Several Republican representatives have proposed amendments to the National Defense Authorization Act to try to stop the Pentagon’s electrification. The proposals sound so mind-bogglingly dumb that they look like they were written by 19th-century Luddites or the fossil fuel industry itself.
With the US military operating a fleet of hundreds of thousands of vehicles, including tactical vehicles, it makes the Pentagon the largest institutional consumer of fossil fuels in the world.
The entire transportation industry is currently transitioning to electric propulsion, and the US military knows better than to be left behind.
Representative Gosar commented on his initiative:
>The military is no place to experiment with untested technology.HAHAHAHAHA. Better tell that to the United States Army Test and Evaluation Command or the Army Futures Command or any of the other branches test and evaluation commands. That Gosar guy is a dipshit.
That Gosar guy is a dipshit.
As signified by the ®
DARPA is laughing way too hard
um… DARPA?
We all know DARPA is a front for all the alien tech that they’re reverse engineered.
Like Velcro and Mylar and the charcoallerizing ray gun
These are unserious people and it is shameful that we (collectively) have elected them to positions of power. If you’ve ever wanted to run for office but doubt your own abilities, just take a gander at these nimrods.
The proposals sound so mind-bogglingly dumb that they look like they were written by 19th-century Luddites or the fossil fuel industry itself.
Add in some guns & christofascism & that’s basically the GOP in a nutshell.
This is actually the best dystopian news I’ve read in awhile, whenever the military gets serious about a technology they usually throw money into it to make it cheaper and more efficient, which eventually ends up getting in the hands of us civilians. Teslas are still luxury vehicles, it’ll be great if the military makes e-fords or some ungodly thing like that.
Teslas aren’t luxury. They’re just way over priced. They have worse fit and finish than my decade-old beater
I mean just in terms of price really, I’ve seen their Soviet build quality.
Umm what? Ford already makes these.
They do? Well shit I feel dumb.
No need to feel dumb, be happy you’re one of today’s lucky 10,000! ;)
There’s always a relevant XKCD, lol
Yeah. They’re QC sucks. With all manner of defects like hoods flopping up on the highway, weather stripping literally just falling off, gaps in the interior. (And all sorts of other recalls.)
It doesn’t help that every thing is over engineered and prone to breaking in the first place.
I wonder how they prevent the batteries from burning when they are punctured? Diesel doesn’t really burn, but one bullet in the right place can destroy an entire EV in minutes.
a bullet in the right place also disables a diesel vehicle
Doesn’t the one bullet in the right place also kill pretty much every vehicle?
A lithium powered EV will definitely burn itself to ash.
Maybe this means that the US government can invest heavily in battery technology where the patents are publicly owned.
For example, graphene batteries wouldn’t have the explosive problems that lithium batteries have.
A bullet in the right place will kill a person. Better stop using them, too.
All hail the robot overlords!
Well they’re pretty good at stopping bullets. That’s not an argument against anything, it’s just a logistical problem.
So surround the battery in half inch thick carbon fiber plating and call it a day. Military vehicles are usually less worried about weight limits than civilian vehicles and they’re especially not worried about looking pretty. Armoring your vehicle isn’t a new idea.
CFRis actually not the best for ballistic protection. Chances are they will go with a composite based off chobbam armor. (Which may or may not be CF-reinforced ceramics,)
Going to start running into cooling issues there as well.
Look, I’m all for electrification in as many places as we can, but there are absolutely many military use cases where they currently aren’t feasible. Not to mention lithium batteries getting blown up is significantly worse for the surrounding environment long term than a diesel vehicle.
I would imagine the military is considering all of these factors. If there is actually political pressure to electrify vehicles in contexts where it’s truly not appropriate, that would be alarming, but I haven’t heard of any evidence of that happening at all, so I wouldn’t say it’s a meaningful concern.
Going to start running into cooling issues there as well.
Reinforced steel then? It both conducts heat and works as armor. I’m confident a technological solution exists.
I’m all for electrification in as many places as we can, but there are absolutely many military use cases where they currently aren’t feasible.
Yes, and there are likely many circumstances where electric is preferable. With the right equipment this could allow military operations without supply chains delivering fuel. Batteries to be refilled by solar, or portable fission or fusion reactors, for example.
Not to mention lithium batteries getting blown up is significantly worse for the surrounding environment long term than a diesel vehicle.
I suspect a military that uses depleted uranium rounds and burns all its waste in massive fire pits doesn’t prioritize pollution reduction.
Having some military vehicles mixed in the fleet that are electric would probably make things more robust.
What if the supply lines get cut off and they’re stuck in a part of town in a defensive position.
They’ll eventually run out of gas, but there may be electricity there, or they may have solar panels as part of their kit.
All gas has this problem, all EV has a different problem, but a mix could be more resilient.
Agreed. Also, electric vehicles are also much simpler mechanically speaking. They have fewer moving parts that can break relative to a modern gas engine. In-wheel electric motors wouldn’t need a drive train, and would mean more room for other military stuff in vehicles.
Fueling is also much less volatile and you can gain that electricity with cleaner means and cheaper fuels, ideally nuclear.
If they had to do an emergency airlift supply drop, I wonder if they’d prefer dropping a massive battery vs a pile of gasoline. Although the battery would be more expensive I guess. Like airdrop a Tesla Megapack.
Also that’d be bad if a enemy overran them and then took that asset, so probably bad idea heh
Keep in mind that these proposed amendments would effect every vehicle purchase the military makes, which includes (as the article mentions) domestic fleets of vehicles that the military maintains. This isn’t just about front line war machinery; they’re arguing that EV tech is too experimental to allow the Pentagon to buy EVs for staff cars, or for military bases to use.
🤦♂️
for military bases to use.
My dad used to work on a military base as a civilian in wastewater treatment plant. Part of his job, about once a day he’d hop in their little public works pickup truck and collect some water samples from a handful of places around the base, check on some gauges at a couple different sites, etc. If I had to guess he logged probably a max of 5 miles on a busy day (and that’s probably a very high estimate) All low speed, pretty sure speed limit around most of the base was like 25mph. He could practically have done his rounds in a power wheels Barbie jeep (and really the little Chevy S10 or whatever they had was probably overkill for their needs, something like a golf cart or kei truck would probably have been plenty)
And except for that maybe hour out of his day he would drive it around, that truck would pretty much just sit.
That would be such an ideal niche for an EV, it’s got like 23 hours to do nothing but charge. Hell, you could probably even charge it off a solar panel, doesn’t take a whole lot of juice to go 5 miles.
Cui bono if the US military is hamstrung? Answer that and you know who is sponsoring Republican actions.
Cui bono if the US military is hamstrung? Answer that and you know who is sponsoring Republican actions.
Putin on the ritz
Helsinki made that plainly obvious to anyone who was paying attention.China benefits in a big way too. So does UAE with Mister Bone Saw fancying himself as the power centre of ME politics.
