It’s bad enough that the US Army is allowing in transgenders (who have a much higher rate of mental health issues, suicidal tendencies around military grade weapons), reducing physical fitness standards, and raft of other Woke stuff. So, sure, let’s worry more about ‘climate change’ rather than protecting the U.S. and being able to project power
U.S. Army’s first climate plan calls to slash emissions and build electric vehicle fleet
The U.S. Army on Tuesday unveiled its first climate strategy focused on protecting and training soldiers amid worsening climate disasters like floods, heat waves and drought and cutting the service’s greenhouse gas emissions.
The Army’s plan, a response to President Joe Biden’s executive orders calling on agencies to adapt to climate change, directs the service to slash its emissions in half from 2005 levels by 2030 and reach net-zero emissions by 2050.
As part of the strategy, the Army plans to install a microgrid on all of its installations by 2035 and have an fully electric non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2035. It will also work to cut emissions from buildings and include climate change threat mitigation into its land management decisions.
The military considers non-tactical vehicles as
Non-Tactical Vehicles (NTV) comprise of any commercial motor vehicle, trailer, material handling or engineering equipment that carries passengers or cargo acquired for administrative, direct mission, or operational support of military functions. Sedans, station wagons, carryalls, vans, and buses, leased or owned, are considered “non-tactical.”
Well, thankfully this doesn’t apply to true mission vehicles. Yet.
The service has already started or completed 950 renewable energy projects, including a 2.1 megawatt solar field at Fort Knox in Kentucky, and 25 microgrid projects scoped and planned through 2024, according to the strategy.
Oh, good, turning training commands and other bases into climate cult centers. How will this work when they actually have to deploy?
A rise in extreme weather events has already cost the department billions of dollars and will prompt more demand for U.S. troops while damaging military bases, degrading mission capabilities and putting service members at risk.
“Climate change threatens America’s security and is altering the geostrategic landscape as we know it,” Army Secretary Christine Wormuth said in a statement.
And they want to turn the military into a Bad Weather response team. We’re doomed.
Nothing new. Plus, there may be several advantages of doing this. The military maintains a vast fleet of NTVs for several functional purposes. Many of those are leased and turned over for newer vehicles frequently. Just like a car rental company. Vehicles used on base and local trips, 99% of NTV usage, is actually a good use for electric vehicles. And since they are commercial, it’s not a huge cost to the military for buy-in. Not like trying to RDT&E their own.
For deployed locations, like air bases, a lot of those vehicles could be replaced by electric golf carts.
It reminds me of when the Army bought a fleet of Chrysler K-cars to help bail out that Auto maker in the 80’s, and then buy Chevy Blazers and pickup trucks (painted camo) because we couldn’t afford all the varieties of HMMVs. The US military often is used as a petting zoo by political parties to drive their agendas. Democrats are famous for using it for distinctly non-military agendas. It’s not all bad.
Advantages are less noise and exhaust. In deployed areas, if there is an electrical grid, it greatly reduces the burden of transporting fuel. And for when there is no electric grid, the Army is looking at a new solution: Mobile Nuclear power station. Costly up front, but will save millions on fuel convoy costs and come in real handy when a city loses power.
Thanks for that info, Mr. Hale. It seems electrical cars, trucks, etc. would make a lot of sense for the military as long as they are not fighting vehicles. At least not yet. You develop an electric battery that can power electric stealth fighters, say 7th generation, and they would be a nightmare to defend.
I think most AGW people think the right is anti-electric car and I don’t believe that is true. The problem with the AGW left is that they want to rid the planet of fossil fuels before we even have the infrastructure built out to power all those electric vehicles.
Battery life has come a long way. Tesla’s are now offering 360 miles on a charge and other companies are offering 300 miles on a charge that is at least double and triple what it used to be. the Battery reliability is the issue not to mention we are all worrying if our car will burn up in the garage.
Lots of growing pains with electrical cars. If the military buys electric cars I hope they install their own electronics because those coming from the automakers is trash right now.
Teach between now and the year 2035 do what battery improvements do you see as probable? Or do you think thst in general EVs will have only about the same performance as they havevnow? I think that their performance will have doubled or even tripled
The military would NEVER buy anything that was crap. We would just lease them anyway.
But one hopes that with enough government demand added to the existing private sector demand, the product will improve over time.
What combat range is really needed needed? Please remember that manufacturers of vehicles are already planning on being all electric by 2035. Teach will have a hard time giving up his hate for EVs.
Unfortunately, in combat, you don’t always have the luxury of heading back to base to recharge! You have to stay and fight as long as the enemy is fighting back.
Dana,
I actually do combat vehicle development for the Future Army. It is my living. The issue is not to EV or to not EV. As you touch on, the issue is “how long does it take me to recharge”. If battery packs could be made to be easily swapped out in field conditions, then this could mitigate the risk of EV failures. Then trucks would have to be dedicated to transporting fresh and exhausted batteries instead of the way we do it now with fuel tanker trucks. But as things exist now and for the next 10 years at least, nothing beats liquid fuel for reliable power generation in space and weight constrained environments. So much so that military forces are willing to expose potentially explosive fuels to combat when electric batteries would be much safer. If we could make it work, we would. it just doesn’t work.
That said, EVs for running around on base is actually a good application for this. Though I would force everyone to use golf carts instead of Chevy Suburbans.
Of course that is true Dana
But it doesn’t come even close to answering my question, if in fact that was what you attempting to do.do you see any advantages at all in using electrically powered vehicles such as lowered heat signature? Reduced audio signature? Mechanical Reliability? Power output(remember that Teslas 500hp engine is about as big as a slow cooker) ? Of course any vehicle will need to be refused I am unsure why you suggest thst only an electrically powered vehicle would have to disengage from combat and head back for refueling. During the ill conceived Iraq war I think the front moved forward no more than 30 miles a day. Of course as most expert opinion regard logistics as being more important than tactics
Hairy,
You ask that as if it is a rhetorical question instead of a question that is asked and answered for every combat vehicle, warship and aircraft that is built by anyone. You can even look up the values on Google. For instance, the value for “what combat range is really needed” for an M1 tank is 300 miles on the road and 100 miles cross country, unrefueled. The M1 tank has a 500 gallon fuel tank to accomplish this because it weighs about 70 tons and slinging armored track around is not the most fuel efficient way to move from point A to point B. Those values are based on extensive combat modeling and are not arbitrary and important decisions about How many fuel trucks to buy and how many fuel truck drivers are needed are all based on that.
But if you just want to go to the Base dining facility for lunch, EVs work fine. Conservatives are not against EVs. They are against government forcing solutions onto everyone else just so that their insider friends can get fabulously rich. Too bad Bernie took the payoff. He used to at least talk this talk.
Hairy: “Teach will have a hard time giving up his hate for EVs.”
You radical leftists all think alike, don’t you? dOwd accuses people who find problems with the Covid non-vaccine of being “non-vaxxers” and you accuse Teach of “hating” EV’s. Neither is true. Yet you keep repeating these lies, why? Are you trying to convince yourself that your retarded commie leaders are correct or are you trying to convince us that we don’t know what we believe?
EV’s are fine if they work. They are not fine if we are being forced into a transportation system that has failure built in or we are not prepared to support.
Vaccines are fine, if they’re actually vaccines. They are not fine when you must force people to use them and must exempt them from testing and law suits.
It’s not hard Hairy. It’s how free men decide. Stop being a slave to Brandon.
Let’s go Brandon, time for a new “crisis” the election approaches.
WWPS: What Would Patton Say?
What’s next, nuclear-powered subs and ships??
Remember, gentlemen, that the purpose of the military is to kill people and break things and our troops need the best equipment we can provide them with to accomplish the task they are assigned.
EVs would be great for the remfs at bases back home, though.