Oil and Petroleum are used in almost every aspect of modern militaries: manufacturing, fuel, polymers, and lubricants, and everything in between.What aspects of a modern US military could be supplemented or replaced with alternative energy sources?Nuclear powered tanks?Solar, wind, and geothermal used in supply chains for FOBs? Replacing things like hydrocarbon polymers with space age metals and cellulose precursors?
but we have plenty of oil
>>65114092if it gets that bad we'd just stop exporting oil and keep it for ourselves. maybe go full fallout and take canada's along with venezulla. prevent other nations from getting anyone else's oil. huh
>>65114108>>65114095This isn't about complete decoupling because that simply isn't possible with the way modern manufacturing and most military technology works, and it isn't about being out of oil, this is about creating redundancies that render things like supply shocks completely irrelevant, the same way renewable energy is used to pad out the modern electrical grid to account for spikes, not the overly default energy source by any stretch of the imagination.
>>65114115ok but we have plenty of breakfast
>>65114092We need to move energy generation to coal in the short term and nuclear in the long term. Solar, hydroelectric, and geothermal are currently being used just about everywhere they're viable, and subsidies will just make them be used in places they shouldn't be viable. Wind isn't viable anywhere.Replacing hydrocarbons for transportation and industrial precursors isn't currently viable, but we'll be able to free up a shitload of them just by moving our power grid away from them.
>>65114092The big stupid the whole world is doing is burning oil in cars, there are many ways to move a car and very few ways to lubricate machines.I don't care if it's batteries, hydrogen fuel cells or big wind up spings we need to get cars off gas. Save it for planes, lubes and plastics that don't have replacements.I hate that planning just 50 years ahead isn't even considered in modern politics.
The only things that can feasibly run on their own nuclear reactors are ships (and possibly strategic bombers if you're on that Cold War booger sugar)We can't store electricity with enough density to make all-electric tanks and armored vehicles, not to mention the issue of refueling. So with our current technology, we can't replace hydrocarbons as fuelAs far as other things go, your non-oil based options are generally either biodegradable (bad) or heavier and more expensive
>>65114169>Wind isn't viable anywhere.Where do you get that nonsense from?There's tons of areas that can be covered with solar panels, e.g. roofs, parking lots and deserts. Replacing individual ICE with EV is well underway in Europe and Asia with Norway taking the lead. Public transport and freight is also electrifying more and more.Nuclear fission isn't scalable since Uranium is a finite resource and extraction costly. Fusion is still decades away from practical applications.
Military vehicles themselves could still run on hydrocarbons, the problem I'm seeing is that refining capacities will go down over the years as general demand in combustion fuels drops, as will transportation logistics. It may be more effective to have localized power to ammonia production. Multifuel diesel and gas turbine engines can run on ammonia with some modifications.
>>65114250Diesel isn't going anywhere for a long time, you need the energy density and rapid refuel for trucks, tractors, escavators ect.Construction and logistics can't transition away from diesel without massive improvements in battery tech that may never come.
>>65114259Battery electric trucks are already taking over and now we're seeing Megawatt charging rolled out across Eurasia. Current work legislation already demands breaks that can be used for recharging.Battery powered construction vehicles also exist and in some cases a tethered electricity is an option. Agriculture is further behind but not completely out of question either.
>>65114280Electric vehicles just change where your burn your hydrocarbons, not your addiction to them. First, as you shift vehicles onto the electric grid, demand for electricity is going to skyrocket. The only feasible energy source to meet that demand are hydrocarbons. And while it's marginally more efficient to burn hydrocarbons in a power plant, there is the tremendous expense of transmitting and storing that energy for future use. This is especially bad for military applications, given you might be fighting in locations where EV infrastructure is non-existent or destroyed.
>>65114224>uranium is a finite resourceOh man if only there were an entire family of fissiles that can be refined into fuel but weren't because they're vastly more difficult to make weapons grade.>the US alone only has 1.2B lbs of known uranium reservesYou know what else is neat? Reprocessing spent fuel rods. You know you can do that right?>but the US imports so muchWhy not? Let other people sell their uranium. It's not like it's going to go bad sitting in the ground for when it's needed.>windYou mean the shit that consumes more energy to build and maintain than it puts into the grid over the lifespan of a turbine?It's almost like half a century of soviet and chicom propaganda combined with people that don't understand anything about nuclear power fearmongering has set the US back seventy years on power generation.
>>65114310I'm not talking about military applications but outside of the military niche you're seeing a shift away from hydrocarbons.And contrary to your claim the electricity production is also moving away from fossil fuels.
>>65114329Didn't somebody figure out that there was enough uranium in seawater alone to last for hundreds/thousands of years? It's just more expensive to filter it out of the water than to mine it out of the ground.
>>65114334Electricity is absolutely not shifting away from hydrocarbons. In fact, with the exception of nuclear, as you shift to wind and solar, you need even more hydrocarbon because wind and solar don't generate at peak demand hours and you need the ability of a coal or gas fired plant to bridge the gap.
>>65114329can also run breeder reactorsUranium supply is essentially infinite, all that holds it back is regulations>>65114349Solar itself could basically completely run the grid, its just only produced in China nowadays and has high tariffs
>>65114329>You mean the shit that consumes more energy to build and maintain than it puts into the grid over the lifespan of a turbine?Try looking up Denmark, where wind makes up for the majority of the electric production and is also one of the major industrial sectors. You have to ask yourself how much propaganda you blindly eat up.Thorium has been tried and didn't work out. Most countries operating NPPs don't have nucelar weapon programs and are signatories to the non-proliferation treaty.>It's not like it's going to go bad sitting in the ground for when it's needed.Uranium literally decays over time.
>>65114354Where are you reading this shit? Solar absolutely can not run the grid in its current form. Peak energy hours are when the sun isn't shining. You would need massive battery banks that would take years to build and billions of dollars, employing technology that doesn't exist yet.
>>65114357danes pay 40 cents a KWH though So eurosocialist retards are not doing things right eitherHave to look to China, they are doing things right
>>65114349Coal fired plants are far too sluggish to work on demand.There are alternative options to gas such as pumped storage, which originally was introduced as a supplement to fission.Look up the actual development for electric generation.
>>65114357>Thorium has been tried and didn't work out.no it didn't have the proper investment and political motivation. It works fine. China is building one right now. >Uranium literally decays over time.wow yeah a blistering 4.5 billion years for half of it to be gone. This is a point an 11th grader would make
>>65114354>>65114347>>65114329Uranium extraction is getting too costly. We're already seeing demand outstrip the supply and there are no real investments in expanding it.The price of fuel will also factor into the overall operating costs, which are already not competitive.
>>65114329NTA but wind energy absolutely puts out more energy than it took to put in. https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0196890421005100https://www.ourenergypolicy.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/turbines.pdfhttps://www.researchgate.net/publication/240139630_Life-cycle_assessment_of_a_2MW_rated_power_wind_turbine_CML_methodI do agree with you about nuclear power though. Uranium is cheap and if we could keep boomers and gen x hippies to stop suing nuclear plant permits then the costs wouldn't be so fucking high.
There will never be green FOBs or nuclear tanks that's retarded. Hydrocarbons are too good at storing energy. Even if you can only use 20% of it. Think about it: you can store immense amounts of energy that can move several tons in a shitty plastic bottle and move it around with cheap liquid pumps. There's nothing else like this. The best you can do is use nuclear to produce artificial hydrocarbons at home
>>65114384The problem is not lawsuits but the NRCDesigns take 15+ years to get approvedPermits take 10+ years after that
>>65114372The Europeans self-sabotaging their energy domestic energy production is irrelevant. Most of those gains result in them shipping economic activity to more polluting countries, who surprise surprise are running on hydrocarbons.
>>65114388The NRC was deliberately set up in a specific way to hamper new nuclear expansion.
>>65114377Trying to hide your own problems by blaming them on Chernobyl didn't help Thorium at all.Hyping it up in the way fusion power is and ignoring all the previous failed attempts is idiocy.
>>65114392Do you understand the difference between energy and electricity?
>>65114415There is no difference for the purpose of this thread. If you shift a combustion car to an EV, you've redirected the energy demand from the gas pump to an electrical outlet. But physics still exists, and that energy needs to come from somewhere. My point is that you can't take all your gas burning cars, turn them into EV, and suddenly expect the same distribution in the electrical grid. It doesn't work that way.
>>65114385Hydrogen has far higher energy density and fuel cells offer more efficiency.Ammonia is easier to synthesize than hydrocarbons since they only need air and water.
>>65114432>Hydrogen has far higher energy densityit's also an absolute bitch to store, which negates all its advantages
>>65114428Works for Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland.Don't see the rest of Europe expanding fossil generated electricity either. And Europeans are also switching heating to heat pumps which requires electricity.
>>65114466>Works for Norway, Sweden, Denmark and Iceland.running their economies into the ground by subsidizing EVs
Super dense battery cells that double as ERA for hybrid power source. >you lose power when you start to take fireJust turn on the engine to gtfo.
>>65114092portable micronuke generators for established bases and FOBs so fuel can be used for other things instead of generators.
>>65114463Storing hydrocarbons isn't problem free either, just ask the people in Tuapse.
>>65114466I don't see your point? Energy isn't a self-contained economic zone and their green energy transition isn't costless. Rising energy costs have pushed industry and growth out of Europe. Nothing about this model is economically sustainable or a recipe for national success and prosperity.
>>65114489just don't invade countries that you cannot defeat that you also cannot defend against from. problem solved.
>>65114489If those tanks were full of hydrogen, there wouldn't be people to ask.
>>65114503Hydrogen doesn't explode unless you mix it with oxygen. The Hindenburg slowly burned down and the majority of people on board survived.
>>65114224Just because something is renewable doesn't mean it has no ecological impact. Wind looks great until you realize that it can't generate power if there's not enough wind, can't generate power if there's too much wind, and can't generate power if there's not enough demand and realistically there's no way to build a large enough storage buffer to fully utilize large scale wind power. You can make a case for small scale wind turbine installations to partially offset a primarily fossil fuel grid, but you still have to consider the birds that will get splattered and what you're going to do with the massive fiberglass blades and literally thousands of tons of concrete and rebar that can't be recycled when decommissioning them.>There's tons of areas that can be covered with solar panels, e.g. roofs, parking lots and deserts. Can be, yes. Should be? Consider the energy and materials that go into building them and the expected energy return in the PNW, New England, northern Europe, etc. Deserts tend to be near the equator and have very few overcast days, but they also tend to have a lot of dust or sand. Yeah, just hose off your panels/reflectors periodically. With water. In the desert. Yeah, it's not necessarily a deal breaker, but once again, you can't just pretend that renewables have no ecological impact just because they're renewable.>Replacing individual ICE with EV is well underway in Europe and AsiaYou're aware that lithium is not a renewable resource and that it's incredibly destructive to the environment to refine it, correct? Moving your ecological disaster to some thirdie shithole like China is not a solution.>Nuclear fission isn't scalable since Uranium is a finite resourceI suppose this is true in the strictest sense, but in that same sense solar isn't renewable because some day the sun will run out of hydrogen. There is more than enough fissionable material to sustain the human race until we're ready to start climbing the Kardashev scale.
>>65114092nothingoil is basedrenewables are gay
>>65114521Notably, Hindenburg wasn't hit by an explosive-laden drone.
>>65114432Hydrogen is the most shit fuel of all. It's energy density is worthless since it's physical density is terrible and just leaks through anything you store it in. Comparing hydrogen storage to diesel storage is absolutely retarded. I don't think you're very smart
>how can we make something incredibly expensive an inefficient cost more for less
>>65114407Is this ESL, retard or bot?
>>65114552*raises hand*Government regulation!
>>65114092The real deal is going to be manufacturing hydrocarbons. Just grab CO2 & H2O and use sunlight to link up some sweet C8H18. All these efforts in alternative energy supplies and storage (very important) is barking up the wrong tree and wasted effort. Batteries are not energy-dense and ironically are more dangerous than a tank of gas. Someday someone is going to invent a way of producing octane for cheap, be it biological, catalytic or chemical, and they'll look back on the mania for mass solar panels and wind turbines as a massive collective clown show.More importantly, any serious military is obviously going to get the prime pick of resources. In a oil-scarce economy, the military is going to keep all the oil to itself and the civilian sector can go suck a dick. What's the alternative? Get fucked over by a screaming jet guzzling kerosene at 300 gallons and 300 miles an hour because you thought a solar powered plane is better, and spend the rest of your life scratching dirt when the victorious enemy takes everything? No thanks.
>>65114553The retards are the ones still believing in Thorium despite all the historic setbacks.
>>65114532>the expected energy return in the PNW, New England, northern Europe, etc. Deserts tend to be near the equatorYou completely failed at geography.
>>65114499>Rising energy costsAs if those don't exist with oil.China is also heavily investing in renewable electricity. Even in India it has become the majority of new installations.
>>65114499>Rising energy costs have pushed industry and growth out of EuropeThe terrible, unsustainable, impossible energy costs that have sent IT infrastructure providers scrambling to build as many data centers as possible in these countries?
>>65114377>wow yeah a blistering 4.5 billion years for half of it to be gone.That's U-238 which is useless for fission outside of breeder reactors and those have largely failed to live up to the promises.U-235, the only isotope with practical usage for non-weapon fission, is a magnitude lower.
>>65114774>A magnitude lowerAn order of magnitude lower is 450 million years
>>65114169>move to nuclear plants >gets them bombed with Iranian nukes in the year 2046
>>65114777704 to be precise.
>>65114547>he doesn't know
>>65114547Doesn't matter. Without oxidizer the hydrogen can't react and if atmospheric oxygen is only at the border it will merely burn. A sustained chain reaction of hydrogen fusing to helium is even more out of question.
>>65114774oh shit so it only last for 2 weeks?
>>65114731>Well you see, Antarctica is the world's largest desert and it would be a terrible place for a solar farm, and therefore you're wrong, and therefore deserts are ideal places for solar farms with no possible drawbacks???
>>65114187It genuinely boggles my mind how wasteful the car really is (mind you I own a Hilux I use to go off-road camping myself)We literally burning the most magical cheat code compound on earth so that some fat fucks can go to McDonald's drive thrus
>>65115125Didn't Lomonosov remark that petroleum is too valuable to burn?
>>65115074There are next to no deserts near the equator. They're concentrated on the tropics of cancer and Capricorn and also exist in the continental US.You also don't need water to remove sand.
>>65115858So you're saying that the deserts are closer to the equator than all of the places where the treehuggers who want to put solar panels on everything are?
>>65115866They're in California.
>>65115870Looking at your map, that seems to be broadly in accordance with my statement. But yes, solar panels in California are probably worthwhile. Which is in accordance with my earlier statement that solar power is already in use most places where it's viable. There's room for some more solar in California, sure. Where does it go next? Places where it's not viable.
>>65114092>thorium FOB reactors being teased for the past decadeAnti-Air Defense mostly, then perhaps ship propulsion. Then it's only a question of herding contractors into IP non-leakage compliance with severe consequences, so China folds in on itself without acquiring similar capability by copying AI's homework.
>>65115884Southern Europe and Northern CONUS are still very worthwhile. Anything south of the UK is.
>>65115915Nice map. Have a source for your claim?
>>65115943Everything you're asking for is in the image.
>>65114092The real answer? Nothing major. Maybe have them drive golfcarts around base or you could run small sensors or bases at home off of solar depending on where you are, but realistically you're dealing with the "non-military" part of the military that is essentially civilian level infrastructure behind a fence. Substituting polymers for metals is laughable given the additional machining costs and energy consumption. Not to mention some things can't be substituted because the unique polymer properties are specifically desired (PTFE snubbers etc). And even civilian industry goes in the opposite direction to make cars or planes out of composites rather than purely aluminum. Most fuel alternatives are nasty, as in hydrazine levels of nasty. And even if you recycle all your materials, any losses will be, well lost. Look at the amount of resources that sit on the bottom of the Atlantic and Pacific. Looking at only the sunk ship tonnage that's enough to build thousands of Arleigh Burke destroyers. With the fuel and ammo cargo sunk you could sustain 600 Destroyers for a decade. Similarly look at the thousands of helicopters lost in Vietnam or the ordnance expelled.You would also have to close your eyes to all sorts of supply squeezes from REEs to copper that would significantly affect any infrastructure project.One of the best things you actually could to at this moment in time re: resource security is to ban catalytic converters to get that palladium and platinum.The next best thing would be to invest heavily in carbon capture synthetic fuel type tech. Simply because the US military is the only consumer of oil large enough to get it to work at reasonable economics.And the seethe would be unimaginable when Americans keep driving their F-150s and US airlines are 10% faster than the competition while the rest of the world carries a case of beer on their electric scooters and goes on vacation on their own patio.
>>65115915Mongolia can into relevance?
>>65114532You couldn't just blow the dust and crap off the panels with an air hose? Make the surface out of a particularly slick material and you shouldn't have to actually give them a good liquid cleaning very often.
>>65114169>solarNot even remotely close to complete economic deployment. We're growing millions of acres of corn strictly for ethanol that is basically meaningless at best and detrimental at worst. Replacing even a fraction of that acreage with solar could theoretically run the entire power grid. In practical terms you couldn't do it this way, but the point is we aren't even close to the limit for practical utilization>nuclearYes. SMRs are on the horizon and it's about damn time
>>65114200The navy uses biodiesel jp-5
>>65116066Mongolia used to rule the world.
>>65114780Is getting any infrastructure bombed with iranian nukes not just as much of a problem
>>65116068Most of the "problems" with solar were either solved 10 years ago yet still circulated among psueds or are entirely manufactured
>>65114092you cant its impossible, anyone using gasoline/diesel\kerosene will have a massive advantage over anyone who does.the most you can sort of do is invent coal generators instead of diesel generators for bases/forward positions or use small reactors. but uranium reactors scale poorly to military vehicles/munitions a very big nuclear powered bomber might actually work well i think a nuclear-powered bigger B2 is a good idea but anything smaller than that or anything that need to actually engager in air combat on nuclear jet engines is a bad idea and you'd still want to keep kerosene around as some kind of an afterburner type deal for emergencies
>>65116137Upon what do you base your conclusion? This reads like a 5th grader's book report
>>65114329>It's not like it's going to go bad sitting in the ground Yeah, imagine if radioactive decay was a thing.Ever wondered why most uranium sitting in the ground is not fissile? Because the fissile isotopes decay in mere decades.
>>65116144power density of the generator, power density of the fuel, price and ease of manufacturingUS had nuclear powered bases since the 60s but those will always be outclassed by diesel
>>65116157Nah, this is extremely short sighted thinking. The energy economy has more say in what fuels and sources we use than the actual merits of those fuels and sources. The whole point of this thread is how best to decouple oil from defense, and we can do that right now and it wouldn't be a problem of capability, just economy. SMRs, solar, solid state storage or fuel cells can replace fossil fuels at great cost, but that cost is getting smaller by the day and it's only a matter of time before they're as economic or more so
>>65116137There are a few alternatives like airco MAD, but it's not viable presently it produces like hundreds of gallons or so and needs power for electrolysis or you're shipping hydrogen (yikes)
>>65116171Electrolosis is extremely energy intensive for what you get out of it.
>>65116137Even naval ships have shown that nuclear propulsion is only practical for carriers and subs. Cruisers and destroyers were tried and went back to fossil fuels in later classes.
>>65116170>The whole point of this thread is how best to decouple oil from defenseSee that's where you already went full retard. The problem is reliable access to oil, not oil itself. If you can produce fuels domestically and either ship them reliably or produce them locally when forward deployed you're golden. Given that synthetic drop-in fuels require essentially three things:>power>water (hydrogen)>carbon monoxideNuclear powered ships could be a viable source of synthetic jet fuel for example. Domestically the green purists kind of ruin it for everyone because they don't care about resource sovereignty but muh green energy. As a baseline the US would need to 3x-5x energy production to switch to carbon capture fuels. Meanwhile the problem is that synthetic fuels are costly due to the energy demands, which modern gas turbines could significantly reduce and the US is swimming in LNG basically. It sounds redundant but burn more LNG to easier create carbon capture technology down the road. And the only reason I'm advocating for carbon capture fuels is that most hydrocarbons are more useful as materials instead of fuels.
>>65116186>subsYou realize 688's have less tonnage than even a burke, right? The problem wasn't size or practicality, the navy just decided it wasn't worth the effort. That's a manning thing mostly and a facilities thing secondly
>>65116170you cant decouple oil from defense, if you try you will be defeated by those who dont.make sure your army has enough oil>>65116171>airco MADseems retarded and uneconomic compared to current fuel infrastructure but i could see it being used as a backup in isolated bases or something like that to fuel up small drones (could also just use electric drones with a base with solar panels tho)>>65116186true the advantage of fission power is for very big things or things where fuel weight/volume/byproducts are a constraint like subs.i think nuclear cruisers/destroyers/replentishment-oilers can work current/next gen reactors are just far better than the stuff they tried it with back then and i think nuclear aviation can be a thing both for massive cargo planes/ekranoplans and very big bomber planes.
>>65116220>you can'tYou can, and you absolutely should. This retarded fixation on oil is just incredibly short sighted
>>65116221no, you cantits an amazing power source and not using it is more retarded than a modern army saying they want to decouple from guns or cannons
>>65116221Your retarded fixation on it is short sighted. Imagine sitting on magical dino poop that powers your industry and military and saying "nah I don't need that".Even if you had a working battery electric tank that tank will be outranged even by a gas guzzling Abrams turbine. And even if you get to parity with efficiency gains or the battery density department - when you blow up a fuel bladder somewhere I can put a new one up within minutes. If I blow up your battery swap truck, how many swap out batteries will you have lying around and how fast can you manufacture them? How many resources do you need to ship to your country to be able to make these batteries? How many of those shipments do I need to interdict before you need to have a 50 man tank crew to push your tank into battle? Meanwhile the powers of fluid dynamics make it trivial for me to move fuel around and store it. And even if it's uneconomic or energy intensive, if magically all oil wells or shale basins went dry overnight I can still manufacture drop-in fuels through PtL plants. Zero reengineering of vehicles, ships or aircraft.
>>65114774All of the uranium in Earth's crust was put there 4.6 billion years ago and you think a significant enough portion of it will decay away unless it is extracted in the foreseeable future?
>>65114354>Solar itself could basically completely run the grid, its just only produced in China nowadays and has high tariffsNo it can't and no it isn't. What caused you to vomit out such an obviously terrible lie?
>>65116363There's always a chance a stray neutron comes along and fissions it away.
>>65114092Everything civilian and military could use liquid hydrogen powered by nuclear/hydro/etc; the gaskets and seals which would still need to be made from plastic and rubber.The oil industry continues for the sake of the oil industry; and all the people it employs.
>>65116322Hybrid solutions like plug-in hybrids or range extenders are an option. Diesel-electric tanks have been used in both world wars and batteries have improved since then. Being able to move and rotate the turret on battery power alone has obvious advantages in reducing detection.
>>65116527Look there's legit applications for electric motors. Replacing hydraulic systems or limiting sound emissions in submarines. But that's driven by a completely different objective. Noone is dumb enough to decouple their military from oil for some climate cultist crap. Think about the amount of fuel an air force consumes on a given day. Now think about how much you get airborne without fuel. Efficiency gains can be had of course, but not because "decoupling from oil" is a thing. But because you're trying to maximize logistics. Like think about a KC-135 that is 20% more fuel efficient. That's not translating into 20% less oil consumption. It's translated into 20% more fuel available for offloading.
>>65114532Your thinking is based on the assumption these units are operating in isolation, while a properly developed smart grid is capable of reallocating energy across an entire seaboard. It's always windy somewhere.Also, solar panels work just fine at higher latitudes, where sunlight hours are greater in the summer, though shorter in the winter. I live in fucking Finland, literally as high up as fucking Anchorage, and still every third fucking single-family house has loads o panels on their roofs these days.And that number is rising. Because whatever consumption they cover comes functionally free for the better part of the next half-century, and is that much less off the back of the grid.
>>65118633 (me)>is that much less off the back of the grid.That much MORE off the back of the grid, fucking moron. I need another cup of coffee.
