US Military: A Recipe for Disaster

…US Military: A Recipe for Disaster…

Leaders must define the mission, stick to it, and avoid any deviation from it.

CEOs have the luxury of being able to go WOKE, because, for the most part, in the short term, it only hurts profitability.

Military leaders don’t have the same luxury, because deviations from their mission can lead to defeat and destruction of our nation.

Our military leaders today are going WOKE. 

As a result, we are in grave danger.

• Our Navy is reducing its number of ships, rather than building a Navy that can fight in virtually every ocean.

“The nine Freedom-class Littoral Combat Ships currently in Navy service – the youngest of which commissioned in 2020 – have been marked for disposal as part of the Department of Defense’s Fiscal Year 2023 budget proposal (totaling 24 ships), USNI News has learned.”

• The Navy,  Army and Marine Corps are discharging highly trained and qualified personnel because they didn’t get a Covid shot: Over 2,000 thus far, including two Battalion Commanders. 

And, 

• Climate Change is now a Critical National Security Issue detracting from the mission to defend the United States from foreign adversaries.

Department of Defense:

Here is a quote from the Defense Department’s Climate Adaptation Plan signed by the Secretary of Defense:

“The Department of Defense (DOD) has identified climate change as a critical national security issue and threat multiplier and top management challenge.”

“It is DOD policy (DOD 2016a) that all operations, planning activities, business processes, and resource allocation decisions include climate change considerations.”

In other words, climate change is a distraction from the mission. 

But, it is worse than that because climate plans require adoption of policies and procurement of equipment that will harm the US armed forces’ ability to win the next war.

Here is another quotation making it mandatory to include the price of carbon and carbon footprint in acquisition decisions.

“Incorporate climate exposure and sensitivity in cost benefit analyses, to include consideration of the social cost of GHG emissions in applicable cost-benefit decisions …These updates will include accounting for carbon footprint in acquisition.”

It’s important to remember that every deviation from the mission means less money for equipment and ammunition. 

Money spent on climate issues will not be available for buying equipment, i.e., tanks, planes and ships, that are necessary to fight and win a war.

US Army

Here are two objectives taken from the US Army’s Climate Strategy that deviate from the mission.

1. Field an all-electric light-duty non-tactical vehicle fleet by 2027

This requires buying battery-powered vehicles (BEV) that are at least 20% more expensive than vehicles using gasoline or diesel fuels. As reported by the Wall Street Journal, the average cost of a BEV is $15,000 more than for an internal combustion energy (ICE) vehicle. Savings in gasoline will not recover the added cost.

The US government owns 600,000 light vehicles and President Biden has issued an order to have them replaced with BEVs. If the army owns 10% of the vehicles that are replaced with BEVs, the Army will spend nearly one-billion dollars on these non-mission critical items.

2. Install a microgrid on every installation by 2035

The army currently buys most of its power from the existing electric grid. Building a microgrid on every army installation to eliminate CO2 emissions will spend money that could have been used to buy equipment or munitions needed to fight a war. Money, for example, that could be used to replace the anti-tank missiles sent to Ukraine.

But the consequences are actually much worse than just wasting money and short changing our military for the equipment it needs.

Here is another objective from the US Army’s Climate Strategy:

1. Field fully electric tactical vehicles by 2050.

Tactical vehicles, according to the strategy, “Includes everything from light reconnaissance platforms to heavy transport trucks, and everything in between.”

Using hybrid systems where the engine can be shut down while the vehicle conducts operations will save fuel, but that’s not what’s meant.

Fully electric means there is no internal combustion engine.

How will battery-powered vehicles be recharged on the battlefield or in hostile environments? Fast chargers that recharge vehicles in 30 minutes cost at least $20,000 and, more importantly, require powerful generators to provide the electricity. What drives the generators? Solar arrays or wind turbines?

No matter how the issue is framed, fossil fuels will be needed to power all vehicles … Tactical or otherwise.

Other services:

Presumably the other military branches will also prepare similar climate strategies.

Until then, here are a few additional factors to keep in mind.

Replacing jet fuel with “drop in” replacements made from, garbage, grease, algae, and trees is not feasible. Aside from biofuels being far more costly than jet fuel, there aren’t sufficient feedstocks to produce all the drop in replacement fuel needed to support intense combat operations. The article, Can Biofuels Replace Jet Fuel? (see link below) describes the feedstock problem in more detail as it relates to commercial aviation.

These same feedstocks are also supposed to provide biofuels to replace diesel fuel for use on ships, etc.

In 2010 Secretary of the Navy Ray Mabus directed that half of the energy used by installations would come from alternative sources by 2020. This didn’t happen, so why should we continue down this rat hole?

Here is what RAND, an independent research organization, concluded in 2011 about whether DOD should spend money on alternative fuels.

The RAND report opens with the following statement:

“Over the past few years, the U.S. Department of Defense has spent hundreds of millions of dollars on the development, testing, and certification of alternative fuels that can substitute for petroleum-derived fuels used by the Army, Navy and Marine Corps, and Air Force in their tactical weapon systems.”

Here are their findings beginning with page 83:

Findings on Military Use of Alternative Fuels

There is no direct benefit to the Department of Defense or the services from using alternative fuels rather than petroleum-derived fuels.

And, finally, there is the supply chain problem … I.e., Being certain jet fuel can be delivered to where it is needed.

Jet fuel, as with ammunition and other supplies, is brought to where it is needed by ships. The navy supplies its ships with jet fuel, ammunition and diesel fuel using underway replenishment. This is a dangerous and complicated operation. Adding new variables to the supply chain only makes it more difficult.

The next two pictures in this article are old, but the operation of underway replenishment is still vital to conducting operations at sea and it hasn’t changed appreciably.

The next picture is of modern UNREP in progress.

Conclusion

Quoting an article from USNI Proceedings:

“The United States cannot risk losing the next war as a result of efforts to curry political favor in greenness.”

Climate strategies being adopted by the US military endanger America’s ability to win the next war.

 

Link for article on bio fuels https://bit.ly/3DBToyT

Use this link in a email to let others know about this article https://bit.ly/3uUksrF

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