functions. Sure the demonstration I saw required four hours in Iraq to heat his sandwich... But he was living off the land!
He even managed to figure out where a hostage was being held without ever steeping out of the barracks!
You don't make friends by invading a country either, so maybe the whole concept should be re-evaluated ?
The Cloud - because you don't care if your apps and data are up in the air.
Oh, but they'll find another place to secure.
i dont think a ring of claymores will be sufficient to protect such a target, once the enemy gets wind of a prize like that, they might decide to risk a large scale assault.
As for size, if you can build a reactor the size of a smart car (saw that posted in this thread), fitting it into a main battle tank should be possible, and if power output is sufficient, 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, with semi-unlimited range. Now build a working rail-gun, and munition storage will also be much more efficient (a small metal bolt instead of a large anti-tank round with propellant)
People, what a bunch of bastards
The US military openly admits that their mission is to fight or engage local people? How did that one slip past the censor?
Jetpacks coming next year. Warp drive in two, tops.
Stop using supply depots and start using pylons.
Sure, I don't like our empire, or the fact that we still think we can build nations and bring democracy to every corner of the earth. I do, however, like the technological progress that results from military spending.
It's the closest thing we have to real publicly funded research that most politicians can support.
The private sector has been dragging its feet on alternative energy for 30 years (yes Government does share the blame here). If the military decides it needs to be energy independent, and the physics/chemistry allows it - it will get done.
One can hope that any resulting innovations trickle into civilian life.
-ted
One of the crops native to Afghanistan is safflower, safflower oil could be readily made into biodiesel.
Also its a premium grade food oil so any surplus could be sold on the world market. It can also be used for
dyes and paints. Of course it would be better for a native safflower processing industry to develop but
that takes time. The army could build a processing plant and start buying safflower crops right away
and then when they leave turn over the processing plant to a native company.
The army gets cheaper diesel to fuel trucks and tanks and the native people actually make money and develop industry.
Of course that makes too much sense.
You misunderstand how these bases work. We aren't trying to hide; this isn't a conventional war. We want people to be able to come to the FOBs and report incidents, sell wares, in some cases even go to work (we often work with locals for everything from translators to building contracts, at least we did in Iraq). The FOBS are well guarded of course, you can't just walk in, but they aren't the traditional camp under camo nets. Indeed all the camo nets I ever saw setup were there to provide shade in places like motor pools, not hide anything. Your point would be valid for special ops units and such, but not for the vast majority of troops, at least not in these wars.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Well, the claymores wouldn't be there to "protect" it per-se, but to destroy it if the base is about to be overrun. Keep in mind that a TWR is fully automatic, small enough and durable enough that it can be BURIED, which means that you might not even be able to SEE the thing from outside the base. People could walk right over it and not know it's there.
As far as putting it in a tank, I think you MAY have played a few too many rounds of Mechwarrior. We aren't at a technology level where we can build (or easily transport) any military land vehicle of that size. Although the idea does sound cool, I'll grant you that.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
Talibans don't have F-16 nor drones, they don't have solar panels, and they still control over 90% of the country.
Example of bad strategy is fuel trucks crossing the Khyber Pass, historically well-known & pretty well-suited for ambush. Just ask the British who lost an army there in the nineteenth century.
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.
I want peace on earth and goodwill toward man.
We are the United States Government! We don't do that sort of thing.
Um, we're there fighting a war against tribal extremists who used to use the locals that they didn't like as 80MM target practice. I doubt that environmental issues are first on the list of the locals. Most of them are more concerned with day to day survival, and frankly, the amount of LEAD being unloaded into their environment right now is of far greater concern than a few isolated and REMOVABLE TWRs.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
You are aware the Nazis had their own nuclear program, correct? It was only canceled due to the fall of Berlin -- something the United States did play a part in.
Berlin would have fallen with or without the USA - it was only a question of who it fell too; the Soviets, the Allies or Both (as happened).
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
Please. I spent a year in Iraq. The largest FOBs are the size of cities, you don't "hide" anything. You're right that this wouldn't be ideal for a platoon or company sized base camp, but for division or even brigade HQ it's perfectly reasonable. Even with the current focus on small units doing "on the ground" patrols, the majority of troops live and work inside the large super-FOBs. Nothing of importance is kept near enough to the walls to allow small arms fire to get close to it, and in the (unlikely, thankfully these guys are universally awful at indirect fire) event of a mortar strike, a few broken solar panels are the least of your worries. You could have stuck a *solar farm* in the middle of Camp Victory, and probably saved a fortune over the noisy and annoying (but I must admit reliable) static generators.
By the way... the noisy and annoying generators we did have? Just as vulnerable as solar panels to small arms or indirect fire, just as shiny (they were commercial jobs and most of them were bright white), and several times noisier (to better give away their positions)... I never even heard of one getting hit. We aren't talking about the little 15KW tactical generators when we're talking about power to middle and large sized FOBs. We're talking about commercial jobs the size of a room.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Yes. The oil's a gushing over there in Afghanistan, isn't it?
Oil, opium, same song, just a different verse of it.
The thing is more or less unstoppable. It is the most powerful tank, well, ever. It is agile, accurate, and extremely hard to kill. The "hard to kill" part accounts for much of its inefficiency given its obscenely heavy armor. The M1A2 variant is almost 70 tons. Efficiency wasn't in the design parameters. Being the baddest motherfucker on the battlefield was.
A better idea when talking redesigns is to build a new tank. This is something the military has been talking about, but isn't getting around to doing and maybe they need to move it up. Never mind the cost of an M! moving under its own power, the things are impossible to airlift. A C5 can lift a whole one of them at a time. Also, while you might need to roll out the M1 against Russia, it is overkill in many situations. A lighter battle tank would work fine. that could of course have a smaller, more efficient engine and so on and so forth.
That would seem to be a more sensible course of action if you are going to spend time and money to rebuild a tank. Build and use those, keep the M1s hanging out if they are needed.
Now you're singing my song.
You are welcome on my lawn.
And you do know that with small villages, even something the size of a small FOB, the locals are going to know you are there, if they didn't know you were on your way already....
Those who live by the sword, get shot by those who live by the gun...
The problem is that a typical car engine is producing tens of kW of power (e.g., easily 30-40 kW when running at reasonable speeds, much more when accelerating). A 1 m^2 solar panel produces 0.1 kW of electricity. Not quite a relevant amount of energy in relative terms. It will improve your km/l by less than a few %.
If you're talking about enough power to supply single family home, then you're not really talking about enough power to even keep a battalion in business, let alone any larger unit. If all you're powering with this thing is company base camp sized bases (and even then you'd be cutting it close, these guys need to power a *lot* of technology these days) then it's hardly worth the expense to build and transport such a massive item. You appear to have a vision of what's going on over there which is based on completely valid military service, but about 10-15 years out of date. Small company sized FOBs are typically not permanent to warrant the kind of system you're talking about. Larger headquarters FOBS are immense, use way more power than you could provide with such a thing, and really would be fine with solar panels.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
You make a nuclear powered tank the size of a battleship, with enough armor and firepower to fend off any attack. Add a self-aware computer brain.
I've often wondered why we have compact portable atomic bombs, but no compact portable atomic generators. Perhaps now some will finally be developed! Besides, I can't imagine that solar panels would be a good idea at an FOB. I mean, big square shiny targets? Not good. And they really work poorly when disguised with that camo netting stuff.
No, I'm thinking that some portable nuke plants are in order here. Even something that has to be mounted on a semi flatbed is going to be more useful than a solar panel. At least the flatbed could be rolled into a large trench and covered with camo netting and guarded by dirt and sandbag berms.
Correct me if I'm wrong, but wouldn't some radiation leak from such a device, making it just as easily detected as a pile of solar panels?
Well, i thought if you can build a nuke generator the size of a smart-car, that should be able to fit into the engine bay of a modern tank, along with a few heavy duty electric motors. Now, it is quite probable that that thing will pump out more power then the traditional tank-engine, which means you can haul more weight, in this case armor, to make your tank even more invulnerable than it is (which you want, with a nuke gen inside)
Okay, the technology might be a decade away, and the railgun thing obviously wont happen for a while (and was somewhat sci-fi inspired, i will admit), but keeping an eye on that possibility might be a good thing to do
People, what a bunch of bastards
German tanks ran on gasoline. Russian tanks ran on Diesel. Less dangerously flammable, much lower fuel consumption, and if you can get the fuel to the injector and turn the engine over it will ignite. These were among the decisive factors at Kursk, possibly the turning point of WW2.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
"FOB" is a generic term for all of our bases "over there". The largest base in Iraq, Camp Victory, is the size of a midsized American city and is divided into a few "FOBs". They're essentially just areas owned by a specific command, you can drive from one end of Victory to the other without across all the FOBs in perfect safety (beyond a highly unlikely indirect fire attack). There are smaller, company or battalion controlled, FOBs but most of our people are in the larger ones.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
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:
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.
"keeping the troops from doing what they were sent there to do, to fight or engage local people."
Well, at least they're finally being honest about it. None of this "To bring democracy" crap.
The military *HAS* been infiltrated by dirty commies!
"I guess the moral of the story is, don't paint your airship with rocket fuel." -- Addison Bain
Even the Russians themselves weren't as confident as you seem to be. They were convinced they would never be able to deal with fighting on two fronts, against Germany and Japan. They relied on the Chinese to hold off the Japanese. They even pushed the communists in China, who they were supporting, to aid the Nationalists in fighting the Japanese.
The Soviet Union might have made things tough for Germany but I doubt they'd be able to fend them off forever. They were successful specifically because of American involvement.
Well, The fuel they use has radiation levels only just above background, so there isn't much radiation to start with. Then there is the fact that they are shielded enough to prevent even that minimal amount of radiation out.
Lastly, you would have to have some kind of Star Trek level technology to be able to detect radiation at a distance using a handheld device under battlefield conditions. Current hand-held radiometric equipment requires the detector to be fairly close to the radiation source.
So no, you are wrong, radiation from a TWR isn't an issue.
Official Heretic from the "Church of Global Warming". Proven right thanks to whistle blowers. AGW = Flat Earth Theory
I was the battalion communications officer for a field artillery unit. Since we were largely underutilized in our primary function (never had more than a platoon worth of guns active at a time), we were primarily providing the vast majority of the gate security for Camp Victory. The types of reactors you're talking about wouldn't even begin to power Camp Victory. It was the size of a city, and had dozens if not hundreds of 1500KW or better generators powering it.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Magic Beans!
Sorry Sir, you've just had a Glenn Beck moment and done the equivalent of saying you have all the one world government conspirators on tape. You are going to have to name this magical device with model number and manufacturer to retain any credibility. Anything less is decades out so far as reactor design goes.
As for easy transport, I've had enough trouble just carrying very small shielded radiation sources up ladders (gamma ray sources for radiography of welds). Guess what sort of mass heavy metals are? Also guess how heavy lead shielding is.
Yes, please.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
The tribal extremists are ALSO locals. Part of the problem is when you piss off the locals they join the tribal extremists. The Taliban would happily use it as recruiting material, claiming that "the Americans are polluting the land our people desperately need to survive" or something similar.
And yes, lead is a problem too but only if you think people's concerns are wholly rational. Lead and DU, while roughly equivalent from a hazard standpoint, have sufficiently different impact on public opinion.
=Smidge=
http://www.livescience.com/common/media/video/player.php?videoRef=080201-railgun
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=y54aLcC3G74
might be closer than you think.
or you might be accounting for government program delays.
"If still these truths be held to be
Self evident."
-Edna St. Vincent Millay
Yeah, but the battery needs charging most just after the car has been started. When you turn your car off the battery should be full up (unless you are doing very short journeys, in which case there is a better way to save fuel...), so what are the solar panels doing?
Most car alternators are around 50-100A at 13.6v or so - 1300W to 2600W, so I could see that on a low power car you could save some percentage of power usage, but what I don't see is why the battery would need charging after the car has been run, so the question remains, was the alternator removed? If so that seems like a slightly risky game to be playing
Ford had a prototype of a car that used a small reactor, the Nucleon. It was scuttled because at the time they were expecting lighter radioactive shielding materials which never were made.
For cars, I'd wouldn't go with a live reactor. Mainly because all it would take is one drunk driver to cause a mini Chernobyl.
However, the small reactors do have a number of uses that would improve life, once the technology improved to the point where the devices were essentially batteries that could be dropped into place and left with little to no maintaining:
1: Backup electric generators for buildings. Drop one in, and this could provide clean power for a data center. Since the fuel is spent regardless of an outage or no, in normal use, the reactor could put electricity on the grid 24/7 offsetting the electric bill costs. This way, data centers could be located anywhere, not just dependent on the power grid.
2: Reactors for gas stations when autos move to a complete electric infrastructure. Eventually there will be a time where gasoline phases out, so the underground tanks can be replaced by reactors for fast charge "fill-ups". This also can be fed back onto the grid to help if the main municipal power sources go out.
3: Desalination plants. As water needs only becomes more dire, coupling a reactor with gigantic desalination plants and large pipelines to move water inland will become critical for agriculture.
4: Thermal depolymerization. "Boiling" plastic to break it down back into short chain crude takes a lot of energy. However, it means that we can take landfills that burble with methane, run the garbage through various sorting machinery to filter out metals and such, then "cook" the plastic and animal refuse with usable crude as a result, ready for use for plastic making again. On a larger scale, ships could be doing this in the Pacific Gyre to obtain usable oil. Oil is well past peak, so it might not be a green thing to do, but actually profitable when gasoline starts hitting $8.00 a gallon.
5: Large scale weather modification. Doing something like massive jets of water out in the ocean to get more water vapor in the air so it rains can mean the different in having a drought inland versus a productive agricultural season.
6: Ability to inhabit otherwise uninhabitable places. As populations increase, there essentially are only three ways to deal with it. Wars for land, expand into space, or try to make areas like Antarctica or the Outback livable.
Exactly.
GP is assuming the Americans would have gone on to create the bomb. That is not certain.
The Germans were also working on their heavy water experiments at the time. Without US involvement the European war would have definitely lasted longer and could have possibly allowed the Germans to perfect the atomic bomb that the Americans might not have been even trying to create since they would not be involved in the war. The Americans were working hard for it primarily because they feared Germany would get it first. Germany *would* have achieved the atomic bomb, it is hard to speculate how long it would have taken, but it would have eventually happened and it also hard to know if the Americans would have had it or not. By the end of the war Germany did have bombers that could hit New York so if Germany achieves it first, game over.
That aside, without US involvement Germany *would* have taken Britain, then with only a single front to worry about they could have focused the entirety of their forces on Russia. It is not a forgone conclusion that Russia would have won that fight. Even with Germany's forces split between two fronts they almost were overrun. If Hitler had not been so obsessed with taking Stalingrad he could have bypassed it and hit Moscow before winter set in, especially if he had the resources from the Western front at his disposal. Germany had the finest military in the world at the time. I am not taking anything away from the Allies, but the fact is, the German military was the best. Efficient, professional and deadly.
If Germany was able to get the bomb....a Nazi regime with a nuclear arsenal is not something I would like to think about.
Then, much as I love the idea of solar power, if you can't get enough power from a nuke plant to run Camp Victory, the battle for solar power is already lost.
I'm going to take "dozens if not hundreds" and approximate that to about 100 generators. If they are, as you say, 1.5 megawatt generators, then we can assume that Camp Victory's power needs would be approximately 150 Megawatts, right?
I can see solar as a supplementary power source for certain low-power systems, but at about 10 watts per square foot, you'd need 150 thousand square feet of solar panels to replace a single one of the 1.5 Megawatt generators you cited. Plus you'd have an energy shortage at, say, night, so you'd have to at least triple your solar coverage in order to charge the batteries to get you through the night (or run generators or something during non-daylight times).
The issue is not that the solar panels are more delicate than a generator. It's simply that, in order to get enough power out of them, you need a lot more surface area of them, and they are therefore an easier target. You can't harden them or conceal them in any way, or they can't get the sunlight they need.
Your insurgents might not be able to hit a container-sized generator in the middle of camp, but when that same generator has to be replaced by a shiny square nearly 400 feet on a side, it'd be hard to miss. Sure, they couldn't take out all of it, but they could keep knocking down bits of it.
If you needed 100 of those generators, and to account for nighttime power, you'd need to replace them with a square of solar panels over 6,700 feet on a side. Ignoring the cost, and the fact that you'd need at least triple that to get through the night, you're talking well over a square mile of solar panels operating at peak efficiency to replace 100 generators, plus shitloads of batteries. Imagine how long that would take to set up.
Instead, you could replace those gas or Diesel generators with a 150 megawatts of quiet portable nuke generators, for 24/7 power in units that can be hardened and scattered about camp.
Look, I'm all for renewable power and saving energy. I ride my bike to work when I can. I carpool. I have a solar "sunshower" to heat my shower water. I'm anal about turning off lights and stuff I don't need. I run a 50MPG car to save fuel. Any pragmatic measures I can take to save power, I'm going to take.
But equipment that might get into harms way needs to be far more portable, far smaller, and far easier to harden than a solution that's practical for us civvie dweebs.
"This post contains words, known to the State of California to cause thought. Wash brain thoroughly after reading."
Every time I refill I do so from the same pump, always to the brim, and record the exact volume of fuel pumped and the mileage. I have a high-accuracy fuel-economy record going back 3 years.
the improvement in fuel efficiency from my conversions is between 2% and 2.5%
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
I think the definition hinges largely on what you consider the US "entering the war". If it is only US troops in Europe, then sure.
Then you're ignoring the massive amount of material support to all Allied nations from the US. US naval activity in all theaters. Strategic bombing, which was focused on industrial sites in 1942 and forced the Germans to spend resources countering it. The US operations in the Pacific, diverting Japan's efforts (whom the Soviets were also fighting).
I'm not trying to take anything away from the Soviet. They fought and suffered greatly. But they were on a thin edge until the end of 1942. And the Nazis already had their solution to a guerrilla war in the East... were fine with murdering everyone and repopulating.
On my car the alternator is wired so it cuts in when battery voltage drops to a certain point then cuts out when it reaches that threshold again. Solar charging improves the state of charge when the car is standing (cancelling out the drain from the security system and clock) and ensuring the battery is maximally charged.
My car often spends several days without being used and its noticeable how much less the car labours just after starting when its been unused for a week since fitting the panels
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
well i know railguns are in the experimental phase already, but considering they need to be overhauld after several firings, i think it will be a while untill they have it reliable enough for use as the main gun on a tank
People, what a bunch of bastards
Without US involvement, Germany still wouldn't have taken Europe - much less Russia. It's the Soviets who would have been the big winners and "liberated" Western Europe had the Americans stayed at home.
Completely wrong. Period.
Russia had their asses completely kicked. The only reason they were able to push is because of the US. Most people don't know but the US was supplying weapons and support long before the US even declared war. US merchant ships had been sunk by German U-Boats long before the US entered the war.
Many of the planes flown by China, Briton, and even Russia were supplied by the US. Small arms and munitions were also provided, along with food, and raw materials. If you've ever heard of the famous Flying Tigers, then you'll understand. Those were US built P-40s being flown by US and Chinese pilots.
The ONLY reason the allies won the war was because of US involvement on a "third and forth front". Remember, despite having a front with the British in Europe, including a theater in Africa, Germany completely kicked Russia's ass. The only reason the British were able to hang on as long as they did was because of the steady stream of supplies received from the US, including fuel, food, raw materials, small arms, munitions, ships, planes, tanks, trucks, man power, so on and so on.
While US forces did frequently integrate with British forces, such as in Africa, many US forces stood completely alone and effectively created that third and/or forth front on Germany. This drew massive pressure off of the Russians (not ignoring the British efforts which did more of the same). This in turn allowed Russia to come back swinging with technological wonders like their T-34, which allowed many shells and man portable AT rounds to largely ricochet right off.
To say WWII would have been won without the US' active involvement is nothing but a wet dream.
India 3/5 will likely be at a smaller company FOB. Since this story came out of 29 Palms, they must be utilizing it during mojave viper or whatever they're calling it now (~4 wk training op most groundside Marine units go through prior to deploying). I have a feeling that they're going to pack this shit up into an Conex box, send it over, and FORGET about it while they're there. Most company FOBs are already developed enough that they won't be setting up tents. They'll already have a generator. It won't be worth THEIR effort to actually set this stuff up and use it.
I was an 0656 (Data Network Specialist) with 3/4 out of 29 Palms for a few years and pumped twice with them to Iraq. You said you were a communications officer, I'm going to assume Army since you mentioned brigades. Did the Army have the UOC? Basically what it was is a ready-to-go COC that can fit on two highback HMMWVs with trailers. One of the trailers was full of networking equipment, already "set up". Switches, routers, servers, etc. Also came with laptops, a projector, tent, tables, you get the picture. It was supposed to revolutionize the way we fight. The idea was we could pack up the whole COC, move to a new pos, then set back up. Do you think it was ever used like that? Only during Mojave Viper before deploying, and that was because it was a requirement. Once we got in country, the majority of it stayed packed up in a Conex box the whole deployment. Some of the stuff would have been nice to use, but not at the risk of losing track of it and not being SL-3 complete. I guarantee the Marines of 3/5 will have the same attitude towards this system. They're being required to use it now (to make their BC look good), and won't touch it in country.
The problem with it is that it's difficult to properly monitor production. While hemp can't be used for pot, it's fairly easy to sneak a few pot plants into the mix and tough to monitor for.
You can still sell it in the US, you just can't grow it here, and the DEA has a zero tolerance policy. There are a few states that have legalized production, but I'm not aware of any actually doing so, and since it conflicts with federal law, I'd expect lawsuits if they ever do start production.
I've often wondered why we have compact portable atomic bombs, but no compact portable atomic generators. Perhaps now some will finally be developed! Besides, I can't imagine that solar panels would be a good idea at an FOB. I mean, big square shiny targets? Not good. And they really work poorly when disguised with that camo netting stuff.
No, I'm thinking that some portable nuke plants are in order here. Even something that has to be mounted on a semi flatbed is going to be more useful than a solar panel. At least the flatbed could be rolled into a large trench and covered with camo netting and guarded by dirt and sandbag berms.
The US Military has many smallish nuclear reactors - in every combat submarine in the fleet, for example. They're still fairly large, complicated, and expensive.
"Giving money and power to government is like giving whiskey and car keys to teenage boys" P. J. O'Rourke
Berlin would have fallen with or without the USA - it was only a question of who it fell too; the Soviets, the Allies or Both (as happened).
It happened only because of US involvement requiring Germany to split between two fronts, which is completely ignoring the pressures placed elsewhere because of directly US involvement.
I think the main issue with a portable fission reactor would be the risk of it being stolen in an ambush and then the fuel being harvested and used in a dirty bomb. I don't think you could get material suitable for a nuclear bomb out of it, but you could definitely pack some fuel in an IED and create one heck of a mess.
Regardless of practicality, the American public would go nuts over putting portable nuclear reactors in a combat zone. I'm all for nuclear power, but I don't think you're gonna see it in a war zone until the American public gets over its fear of all things nuclear. The industry is bouncing back though so I'm hopeful.
Solar is always auxiliary power. I don't think this stuff is to replace fossil fuel dependency, just mitigate it. You could have put enough solar cells on top of 4ID headquarters (of course it's not 4 ID headquarters any more, but whatever division is currently running that AO)to power half the damned thing, and you wouldn't have made it any more of a target. It was a huge sprawling 3 story office complex. The point isn't that you can get rid of all the generators, the point is to use less fuel. I seriously doubt the DoD is under any delusions that they can ship some solar cells over and stop worrying about diesel all together.
All I'm saying is that on the larger bases (where the majority of the people are), solar cells would be a much better auxiliary source than incredibly heavy, possibly dangerous, low yield mini-nuke plants. You also don't entirely understand the scale of a place like Victory (which, granted is unusually large). You can't hit large swathes of it even with mortars.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
For the most part, the German scientists were stonewalling their own government, taking their own sweet time developing the superweapon - fast enough to avoid some sort of purge, but as slow as they could manage. Nor was heavy water a particularly good direction. From what I've heard, the Germans also had an intercontinentaly nuclear bomber under development, except it was designed around a bomb 10 times the weight of ours.
After V.E. day the Brits had the German scientists on ice, and kept them under observation as they let them see the Hiroshima/Nagasaki coverage. It only took a few hours for them to figure out the critical bits from "general coverage." They were sandbagging in Germany.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
Unfortunately, hemp is marijuana's cousin, so growing enough industrial hemp to create enough fuel for a diesel truck will never happen unless marijuana is legalized. There are trace amounts of THC in hemp, but smoking it will only give you a headache, not get you high. Congress fails to see the difference (forestry lobbyists do not help - what would happen to forestry if we could make paper out of hemp? We'd have to stop cutting down the trees, man!)
I find the whole situation ironic. We are allowed to import enough hemp to make as many hemp necklaces as we want, but we can't grow it and contribute to help solve energy problems.
I'm not sure on this one, but there may be more THC in chocolate than there is in hemp, but of course chocolate is perfectly legal. I may be mistaken, but I know at least it's pretty comparable.
Whatever your opinion on marijuana is, hemp should be separated from that and be allowed to grow. A whole new industry, wouldn't that be nice?
To correct you on your THC in chocolate statement: Chocolate does not contain THC, but it does contain Anandamide which is a chemical that can bind to cannabinoid receptors in your brain. It produces a very weak, barely noticeable effect because it is broken down quite quickly.
All that aside, yes the potential for hemp is amazing. Fuel, food, paper, textiles, even whole houses can be made from hemp! It's a tragedy to see such a valuable resource go to waste.
TWRs use depleted uranium as a fuel source
And CANDUs use natural uranium as a fuel source. So what? They still generate a vast amount of highly toxic, highly radioactive waste due to the prolific production of long-lived isotopes during operation.
That the fuel happens to be safe is completely irrelevant to the risk involved, as after three months of operation there will be a wide variety of plutonium isotopes, iodine isotopes, and other goodies to spread around when (not if) containment is breached by the other group of idiots who think killing people is an efficient and effective way to achieve any particular end (other than killing people: killing people is great for that, so if your only goal is to kill people, I highly recommend killing people as a means of achieving it. Anything else... not so much.)
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Yeah, realistically I was talking more long term and large scale than the specific stuff that this one company is deploying. That particular bit seems almost like some sort of little test project. "Look we fielded this company with high tech energy saving stuff! We're doing something!" An element that small probably uses more diesel for its trucks than its generators anyway.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
Sounds like the request came down from the administration.
But really, how do they plan to keep the panels clear of dust?
You are aware the Nazis had their own nuclear program, correct?
It was nothing much, and not oriented toward building a bomb. Michael Frane's play "Cophenhagen" gets it right: if Heisenberg had wanted to build a bomb he wouldn't have needed a week to work out a reasonable estimate of the mass of the bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
There is simply no plausible case that the NAZIs were working on viable a nuclear weapons program.
Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
Less efficient and less robust than Diesels, don't scale so well, and when the priority is weight and portability, solar PV is better than solar concentrators. This is why they are driving around on the road near you.
From scarped cliff or quarried stone she cries "A thousand types are gone, I care for nothing, no not one."
Arguably, you could say one of the primary reasons Russia was able to successfully defend against the Germans was the fact that the Germans beat themselves, independant of the americans. Combine the ill-planned 'Operation Barbarossa' with a tenacious, motivated, well-led enemy, the Germans really had no chance.
Some factors of the German defeat:
1. Germany sent in a field army, not completely comfortable in urban environments
2. Germany was ill-prepared, both men and equipment for the cold environment
3. Germany was fighting a multi-front war (the only relationship to the americans)
4. Too long of supply lines, later succeptible to air attack (sturmavik)
In conclusion, I won't take anything away from the american involvement in WW2, they did their part, but to attribute any part of the German defeat in the Russian campaign to the americans, would be, in my opinion, disingenious to the Russian people who fought and died to save their homeland. Not to mention revisionism.
Hi, I Boris. Hear fix bear, yes?
I agree. Too many rich warhawks believe wars should be fought by someone else's son.
Right on.
I seem to observe these days that the civil liberties we fought for in the 60s and won are slowly being eroded. The only thing missing was the type of opinion voiced by the grandparent:
Actually, no. Education does that. A civil society does that.
Entitlement programs? You mean like the bank, where you put money in and are entitled to ask for it back?
Very interesting, apparently you're not aware of how SS/Medicare works. It's not, and never has been, a savings program. It's a pay as you go program. What that means is the working population pays for the retired population.
In practical terms, it means the generation that started SS made out like bandits. SS/Medicare tax started at 1% -- because there were literally no retired people to pay for. (Then-current retirees didn't magically get swept into the system "for some reason" wink wink. Guess they didn't really care about old people as much as... themselves.)
Baby boomers feel entitled to SS because they paid *some* money into it. The tax rates have risen over the years. But really, I can't feel too sorry for them when I'm paying 12% from day one, whereas they started at maybe 3% - 5% (including employer portion).
Sadly as long as we have a military industrial complex that makes more money than most third world countries that will simply never happen. Ike tried to warn us but they managed to keep us distracted with "ZOMG! Is that a commie?" until they were so firmly entrenched and so enriched they could simply buy the politicians that I don't see things changing until after our economic collapse (which considering we've lost 42 THOUSAND factories to offshoring just since 2001 probably will be soon) thanks to the incredible amount of influence they have.
I mean look at the stupid shit we have been blowing boatloads of cash on. The F22 and F35? WTF? Who in the hell are we going air to air with that the F15 through F18 couldn't seriously kick their ass? Hell the Chinese and Russians are using 80s tech fighters, no threats there. The middle east? from what I understand the Iraq air force was a turkey shoot. Yet we keep blowing assloads of cash we don't have acting like it is still the cold war. Hell we ought to cancel ALL new military spending except for UAVs, give our guys on the ground a 20% raise and war pay, and then use the rest to pay down our debt. But that wouldn't give the guys in the MIC money for their new Lexus, so that'll never happen.
As for TFA? Thanks to the coziness of the MIC whatever they choose will be 300% over budget and could have been built privately for a tiny fraction of what we'll blow. It is just shameful how much money we blow on this crap when we can't even defend our borders or give decent healthcare to the poor. Just shameful.
ACs don't waste your time replying, your posts are never seen by me.
Yup, just a gold star on a few officers' fitreps. I do think this would be very useful for the larger FOBs (Al Asad comes to mind).
Did anyone catch this from the article:
During EXFOB, Company I ran their equipment on solar and battery power for more than 192 continuous hours. This led to a saving of approximately eight gallons of fuel per day
Eight? That's it? When I was over, we used about 10 gallons of JP-8 per day JUST for our air conditioner genny (which was also a backup genny for our servers, though rarely used as such).
I've been advocating for an energy independent military for a long time. Supply lines are the vulnerable backside to any campaign. Reducing the material that flow through should be a number 1 concern of logistics.
Not that one or two of those proposed 25MW nuclear generators wouldn't be out of line either.
25MW, $25M
Assuming that's ONLY for the reactor, not the steam plant to actually produce the electricity, say $50M for a power plant
Let's assume that $100/gallon is a worst case scenario for a short period of time of intense fuel convoy attacks, and that it averages closer to $10-20/gallon.
Diesel is 37.3 MJ/L, $2.64-5.28/L, Assuming 30% efficiency*, 1 MJ = .278 kWh, 3.11 kWh per Liter, or $.85-1.70 per kwh, using diesel. Ouch.
A $50M 25MW plant, assuming a 90% capacity factor, should produce 197 Million kwh a year. Assuming it lasts 5 years, that's closer to 5 cents a kwh. Even if we double the cost AGAIN to $100M, that's still only 10 cents a kwh before operation expenses.
$800 for 200 watts of solar panel doesn't seem out of line right now. Figure once we're done militarizing it, adding extra components like inverters, and shipping, $1600 for 200 watts. Being fairly generous, that 200 watt panels should produce ~ 788 kwh/year. Figure on 5 year timeframe**, that's 41 cents a kwh.
Either way I see potential for major savings. I'm forced to agree that for bases that are large enough, a suitable nuclear generator would probably be the best solution. For the small ones, solar power looks like a good solution, but you'll still need a generator.
*A GW scale plant can get over 50%, but we're looking at big IC diesel engines.
**Both the reactor and panels should last longer, but I'm being paranoid here. Diesel generators are easy to move and clean up after, relatively speaking.
I don't read AC A human right
From orbit. It's the only way to be sure.
Because of this, we will see many more improvements in available tech soon for the regular population, which is always the case once military sets in on something....except weapons of course, but how many times did we see the army boots, before doc martins came out, especially all the camping gear which is always about 2 years behind technology wise...
Um, no. You may have a shred of a point with lend-lease supplying materiel in the first years of the war, but US involvement in Europe, while important, was more about saving England and liberating France/Italy before the communists did than materially affecting the course of the war.
The Soviets sacrificed nearly 15% of their population in World War 2, and had 8-10 million military deaths to our .5 million and Germany's 5.5 million - the eastern front was World War 2 and everything else was a sideshow by comparison. The Soviets were quite capable of crushing Germany singlehandedly, albeit with losses the western powers would have considered unacceptable. Had the German divisions at the Western front been up against Russia, England would still have bombed out their industrial base, and the Soviets would have simply crushed the Wermacht beneath a pile of Russian bodies. Besides, they only needed to get as far as Berlin, not all the way to Dunkirk and Sicily.
The main problem with using PV in Afghanistan has more to do with dust, damage, and replacement cost. The dusty environment there had us replacing computers at a rate of every 6 months. Most fans, hard drives, and other moving parts would have the bearings go to crap in 3 months. Given that dust on the PV arrays causes a dramatic drop in efficiency and output, plus the cost of replacement, this doesn't seem like a good plan. If we want to get serous about fuel dependency, then we need to develop better tactical generators. I'm all for a small nuke generator. Fly it in to the main FOBs, then use the most efficient diesel generator you can find in the smaller camps. You won't end dependency on fuel, but you probably can't do that anyway in a wartime environment. It's best to be efficient.
Government is not reason; it is not eloquent; it is force. Like fire, it is a dangerous servant and a fearful master.
Do you think this announcement has anything to do with todays news about Another 20 oil tankers burned as Pakistani Taliban claims responsibility for third attack in three days?
The shielding required for a tiny reactor isn't much less than for a huge one, thanks to the exponential attenuation of radiation. Say a big reactor produces 10^9 times too much radiation to be safe unshielded and one a thousandth of the size produces 10^6 times too much - the small one will still need 2/3 of the shielding thickness of the big one.
Also, depleted uranium isn't very hazardous but fission products certainly are.
Because all but the largest bases can be overrun / lost.
If there is one thing the bulk of Americans rally about, it is maintaining and growing our military strength. The military attempting to move away from fossil fuels is the most positive development to ever occur in the so called "alternative energy movement", which should never have been trivialized. Petroleum distillation is simply not viable over the long haul.
I'm sorry, I don't think you've ever actually studied WW2 in any detail. Frist, Japan did take on the Soviet Union and got their asses handed to them both times in battles of Lake Khasan and Khalkhin Gol . They sued for peace and turned their eyes to China. Second, the European theater was completely decided on the Eastern Front. The Germans failed to win at the Battle of Moscow. The Russians had turned everything around by Stalingrad. By time the Battle of Kursk happened, the end of Nazi Germany was written. D-Day and the Western European Front dealt with a forth of the resources that the Germans were throwing at the Eastern Front. If the Allies had not landed in Europe, the Soviet Union would have gone all the way to the sea.
While it may be arguable that the Soviet Union might not have been is such a good spot without Lend Lease and things were touch and go in the early part of the war, they still did the brunt of all the fighting against the Nazis.
I have been writing Senator Udall (my senator) for 2 years to get him to create an X-prize. The prize would be for energy beaming as well as ultra-caps. The right way to do this is to have staged prizes for each.
.25 miles, then .5 miles, then 1 mile, then 4 miles, then 20 miles, then 300 miles. Now why do the above? Because .25 mile allows for providing power to robots and electric weapons. Likewise, it can be used in civilian to provide power to mining equipment such as gravel pits. A .5 mile is about the same use for DOD, but now, it provides for power for ag use (electric tractors). Then a 1 mile, allows for some useful operations for the military. Basically, a small balloon, helicopter, or plane can fly over an area and provide power to loads of areas. This is useful to reflect power various groups in the DOD, but it is also useful for rescue. Imagine if Haiti, or New Orleans had say 10 MWs of power within 4 hours after the event being beamed around? That would have saved NUMEROUS lives in Haiti. And after hurricanes, it would allow for getting power going very quickly. At 4 miles, it allows for use over most battle fields (hard for AQ/taliban to hit it, but Iran could). OTH, 20 miles would give a height of 80-100,000 K altitiude. THat will be on the edge of what Iran could hit. Finally, 300 puts it in space.
The beaming would be at
And ultra-caps make the most sense for storage. Their issue is lack of energy density and high costs. However, the DOD would gladly pay to ramp up production if it brought down prices. Ability to take a charge fast and give it up, allows for quick re-charge, and the ability to provide electric weapons power.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
Yes, it is shameful. However, one must have a proper perspective. U.S. defense budget for the new year (not yet approved) is about $720 Billion. The budget deficit added to the national debt in the last fiscal year was roughly $1400 Billion. So even whacking defense to $0 still wouldn't pay for health care for anyone.
The projections for increases in expenditures in the U.S. budget for entitlements, that other 2/3's of the budget, is expected to far outstrip the U.S. ability to tax enough to pay for.
Anyhow, of the roughly $700 Billion in defense, about $400 is appropriations, i.e., material like trucks, tanks, bullets, ships, the sort of stuff that wears out, etc. The rest is for personnel. Let's guess for the sake of argument we can whack $200 Billion of that. That'd be $200 Billion that won't be going to help employ the people producing the material. And there'd be the ripple effect through the economy. So you wouldn't even be saving the $200 Billion. Also, don't forget that China is building a large blue water navy...those nice well-adjusted Chinese wouldn't think on leaning upon anyone with that Navy, now would they?
If you want to cut defense, let's start by the mission first, then see what we need to cover. That's sounds sensible. Except that Japan and Korea pretty much cover the U.S. expense for the troops, ships, and planes we use there. Taiwan buys a lot of big ticket defense items from the U.S., no savings there. That would leave Europe. Now, that's an arena ripe for plucking. Their defense budgets are tiny compared to their requirements. The U.S. makes up the difference. My thought is that a people not willing to defend themselves isn't worth defending. Let's start by pulling troops and bases out of Europe.
We could save a few Billion by telling Pakistan we don't like them any longer and since the feeling is mutual, we'll be supporting India from now on. India pays its way, still a few billion is a few billion.
Could try the same with Egypt, except if that pushes the country into the loving hands of the Muslim Brotherhood and their dream of the Final Solution to their Jewish Problem...in which case, we'll be sending Israel a lot more aid.
To say WWII would have been won without the US' active involvement is nothing but a wet dream.
You make many good points, but my post was made assuming lend-lease and other other indirect cooperation and help remained the same. The USA could have kept troops out of the Western front. Berlin would have fallen to the Soviets because Hitler made the classic mistake of trying to invade Russia in the winter - The Eastern front was lost when Operation Barbarossa failed. Once the Eastern front had failed, it was only a matter of time before the Soviets beat Hitler, the final years of the war and Allied liberation of Europe were almost as much about keeping Western Europe out of Soviet hands as liberating it. I'm not trying to take anything away from the American war effort - as a Brit, I'm profoundly grateful for it - I'm just pointing out that I think that US troops in Western Europe changed post-war history far more than it changed the direct outcome of WWII.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
You bring up an interesting point, because of course the dust and grit *is* a huge issue. Seems like the sort of thing that solar manufacturers would be old hands at dealing with though. I mean all of the *best* places to install solar are also very dry, dusty, and gritty. "Desert" and "solar power" are kind of like peanut butter and chocolate. I don't know enough about solar installation to make any educated guess here, but my assumption is that grit and dust and pretty much things solar people expect to have deal with?
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.
It happened only because of US involvement requiring Germany to split between two fronts,
I'm sorry, I disagree. In my opinion once Operation Barbarossa failed, Berlin's fate was sealed. US support was far more vital in terms of lend-lease and other indirect help than actual troops on the ground; the final years of the War in Europe were just as much about keeping Western Europe out of Soviet hands as they were about liberating it.
If I have nothing to hide, you have no reason to search me
That was my point.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
How big exactly do you think a tank engine is? An M1A1 Abrams Turbine Engine + Gearbox is pretty big (and heavy), but the actual Turbine isn't much bigger than a large deisel pickup truck engine. If you figure you need to replace that turbine engine with some sort of electric motors / gearboxes capable of carrying not only the weight of the trank but now a reactor and undoubtedly some big heavy batteries for load leveling and such... Yeah, doesn't really add up.
Berlin would have fallen to the Soviets because Hitler made the classic mistake of trying to invade Russia in the winter -
Had it not been for the Allies (materially backed by the US) putting pressure on Germany's other fronts, come first thaw, the Germans would have simply re-enforced their Russian fronts and finished the Russians. And that's ignoring the forces which were not committed because of the British front which was completely sustained by US resources.
Bluntly, without the Allies receiving massive direct and indirect support from the US, its extremely unlikely the Russians would have won. Even with massive support and as you point out, the harsh Russian winter, Russia was barely able to turn the tide. With any less support, its extremely unlikely Russia would look anything like it did post WWII.
After the Japanese lost the battle of Khalkhin Gol they were not very interested in fighting the Soviet Union. Regardless of whatever the US did. Japanese naval power was formidable, and they had a decent air force, but their tanks and infantry were inferior to the ones fielded by the Soviet Union. They would not have lasted in a protracted land battle. It is one thing to win against Chinese using obsolete weapons, a different thing fighting against the best armored vehicles of WWII.
The big difference, of course, is that if the UAE (to pick an example) decides to have a civil war, or invade Oman, or whatever - we won't necessarily have to intervene. Which would save us quite a bit of money and trouble.
Right, because people just love being on unemployment. If what you're saying here is that the government ought to start paying a bunch of unemployed people to do productive work, I'm with you there. We'd get economic stimulus plus make a dent in our giant backlog of needed infrastructure work.
Everyone seems to think that the object of the game here is to 1) save money or 2) be green. Well, I guess there are some elements of that, but the real issue is logistics. It's really, really hard to get fuel to some of the places where the services need to use it, so if they can remake their forces so as to use less, they can be more operationally effective.
Also, as a minor but related point: on the other side of the cost ledger, you've left out the costs involved in transporting said fuel to said locations. I've heard price quotes of something like a hundred bucks a gallon by the time you finally get it to where it needs to be. Further: you wouldn't necessarily want to retrofit the M1s. It would probably be more effective to build the next tank with energy efficiency in mind.
Even if Moscow had been taken Germany would not have won the war. Just like Napoleon did not win by taking Moscow either. Most Soviet manufacturing plants had either been moved, or were in the process of being moved behind the Urals. To win the war decisively the Germans needed to smash the Soviet Union's military and capture their industrial production facilities. Germany stretched their supply chain over the limit. That was why they lost.
Regarding Allied bombing impacting production capacity, German war material production actually increased at the height of the campaign. While this bombing campaign did take away some manpower from German industry, most of the work done constructing underground facilities was done by slave labor from the occupied regions, something the Germans had in large quantity. I think the Allied blockade was far more effective as it reduced Germany's access to strategic materials which eventually caused their war machine to collapse. The strategic material shortage ranged from specialized metal alloys, to petroleum, and even food.
The Soviet Union would have had an even more costly victory, but I still think they would have won.
You are correct, but that occurred in 1939. The Japanese knew they couldn't take on the Soviets and the USA, so they made peace with Stalin and turned to the South Pacific. By 1942, many of the Soviet units and commanders had been redeployed against Germany.
The original point was whether the US had any impact on the eventual outcome of the war. I think its likely the Japanese would have taken a more aggressive approach to the Soviet Union if they didn't have to worry about the US Pacific Fleet. Especially when Germany appeared to have Russia up against the wall.
The original post seems to argue that, because the US wasn't on the ground at Stalingrad, there was no impact. This totally ignores the resources that the Axis committed against even potential US moves. What would an additional 60 full-strength divisions have done for Germany on the Eastern Front?
http://www.pdfernhout.net/recognizing-irony-is-a-key-to-transcending-militarism.html
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
Two problems with that. Firstly the United Kingdom "purchased" its war materials from the USA, they where not free. Just like we did in WWI. This massive transfer of wealth is what made the USA so rich so quickly and conversly why we have no empire anymore. We have only recently finished paying the loans off. The whole "lend lease" program happened because Wall Street bankers where rubbing their hands in glea with the thought of all the money they could make.
The second problem is that the defeat of the Luftwaffe in the Battle of Britain signalled the end of Germany's plans to invade permantly, and thanks to Ultra we knew this to be the case. This all happened long before the USA actually got involved. Even if they had won they where struggling to put together a suitable naval operation to actual make the invasion work. Remember it took years of preparation for the reinvasion of mainland Europe, so the notion that Germany could have done the opposite without similar preparation is somewhat laughable.
.. that the mileage I do is heavily urban and this holds down my net economy - on long runs I've occasionally recorded more than 55mpg, and have to carefully note when I've done them or it also skews my figures.
I have been a user for about 10 years. This ends Feb 2014. The site's been ruined. I'm off. Dice, FU
You have the Gundams drop in a stronger bridge. Isn't that obvious?
Try not to take me more seriously than I take myself.
First: No said otherwise, so its simply not a problem, nor does it have any bearing on the subject.
Second: You're completely ignoring the time line.
None of your points place into contention any of the counter points I've previously provided.
natural hemp rope and hemp oils would have quite an appeal.
w00t! I just won talking point bingo.
"If you need the fuel, don't bother with trying to get it in overland. Fly it in. ie. quit screwing around and do the job right."
Eats FAR too many sorties from a limited airlift fleets. Not more cost effective than trucking, even counting burned trucks and dead (contract foreign national) drivers.
"This post is an artistic work of fiction and falsehood. Only a fool would take anything posted here as fact."
"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."
Given your sig I don't expect facts to get in the way of your opinions but US FOB's are similar in size to a small city with an airport.
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
It’s fine when you’re fighting cave men. But any one with satellites can see you.
Rocket Surgeon.
They didn't have to fend them off for ever. Germany was over stretched and undersupplied (it’s a tiny country that was crippled by WW1) they needed to win the whole lot quick hence Blitzkrieg the lightning attack. Nazis had to win before the 11th hour, Russia just had to wait it out (easier said then done). The war was essentially over when the 'German war machine' ground to a halt in Stalingrad.
Rocket Surgeon.
And you wonder why your children and grandchildren never visit you ...
Whoa man. No one attacks the fact you never have any girls visit you. Leave the veteran alone, each generation after an event is never going to understand it, because they weren’t there, and cause history is RE-written by the winners (like Winston Churchill where you seem to get all your info from).
Rocket Surgeon.
What kind of car do you have? I've never seen one that works in that manner, unless you have a hybrid and your calling the gasoline engine the alternator.
How big do you think a smart car is? as for gearboxes, electric motors dont need them, they provide mountains of torque right from 0 RPM up to ridiculous speeds (the tesla roadster has a 2 speed gearbox, up to 70 mph is in first), and for 90% of their range efficiency is very high. The obvious way to put electric motors in a tank would be one on every thread-wheel (with the added benefit it could still move on semi-solid/solid ground with its thread run off)
People, what a bunch of bastards
Just like the current focus on fuel transport will cause enormous problems that cannot be solved by any of the (long-term) solutions here (today there was another large-scale burning of fuel trucks).
Houston, we have a problem...
As usual, using less fuel is always better.
Every kWh generated by solar panels is one kWh less of fuel that has to be transported through harms way. Multiply that by a few panels and you soon save one transport every time.
The AC (needed in hot weather) takes its energy from the battery, which depletes it. Why do you think it doesn't run out?
Do whaaat? Never heard of a car AC running off electricity. Every car I've ever owned and have seen has a big honkin belt attaching it (the compressor) to the crankshaft.
OK... Now I have to ask... Any idea what, if any, advantage there is to using that thing instead of a regular breach loaded self propelled howitzer? I mean you're right, it's technically a mortar, but it seems to have none of the usual advantages of a mortar over a breach loader (portability, ease of use, and deploy-ability mostly). What an odd contraption.
I don't need a million points of light, just two points of multi-mode fiber and a 10 Gig-E router.