Sounds crazy at first but comes with some good advantages: it can cross rivers as it doesn’t need air for combustion, it’s silent, and you can load it anywhere at the battle field if you have solar panels, time and sun. Still you can rely on military logistics to carry a swap battery. But isn’t the military supply chain the first target to disrupt? My two cents, this is the next thing at battle fields.
Oh, and if all your equipment runs on electricity, you can load and reload power at your needs. Tank needs power but car not? Combat robot out if power and car is full? Transfer the power
Range of tanks is not super important other than blitzkrieg strategy where refueling infrastructure catches up. Even under blietzkrieg, tanks eventually get into a siege position and solar can be enough to sustain their position indefinitely. H2 is the best quick refueling method for electric heavy vehicles. A dispenser can be hidden 1 mile or so behind the front lines. Production facilities can be portable and moved forward
Honestly if MILITARY applications are what kicks renewable energy and mass storage into high gear, I won’t be surprised, but I will be disappointed.
But hey, improvement is still improvement and if a military organization sees renewable as the future, they’re gonna try to make sure they get there first. As long as whoever gets there shares the progress with the rest of the world, I’m okay with it.
But who am I kidding, it’s gonna be China or the US and the rest of the world won’t see shit for decades due to suppression of research and technology that would allow for similar specs to be achieved privately…
… How credible is my aluminum foil hat guy?
I must admit though, it’d be cool to see an armored combat battery sliding across a field to quick charge a tank that died mid-battle. 10 seconds of charging to get it up and running, and the battery moves to the next low power thing. I’m imagining a semi-autonomous hot-swap of a battery compartment and eventually recharging like modern airplane mid-air refueling. Insert Rod A into Slot A and wait a little bit. The faster they want it to charge, the more they’ll dump into R&D.
Just wait some years - they have solid state batteries close to industry ready. That means huge increase in capacity and no issues with temperature.
Next stage will be structural batteries where you take the structure as battery. For a tank that means all the armour will be charged and work as battery. Just a matter of years.
Loading time is solved already. It’s a matter of battery temperature while infusing power and solved by battery management software.
Any idea why the Boston Dynamics robots aren’t on a battle field? I mean the do incredible stunts. It‘s the battery. Lasts for around 2-3 hours. Today. Military is working on that, I‘m pretty sure.
I’m not super familiar with the matter, but what do you mean by “going the way of the battle ship”? Do you mean they’re becoming more obsolete because of their size/utility compared to drones?
Ultimately these small drones are still pretty vulnerable. I’d imagine the next/current generation of automatically targeting point defense weapons will be the solution.
Still you can rely on military logistics to carry a swap battery. But isn’t the military supply chain the first target to disrupt?
That’s true as well for hydrogen, though. And I guess there’s a higher chance of getting access to “power” somewhere in the field than finding a hydrogen tank. Also, energy density of lithium batteries is higher than for hydrogen storage.
energy density of lithium batteries is higher than for hydrogen storage.
opposite is true by a large margin. You’d still want a hybrid power train, and a charging from solar or BEV option never hurts, but H2’s advantage is quick refueling with battery charging on the go.
That applies if you’re looking at density per weight - but for most stuff driving around the interesting metric is density per volume, and hydrogen sucks there, even if we’re looking at liquid nitrogen, which is completely impractical for storage here.
To make matters worse, you’re limited to specific shapes for your pressurized tank if you want to optimize pressure it can take (and with that storage volume), while batteries you can stick in individual chunks pretty much wherever you find a bit of space.
While LH2 is about 1/3 the density of gasoline as heat energy, and 3/4 the density for electric energy, it is about 2kwh-electric per liter. Lithium batteries are under 1/4 of that.
Who if not the Germans built an electric tank in 2020 https://efahrer.chip.de/news/geraeuschlose-einsaetze-weltweit-erster-elektro-panzer-kommt-aus-deutschland_103179
Sounds crazy at first but comes with some good advantages: it can cross rivers as it doesn’t need air for combustion, it’s silent, and you can load it anywhere at the battle field if you have solar panels, time and sun. Still you can rely on military logistics to carry a swap battery. But isn’t the military supply chain the first target to disrupt? My two cents, this is the next thing at battle fields.
Oh, and if all your equipment runs on electricity, you can load and reload power at your needs. Tank needs power but car not? Combat robot out if power and car is full? Transfer the power
Range of tanks is not super important other than blitzkrieg strategy where refueling infrastructure catches up. Even under blietzkrieg, tanks eventually get into a siege position and solar can be enough to sustain their position indefinitely. H2 is the best quick refueling method for electric heavy vehicles. A dispenser can be hidden 1 mile or so behind the front lines. Production facilities can be portable and moved forward
Any reasonably sized pv installation near a battlefield will definitely not look suspicious on reconnaissance images.
You think less suspicious than these huge petrol storages in a city?
PV can be dismantled, if needed. I bet it’s even cheaper to replace when destroyed compared to petrol storage. Anyway, future will tell
Honestly if MILITARY applications are what kicks renewable energy and mass storage into high gear, I won’t be surprised, but I will be disappointed.
But hey, improvement is still improvement and if a military organization sees renewable as the future, they’re gonna try to make sure they get there first. As long as whoever gets there shares the progress with the rest of the world, I’m okay with it.
But who am I kidding, it’s gonna be China or the US and the rest of the world won’t see shit for decades due to suppression of research and technology that would allow for similar specs to be achieved privately…
… How credible is my aluminum foil hat guy?
I must admit though, it’d be cool to see an armored combat battery sliding across a field to quick charge a tank that died mid-battle. 10 seconds of charging to get it up and running, and the battery moves to the next low power thing. I’m imagining a semi-autonomous hot-swap of a battery compartment and eventually recharging like modern airplane mid-air refueling. Insert Rod A into Slot A and wait a little bit. The faster they want it to charge, the more they’ll dump into R&D.
Just wait some years - they have solid state batteries close to industry ready. That means huge increase in capacity and no issues with temperature.
Next stage will be structural batteries where you take the structure as battery. For a tank that means all the armour will be charged and work as battery. Just a matter of years.
Loading time is solved already. It’s a matter of battery temperature while infusing power and solved by battery management software.
Any idea why the Boston Dynamics robots aren’t on a battle field? I mean the do incredible stunts. It‘s the battery. Lasts for around 2-3 hours. Today. Military is working on that, I‘m pretty sure.
Carrying volatile chemical energy on the outside of your tank seems somewhat unwise.
There are other types of batteries that don’t involve volatiles, like water batteries or metal-air batteries.
Yes, but structural batteries won’t make proper armor. The material demands are simply nowhere near compatible.
Tanks are going the way of the battle ship though. Drones are doing a lot of the stuff they can do, and a lot of things they can’t.
Drones also seem to be good anti-tank and anti-ship weapons.
I can imagine a unmanned autonomous tank though.
I’m not super familiar with the matter, but what do you mean by “going the way of the battle ship”? Do you mean they’re becoming more obsolete because of their size/utility compared to drones?
That, and expense. Tanks cost millions, while a $5k drone with an RPG strapped to it can take it out and exploit the weak spots.
Ultimately these small drones are still pretty vulnerable. I’d imagine the next/current generation of automatically targeting point defense weapons will be the solution.
And if your tank is electric, it can be modified later with a small nuclear or fusion reactor.
That’s true as well for hydrogen, though. And I guess there’s a higher chance of getting access to “power” somewhere in the field than finding a hydrogen tank. Also, energy density of lithium batteries is higher than for hydrogen storage.
opposite is true by a large margin. You’d still want a hybrid power train, and a charging from solar or BEV option never hurts, but H2’s advantage is quick refueling with battery charging on the go.
That applies if you’re looking at density per weight - but for most stuff driving around the interesting metric is density per volume, and hydrogen sucks there, even if we’re looking at liquid nitrogen, which is completely impractical for storage here.
To make matters worse, you’re limited to specific shapes for your pressurized tank if you want to optimize pressure it can take (and with that storage volume), while batteries you can stick in individual chunks pretty much wherever you find a bit of space.
While LH2 is about 1/3 the density of gasoline as heat energy, and 3/4 the density for electric energy, it is about 2kwh-electric per liter. Lithium batteries are under 1/4 of that.