US Army: Peak Oil and the Army's future

[4dsc]

http://www.energybulletin.net/13737.html

Good read here.. I wonder how anyone could be in denial about peak oil after reading this??

“The days of inexpensive, convenient, abundant energy sources are quickly drawing to a close,” according to a recently released US Army strategic report. The report posits that a peak in global oil production looks likely to be imminent, with wide reaching implications for the US Army and society in general.

The USGS estimate implies a five-fold increase in discovery rate and reserve addition, for which no evidence is presented. Such an improvement in performance is in fact utterly implausible, given the great technological achievements of the industry over the past twenty years, the worldwide search, and the deliberate effort to find the largest remaining prospects.

The authors warn that in order to sustain its mission, “the Army must insulate itself from the economic and logistical energy-related problems coming in the near to mid future. This requires a transition to modern, secure, and efficient energy systems, and to building technologies that are safe and environmental friendly.” The best energy options they conclude are “energy efficiency and renewable sources.” However, "currently, there is no viable substitute for petroleum."

They do not expect that any transition will be easy: “energy consumption is indispensable to our standard of living and a necessity for the Army to carry out its mission. However, current trends are not sustainable. The impact of excessive, unsustainable energy consumption may undermine the very culture and activities it supports. There is no perfect energy source; all are used at a cost.”

[yourout]

1. All that Peak oil means is the Army will be invading oil rich..

for the next several decades if the Neocons are still in power.

[bemildred]

2. Ah, yes, the crazy aunt in the attic.

Modern mechanized military forces are 100% dependent on cheap oil. Think "Road warrior" and you have the right sort of idea. This is the first instance I have seen of someone in the defense bidness taking notice of the situation.

[no_hypocrisy]

3. Guess the Army won't be returning to horses and calvary

anytime soon, huh?

[Coastie for Truth]

4. DOD's engineers are at work

<>
Most Environmentally-Friendly Military Vehicle: The Shadow RST-V (Photo: Army-Technology.com)

<>
Ready for flight: The Shadow RST-V can be reduced in size for air transporation.

Is the DoD going green? The new diesel-electric hybrid Shadow RST-V certainly makes it seems that way. It uses less than 50 percent of the normal fuel weight of a Humvee, and runs on four magnet motors and two lithium-ion battery packs. A typical Humvee guzzles over 1,000 pounds of fuel per mission, and the civilian equivalent (the Hummer H2) was ranked among the "12 Most Environmentally Unfriendly Vehicles of 2004." But don't worry, a green-friendly Humvee is fairly low-priority on the DoD's list of innovations. The Shadow RST-V's reduced fuel consumption wasn't created to make it better for environment, it was designed make it the stealthy and efficient multi-purpose attack vehicle of the future.

The Shadow RST-V is a new diesel-electric hybrid vehicle used for reconnaissance, surveillance, and targeting. The vehicle is aluminum bodied, with two side doors and a rear access ramp. Bulletproof windows are standard, and for added protection against small arms and mines, an armor package can also be installed. The Shadow RST-V demonstrates the most current of cutting-edge technology developed by Naval materials scientists with sponsorship by the Office of Naval Research (ONR) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). Shattering records during testing, the Shadow is poised to replace the Humvee as the Marine Corps' new multi-purpose vehicle.

Why replace the Humvee? First of all, the Shadow RST-V can run circles around the Humvee, and go undetected while doing so. Its diesel-electric hybrid powertrain makes the Shadow's "stealth" mode possible. In this mode, the Shadow is operated on pure battery power, allowing for silent movement for over 20 miles with very low thermal and acoustic signatures. Four RST-Vs were tested during the last few years. This included more than 7,000 miles of field-testing and 1,000 mile endurance runs. The Shadow successfully completed live firing and severe off-road exercises, and broke a few records in the process. At the Army's Rock Ledge Course at Yuma, the Shadow came in with a time of 13 minutes and 50 seconds. The previous time was over 32 minutes. The RST-V also breaks records with fuel economy. The Humvee typically uses 1,040 pounds of fuel per month during extended reconnaissance missions. The RST-V uses only 440.

<<<snip>>>

[mom cat]

18. One little flaw: Alumniun bodies

"The vehicle is aluminum bodied, with two side doors and a rear access ramp. Bulletproof windows are standard, and for added protection against small arms and mines, an armor package can also be installed."
The current tanks are getting blown to bits.How long would a soldier last in one of these.

[dcfirefighter]

23. Different vehicles for different tasks:

The vehicle pictured is a "RSTA" vehicle Reconnaissance, Surveillance, & Target Acquisition. As such, it is designed to be relatively light, fast, and stealty. It should travel around the flanks and not engage the enemy directly - it avoids destruction by avoiding detection, and uses it's extended mast & optics to observe the enemy from a concealed position.

This type of vehilce is NOT meant to drive down an urban street & support infantry, nor to directly confront other vehicles. For that job, you need heavy armored vehicles, like the M1 Abrams or the M2 Bradley (which has an aluminum hull).

[Coastie for Truth]

25. Most of the GM fuel cell and hybrid

AUTO SHOW PROTOTYPES/CONCEPT CARS are also built with plastic or aluminum bodies and aluminum structures to get apparently good mileage. This is a "concept" vehicle -

I only wasted eight years of my career working on the GM Electric Vehicle 1. Not a complete waste - met some great people, affiliated with Lawrence Tech, and learned why GM is going to Hades in a hand bag - and taking workers and hometowns with it.

[newswolf56]

5. As it said in an old song well known to my grandparents' generation:

"Jine the ca-val-ree."

Now we know why China, alone among modern industrial nations, still has something like a dozen divisions of horse cavalry under arms. And why Russia, whose war plans have always depended heavily on rail transport -- precisely the reason the Russian rail-gauge is unique (so that other nations can't run their rolling stock on Russian tracks) -- still insists its railroads are strategically vital: you can run steam locomotives on virtually anything.

With energy in short supply, the objection that air power makes cavalry and railroads obsolete no longer applies: you can't fly airplanes without petro-fuels. Period. End of statement, end -- forever -- of the great human folly of flight: the Icarus myth not as an old story about a long-forgotten hot-air balloon but rather a prophetic vision of the eternally earthbound human future.

Too bad the U.S. has arrogantly shut down its own railroads (done entirely in service to moronic greed: the far greater profits to be realized via automotive transport and internal combustion engines). That move, by the way, sealed our doom as a nation: just as railroads united us, their absence will tear us apart -- especially now that the forthcoming energy shortages and outsourced material costs mean the U.S. rail network, formerly the worlds greatest (and with the world's finest and most powerful steam locomotives) cannot possibly ever be rebuilt.

Here for those too young to remember, perhaps too young to have even seen such things, is just a taste of what the lords of the board rooms threw away in the name of profit -- this proud vestage of the time when "American craftsmanship" was truly the world standard:

http://www.retroweb.com/nwsteam.html

I'm glad I'm old. Within 50 years life in the (former?) United States will be a horror beyond conception: a savage hell of starvation and disease not only unimaginable but so far beyond previous human experience there is no language capable of even approaching it. No humans in the million-plus years of human existence ever faced a future like this one -- a future that offers absolutely nothing but bottomless dread.

[juliana24]

6. "Soylent Green" come to life....

[rfkrfk]

7. aircraft can run perfectly well on ethanol .. n/t

[newswolf56]

8. If you're an aeronautical engineer, I'll defer to your expertise, but...

based on what I know -- this from some unofficial conversations with Boeing types a few years ago -- there is NO safe and practical ethanol equivalent of jet fuel (nor can there ever be due to absolute limitations imposed by molecular chemistry), and efficient carburetion of ethanol in piston engines is impossible at altitudes much above about 10,000 feet. The 21st Century version of a Boeing P-12 (or the comparable Polikarpov I-5) would be just as vulnerable to interdiction by ground fire as were the originals. But the whole discussion is moot due to the lubrication problem detailed in the next paragraph.

The ultimate barrier to ethanol is the absolute limit imposed by the fact there is NO -- I say again NO -- non-petroleum substitute for lubricating oil. Without adequate lubrication -- no matter what fuel might be discovered to replace petroleum derivatives -- any and all internal-combustion engines will grind themselves into scrap within minutes. And without petroleum-based insulation for electronics, there will be no electronics. Period. (The original Edison-era wire-insulation was a combination of rubber and cloth, the former impossible to obtain without re-colonizing Southeast Asia, the only place rubber plants grow, or paying definitively hostile nations whatever price they choose to demand.)

I don't hold to the back-to-the-stone-age scenario for the post-Peak Oil scenario, but I do recognize how dependent we are on petroleum for everything from fuels and lubricants to packaging and the insulation on electrical wiring, and I recognize that once the oil runs out, technology will at the least be very quickly reduced to a 19th Century pre-flight level. World population will be reduced by plague, famine and war accordingly.

Given these horrific realities, the United States faces two -- and only two -- alternatives. One is already being imposed on us: the emergence of an ultimate fascist state based on a corporate economy similar to manoralism in which one is either part of the ruling class or is a neo-serf literally owned by (and therefore totally enslaved by) the corporations -- a kind of degradation literally too horrible to contemplate, especially since we already see how it will be enforced: by Abrahamic theocracy (whether Christian or Islamic) and therefore by a New Dark Age that will literally last until humanity itself is extinct. The other alternative -- unlikely at best -- is the triumph of a global socialist revolution (whether via the ballot box or other means) that will (1) ensure that the residual wealth of the old USA is equally divided among all its surviving residents while (2) ensuring that our nation takes its place in a world that shares the remaining resources equally while (3) doing whatever possible in terms of re-forestation and de-industrialization to restore the global ecosystem. Here is a living portrait of how such a society might look:

http://www.globalpublicmedia.com/articles/657

The shape of the future and what it will be -- fascist savagery or socialist humanitarianism -- is in fact the ultimate stake in the political struggles of today.

_________
Edit: addition of link and revisions necessitated thereby.

[rfkrfk]

9. modifications needed, of course

for piston aurcraft, heavy duty carb heater, etc

for turbines,I would think the compressed air would be hot enough.
--> ethanol has 67 percent of the energy of petrol, so less range.<--

for lube oil, a certain amount could be synthesized.
certain applications need big volumes of lube, so not sure about that

there is always...
coal to methanol
natural gas to liquids
coal for ships, rail
palm oil to biodiesel
heavy crude

chemicals and plastics {not sure what to write}

[dcfirefighter]

16. Energy Density of biodiesel

is sufficient for air travel.

I imagine the advantages of mechanization and motorization would trump the benefits of equine cavalry, which is completely vunerable to simple artillery.

Regardless of the scarcity of petrofuel, it's even scarcer if you have to ship it in: I'd bet the logistical costs of fuel are significant enough to make the going rate of oil largely irrelevant: Even with 'Cheap' Oil, the military has been trying to increase it's fuel efficiency in order to simply logistics operations. I believe that fuel accounts for roughly half the tonnage of logistical requirements.

Hybrid Electric Vehicles are wanted more for the other benefits rather than merely fuel efficiency: they can operate nearly silently; they can maintain an overwatch position on battery power alone, rather than a with a IR hot motor running; they can provide sufficient power for radars, radios, etc., reducing the need for generators; for short distances, they can operate in 'stealth' mode.

Rail Transport for military vehicles ridiculously easy to interdict: you know exactly where materiel is going to go, it's difficult to make a short detour, and there are typically many many less railways than roadways.

Nonmechanized infantry is cannon fodder in offensive operations. I'm sure the Chinese horse cavalry are actually dragoons, able to reinforce defensive positions despite a naval blocade of petroleum.

OTOH, US SF have used horses in Afghanistan, and Marines have trained with mules for mountain warfare.

The most telling effect of Peak Oil for the US Military will be the chilling effect it has on training exercises.

Even at $1000/bbl, a price that would virtually eliminate petroleum as a fuel, it would still be used for lubricating oils and synthetic stock, though I'm sure that recycling would be a lot more popular.

The Iraq war has taught the US military that 'light and agile' doesn't cut it in today's urbanized world. Heavy Armor and door-to-door infantry are needed - IN THE OFFENSE.

In the DEFENSE, dispersed Infantry with modern Anti-Tank Guided Missles and Man-Portable Air Defense Systems can repel virtually any attack, if they are resupplied and cared for (by a sympathetic populace).

Possibly the greatest means of reducing fuel use in modern warfare is with decisive strategic strikes, that, by themselves may be extremely fuel intensive, but may take the fight out of the enemy in days rather than years.

While probably unpopular on DU, it seems to me that we have a moral obligation, on some level, to intercede on the behalf of oppressed people. For example, I belive we should have gone into Bosnia earlier; I have no problem (other than the cut-short execution) with the war in Afganistan; we (and the UN) should already be in Darfur.

In each case, I believe the 'best' method would be an overwhelming maneuver of airborne and marine forces into the oppressed areas, very early in the war. There's only so much the USAF and USN attack planes can control from 10,000 ft. I feel that we would have OBL by now had we not been distracted by *'s Iraq misadventure.

That being said, I've thought for some time that US expeditionary forces (USA 82nd ABN Div, USMC MEFs) would benefit, logistically, from renewable energy generators in their forward garrisons. Considering the original thought that the logistic chain makes fuel very very expensive at the forward end makes it even more beneficial to replace heaters with passive solar & insulation, generators with PV, wind, & batteries, some helicopters with STOL aircraft, some vehicles with lighter vehicles, etc. A forward camp might be studded with turbines and covered with PV.

[mom cat]

20. Stopping war would be much more fuel efficient. n/t

[dcfirefighter]

24. I'm not as idealistic as you.

Stopping war implies that EVERYONE on the planet is on board. It would only take one group to upset the apple cart. If everyone were pacifistic and disarmed, who would stand up to the hitlers and napoleons in the future?

However, the pinch of peak oil favors DEFENSIVE forces over OFFENSIVE forces - which tends to put a damper on warfare.

[mom cat]

26. I will take hope in whatever form I can find it.

[mom cat]

19. Thanks for the link on how Cuba made a humane transition to a low

petro way of life and increased thair quality on life.
I followed the links to a wonderful list on resources for the upcoming transition:
http://www.communitysolution.org/resources.html

I am trying to find out as much as I can about urban retrofitting. Not all of us can go to a rural eco village, though I wish that I could.

So, how do we use our ingenuity to figure it out.This is a list of resources that I will add to my treasure trove.

[OneBlueSky]

10. wouldn't it be great if we couldn't fight any more wars because . . .

the military simply ran out of gas? . . .

[newswolf56]

13. Disagree vehemently. If the military "runs out of gas"...

that leaves us utterly defenseless in a world that -- unless it is transformed by global socialism -- will be increasingly savage, with the savagery sinking to a horror so bottomless the human mind cannot imagine it. Think Somalia on a planetary scale with the torture-mentality of Abrahamic Fundamentalism...and thermonuclear weapons.

[Nihil]

14. But the good news is ...

... that at least the bastards will be kept in their own country and
not free to roam the world, killing foreigners.

You are already utterly defenceless against a determined enemy but
this way (i.e., if the military "runs out of gas") there should be
enough gung-ho idiots to defend the borders of the country and none
left able to murder civilians elsewhere.

[newswolf56]

15. Having been one of those "bastards" myself, let me assure you...

even the most "gung-ho idiots" are NOT "free to roam the world, killing foreigners." Soldiering is following orders: doing what you are told, going where you are told when you are told, and staying home when you are told to stay home. Don't blame the GIs. Blame their bosses: the politicians (and the people who elected them). Now please excuse me; once again, I need to go wipe spittle off my face.

[bemildred]

17. Yes. Don't blame the grunts.

:thumbsup:

[Nihil]

22. Don't blame the weapon, blame the person pulling the trigger.

This works on both levels: blame the politician who "pulls the trigger"
and "fires" the armed forces at another country's citizens but also the
"warrior" who "pulls the trigger" and "fires" a missile at a house, the
one who drops 500lb bombs in a city and the one who believes in shooting
first regardless of the target.

[Nihil]

21. Thank you for the assurance.

There was a trial in a certain German town which corrected the
"soldiering is following orders" perception of implied innocence
but that wasn't my concern.

My point was that without the vast quantities of fuel available
for transport of the GIs, their officers and the politicians will
NOT be able to send their trained killers into other countries
(i.e., the places where the "foreigners" live). Do you disagree?

Or is your problem that you dispute that soldiers are trained to kill?
That they are psyched up to believe that they are the best?
That they are constantly reminded that they are "defending their
country against XYZ"? That they kill & maim far more innocent
civilians than they ever manage of "the enemy"?

I will be glad for the day when they are not able to travel thousands
of miles around the world to behave as trained. You may defend your
soldiers (and their fellow government servants) to your hearts content
but I just want them to stay at home.

Hopefully you can manage your next reply without dribbling spittle
all over your face.

[rfkrfk]

11. hybrid version of the M1 - Abams tank in the works,improved mileage

1.3 instead of 1 mpg

[Kolesar]

12. The military is placing alternative energy sources on military bases

They don't want to have to deal with a blackout during the inevitable blackouts or oil shortages. This research is being done by NASA at the Glenn (Lewis) facility.

[Oneliest]

27. Solar Water Heating in Military Housing

I've noticed on Oahu at least that quite a bit of the housing stock is being outfitted with solar water heating and I believe that new housing to be built will incorporate it in the initial design.

If the DOD gets committed to alternative energy particulary portal types that can be used in vehicles, and various equipment, theres a good chance that technology will get mainstreamed.