Labour's Green Woke Machine Doesn't Deter Anyone

The Armed Forces exist to defend the Realm, not save the planet.

Back in the Cold War developing into a ”lean green killing machine” was an aspiration for many soldiers. Nowadays it seems that the Ministry of Defence has focussed on the green bit, lean being a challenge in a nation of fatties (one in four Britons is obese) and killing being insufficiently inclusive.

Still, fighting climate change is more important to recent governments than defending the realm and the MOD knows which side its bread is buttered. To that extent, as has been reported in the Telegraph, it is testing electric armoured vehicles. The justification, according to one unnamed government (not military) source, is “New and emerging technologies can support decarbonisation efforts and improve battlefield capability, reducing the supply chain vulnerability of liquid fuel and also reducing the heat signature and noise of vehicles on the battlefield.”

Really? Let’s see.

The ”supply chain vulnerability to liquid fuel” sounds impressively technical but is utter drivel. The world is awash with fuel. Getting it from a depot to the fuel tanks of combat vehicles is a process that is well rehearsed (or it was when we had an army that spent significant amounts of time training) and straightforward. You fill up a fuel bowser and drive it close to where the fighting is. If you haven’t got a fuel bowser you fill jerry cans and put them on a truck. A Challenger 2 does about half a mile to a gallon, so you’ll need a lot.

Fuel is far from the only logistic challenge in modern warfare. Combat units also need ammunition (lots), spare parts, food, drinking water, medical supplies and more. They also need their casualties removed to hospitals and replacement sent forward. Fuel is just one part of the extensive logistic support and it’s one of the easier ones; diesel is diesel whereas most ammunition is rather more specific.

The idiot government source seems to think that delivering electrons in place of diesel will make an easier supply chain. How? Has the MOD employed Schrodinger’s cat?

As the war in Ukraine has reminded us, electricity power stations, transformers and other transmission infrastructure are vulnerable to bombs and missiles. It’s not just the Russians who attack such infrastructure - any sensible belligerent does. We Brits (and other westerners) did the same to Serbia and Iraq (twice). As this weekend showed the UK (again), even in peace time simple power lines are vulnerable to wind and falling trees. Special forces and bombs can wreak similar havoc.

Perhaps the government spokesman thinks it possible to bring a generator forward and plug combat vehicles into that? A Challenger 2 carries some 1,500 litres of internal fuel, which comes out as having the same energy as 320 Nissan Leafs. Refuelling a Challenger with diesel takes less than 5 minutes. Delivering the same amount of energy though an “ultra rapid” 350kW charger will take almost two days.

Maybe the government’s idiot thinks that the solution is to move a replacement battery pack forward and “simply” slot it in. The diesel in a Challenger weighs a ton and a bit. A lithium ion battery holding the same amount of energy would weight over 50 tons (a Challenger 2 weight 70 tons). It makes no sense. Its not possible. Only a fool would suggest it.

What about the numbskull’s words on heat signature? Certainly the exhaust from internal combustion engines is hot gas, which heats up the engine bay of the tank (or other combat vehicle) and that makes it easier to see on a thermal imager. But it’s not the only, or even the main source of heat. The tracks and wheels get hot, leaving trails of heated ground that can be seen from the air. Well commanded combat vehicles tend to keep their wheels, track and engines shielded from the enemy by using ground, so the practical benefit of a cooler engine is minimal. The hottest part of any combat vehicle when it is fighting is its gun barrel, which necessarily must be visible to the enemy. In any case, thermal imagers are sufficiently sensitive to differentiate tanks from the background as they’re almost never at the same temperature.

Credit where credit is due, the government mouthpiece is correct in thinking that electric motors are far quieter than diesel ones. However the motor is not the only noise source; the tracks themselves can be very noisy, as can cross country tyres on a road. Firing the gun is pretty noisy too. Again, it’s hardly a major change in most circumstances. In any case, it’s difficult to accurately determine direction and range of a tank (or other vehicle) from its noise signature alone – even on an otherwise quiet dawn on Salisbury Plain when one has switched one’s own engine off, removed one’s radio headset and stuck one’s head out of the turret. Once the shooting starts it’s even harder – spelled impossible.

Were the government’s idiot, or the dissembler who wrote his script, well informed and honest the MOD line would have been something like “We’re paying lip service to net zero because we have been told to, but it makes no sense.” But then honest government is rarer global peace and few rise to the top of government without being economical with the actualité.

It’s not just the Army. The Royal Air Force has been obsessing about how it will use sustainable aviation fuel and gaining plaudits for it. For several years the RAF has been researching alternative fuel at the taxpayers’ expense and issuing press releases about it. It even claims to be defencing the skies sustainably.

That’s not quite true; the RAF may be sustainable but it’s struggling to defend the skies.

Its Wedgetail airborne warning and control planes are not yet operational and have not been procured in sufficient quantities. Keeping its 40 F35s and 111 Typhoons flying is challenging and, far worse, it has a huge backlog in pilot training, to the extent that many British F35s are flown rumoured to be flown by American and Australian pilots. A review of flight training has been announced in the House of Lords, although whether that’s the same one announced before the election is, of course, unclear. Back in 2022 Ben Wallace, then Secretary of state for Defence, ordered then Chief of the Air staff to sort out flying training as his sole priority. It doesn’t seem to be going well. Putting trained pilots into the cockpit is more vital to defending the realm than sustainable air fuel.

The reality that the RAF is failing to grasp is that the total number of jet engines that it operates, some 500 or so, is a rounding error in aviation terms. British Airways alone has some 2000 jet engines, and those engines work much, much harder (in terms of hours per day) than military ones. Even in the narrow market of military fast jets, the RAF’s 40 or so F35s are just one and a half per cent of the global fleet. If and when sustainable air fuel becomes mandatory the RAF will get the technology it is given, no doubt with instruction books.

At first glance things appear better on the ocean wave. Much of the Royal Navy’s remaining combat power lies in its submarine fleet, all of which is nuclear powered and therefore sustainable. Its ancient and mostly clapped out surface fleet runs on oil, which has been made more complicated by the scrapping of the Royal Fleet Auxiliary’s old tankers and the ongoing strike. Great for the planet and our enemies, not so good for the Realm.

The Secretary of State, John Healey, should simply stop funding the MOD’s green lunacy immediately. It’s not as if the government is awash with cash or that the MOD had nothing more important to do?

When he took office in July Mr Healey ducked getting a grip of a ministry that has lost sight of its purpose. Instead he took the soft option and commissioned the Roberston Review, due to report mid next year. Waiting for the Review might constrain Mr Healey’s actions but, unfortunately for him and the Realm, service personnel aren’t waiting to read it. They continue to vote with their feet and leave the armed forces at alarming and unsustainable rates.

The latest figures show 15 trained service personnel leave for every 12 who enter recruit training – not all of whom will pass. The overall trained strength is down by 3% since October 2023, when it was down 2.7% on October 2022. Yet rather than confront the Admirals, Generals and Air Marshalls who have delivered this disaster he goes on a green photo trip to an electric vehicle maker. The vehicles he saw, the Jackal and Coyote, were purchased for the War in Afghanistan. The Army has been forced to keep them due to treasury rules. Making them electric adds zero capability to platforms that are of very limited utility on a modern battlefield.

It can have been no surprise to John Healey that the British Armed Forces are in a sorry state and utterly unfit for a war https://www.politico.eu/article/uk-army-would-be-destroyed-in-six-months-to-a-year-in-war-says-minister-alistair-carns/ – which is both their primary role and fundamental to how deterrence works. This mess is most definitely not Mr Healey’s fault, he is a new minister in a new government. He had a mandate to get a grip and start sorting out the morass of idiocy. Unfortunately, rather than taking the necessary robust action now he has kicked the can down the road.

That’s not leadership, its cowardice. Does Mr Healey intent to turn the MOD from green to yellow?

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