Fuel for warfare

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Guardian:

In an era when budgetary cutbacks are leading governments to seriously reassess their military spending, you might imagine that the bean-counters had quickly identified improving fuel efficiency as a key area where savings might be achieved. The fact that so many modern wars seem to include access to oil reserves as a motivating factor should also act to sharpen their attention, too.

But, according to a British Army engineer writing in the latest edition of the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers Journal, the UK's current government is ignoring the potential benefits – in cutting both costs and carbon emissions – of developing more fuel-efficient military technologies. Staff Sergeant Graham Thornton, who is currently attached to 3 Yorks Regiment as a fitter section artificer and is a member of the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, argues that the Ministry of Defence should be looking at how the "civil domain" is starting to embrace "hybrid/green technologies" to reduce fuel use. The changing nature of warfare also demands a rethink on fuel use, he says:

Recent warfare has seen highly mobile land battles that utilised a large amount of equipment and a considerable amount of fuel to maintain manoeuvre. This placed a high demand on the logistical chains and stretched resources, sometimes to breaking point.

A standard 2:21 Battle Group consists of 120 A vehicles and 96 B Vehicles, and can hold up to 12,000 litres of fuel in their tanks. This alone, when burnt, can produce over 31 tonnes of CO2. Furthermore, the amount of fuel that is stored in varying quantities throughout the entire supply chain places a large burden on lift assets and also requires a considerable amount of real estate on the battlefield.

Modern warfare is more asymmetric and therefore sees less movement of land equipment. Subsequently a greater use of air equipments (both manned and unmanned) is being seen.

The idea of hybrid tanks roaming the battlefields of the future is one suggestion put forward by Thornton. He notes that the UK defence firm QinetiQ is already working on an electric drive transmission called the E-X-Drive.

But far more radical is the idea of a "wireless charge system" to power vehicles and equipment and, thereby, reduce the use of heavy batteries, which are, he says, becoming a growing burden on a military increasingly reliant on electricity as a power source, as opposed to diesel. One area where this could prove most practicable is the use of unmanned drones....

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Drones are a possible area for hybrids. I have my doubts about tanks, especially those which use jet type turbines. Fighter jets seem out of the question for hybrids.

The US has actually done a good bit of research on alternative fuels producing jet fuel from coal for example. It is very expensive. They maybe able to produce fuel from natural gas, which is becoming the most abundant and cheapest fuel available.