The Future of Heavy Fighting Machines

Those who fail to study the future are destined to stumble in it. (Unknown)
I have seen the future, and it is here. (Unknown)

War, like love, has been with humankind for aeons. Not a day has passed in history when war or the threat of war has been non-existent on earth. Those who believe in peace and non-violence alone and fail to plan adequately for war live in a surreal world of illusion. Though peace may probably be infinitely better, Mars is still around and has a real job to do. Thus, I cannot believe war is going away anywhere anytime soon, and so nations still have to prepare and plan for war, including war in the future.

With every technological advance, war scientists have sought to discover military applications. Those who succeed first in discovery, win; those who delay stand to lose. To wit, if the defeat of Germany had been delayed another month in WWII, Germany’s new ME262 jet fighter, whose production was hindered for various reasons, was likely to have outwitted all the aircraft the allies could have put up, thereby having the potential to prolong the war. This was the jet fighter whose swept-wing designs were later adopted by the Americans for the F-86 Sabre and by the Russians for the Mig-15.  German designs were also used by the French for the Ouragan that India used as the Toofani.  With another delay of three months, Germany would have likely had the world’s first nuclear bomb, not USA, and Germany might then have ruled the world, literally. In fact, German nuclear scientists were captured and spirited off to USA to work in May 1945 at Albuquerque’s Los Alamos Laboratory on designs of the nuclear bomb.

The world is now changing fast, and Earth’s resources are being consumed at a fast pace, with oil poised to run out on Earth in the next 25 to 60 years, depending, substantially, on the rate of growth and demand from China and India. Have war planners thought how they will run their frigates and aircraft carriers without diesel fuel, fly their fighter aircraft without aviation fuel, or operate their battle tanks and run their personnel carriers without gasoline? Of course, this is not to imagine the scenario where oil supplies may get blocked and production forcefully stops within only the next few years, the result of which will be the same as the former.

It takes tens of years for a nation to switch from one industrial mode to a new one. Innovative engineering for spawning new industries has never been implemented overnight or in an emergency. In the coming days when oil pipelines and natural gas run dry, aircraft stand to be dead birds on the tarmac, naval ships be sitting ducks, and battle tanks a piece of junk.

Nations that are smart could well be secretly planning alternate technologies already. We will do well to remind ourselves that new technology is only created with planned effort, but India, as usual, is running behind. So, this does pose danger signals for an original civilisation that is India. Do not forget what happened to the civilization of the Red people; it can happen to all civilisations that are not alert.

Hydrogen fuel or batteries have been proposed as future solutions. Use of hydrogen in fighter aircraft is possible, but research is far behind for high mach speeds, let alone the planning for development. Additionally, hydrogen fuel cells require platinum that is in limited supply on Earth, especially if automobiles also use them. Alkaline batteries are so heavy that they will be unable to drive huge ships at competitive speeds. Thus, neither batteries nor hydrogen can adequately power heavy battle tanks.

For technologies that are feasible – compressed natural gas, for one, or ethanol, for another, the industrial base is totally lacking in India for military purposes. Gasoline engines made to run on 100 per cent ethanol have to be converted to match compression ratios because ethanol burns at different temperatures to gasoline. The logical direction would be to have dedicated military farms grow corn and sugar for producing ethanol, and then have a corresponding industrial base that caters to that demand for heavy military machines, for which an effort must start now if we are to intersect the future in time. Of course, I cannot recommend ethanol for civilian cars because we will simply run out of land if we have to meet world demand on ethanol alone, but for fighting wars that take place only now and then, ethanol could work with the right amount of arable land spared for the purpose.

Natural gas is also a limited resource, but one that can last longer than oil. Finally, lithium carbonate batteries are probably the only logical choice for jeeps and cars, since lithium deposits on earth and oceans are plentiful and the technology has been demonstrated, but the world and India, in particular, are years behind the curve on developing lithium batteries for mass production in automobiles. Next, the one and only answer for naval ships appears to be nuclear power, which is available, and so it is imperative that no new warship be constructed or bought for use that is not nuclear powered. Moreover, emphasising nuclear submarines and nuclear powered aircraft carriers is particularly appealing from the lethality perspective of those fighting ships.

The future is approaching fast: nations that adapt to new technological realities first, secure the advantage. It is the mark of an idle mind that leaves such bridges to be crossed when they reach there. You can now understand why oil is a weapon and why China, Russia, and USA have large stockpiles of them. India could win a prolonged war today with Pakistan, if for no other reason but that Pakistan will run out of oil stockpiles sooner than India. But in a similar situation with China, India stands to lose, for the same reason. The army that runs out of gas first, loses, while the army that adopts new technologies first, wins. The world’s military equations have seldom been simpler or more complicated.

Dr Amarjit Singh is a Professor of Civil and Environmental Engineering at the University of Hawaii, Manoa

(Disclaimer: The views expressed in this article are those of the author and do not represent the views either of the Editorial Committee or the Centre for Land Warfare Studies).