Biden Energy Secretary Jennifer Granholm is urging the United States military to retrograde their vehicles to go electric within the next 7 years to help meet arbitrary climate emissions goals by 2030.
Granholm made these ambitions known during a Senate Armed Services Committee on Wednesday.
When asked if meeting these aspiration are possible, she said she believes “we can get there,” adding:
And I do think that reducing our reliance on the volatility of globally-traded fossil fuels where we know that global events, such as the war in Ukraine, can jack up prices for people back home – it does not contribute to energy security.
I think energy security is achieved when we have homegrown, clean energy that is abundant, like you see in Iowa. We think we can be a leader globally in how we have become energy-independent…
When news of Graholm’s comments went viral, some former higher-ranking military men blasted this move.
Retired Army colonel James Hutton said:
[Graholm] knows zero about battlefield realities. There’s zero chance of our military forces being able to field an all EV fleet in a mere 7 years. More importantly such an effort would make the military almost completely dependent on China for its source of fuel.
A retired Air Force officer added:
Asinine. As a former military member and Pentagon officer, this is what you get when you have political appointees appointed into these SCS positions – someone brain dead in charge of things but they are only in the position because they/family donated; fill a DEI quota; or related to a politician.
But this is not time the first time the Biden administration has made it known that they want to convert military vehicles to electric.
In November, 2021, former Deputy Defense Secretary Kathleen Hicks expressed the need for the transition to green military vehicles.
If we do not follow this example and are not part of the solution, we will be left behind, and our equipment parks will lose the opportunity to receive support.
She said in an interview with CNN
At the time in November, during a visit to Michigan, the heart of U.S. auto manufacturing, her plan to convert these vehicles was released – which is about 170 thousand non-combat vehicles and trucks used at US military bases are planned to be replaced with electric ones, and tactical vehicles, according to Hicks’ plan, will be transferred to hybrid engines,’ Teller Report noted.
Electric vehicles are quiet. They have a low heat signature and incredible torque, and because they tend to be low maintenance with fewer moving parts, they have the potential to reduce logistics requirements.
Currently the Department of Defense has about 170,000 non-tactical vehicles — the cars and trucks we use on our bases.
That’s the largest fleet in the federal government, next to the U.S. Postal Service. Our success in transitioning this massive fleet to zero emissions, most of which will be electric, will depend on America’s auto industry and autoworkers right here in Detroit.
Hicks said during her visit, reported by Military.com
During that visit General Motors had signed-on to help in this conversion process, “support[ing] the Department of Defense (DoD) in becoming a more electric, autonomous and connected organization, now and into the future,” GM said in a press release at the time.
‘Steve duMont, president of GM Defense, discussed the importance of being able to leverage GM’s investment of $35 billion in electric and autonomous technologies through 2025,’ GM added.
GM Defense has a tremendous opportunity to leverage our parent company’s investments in advanced battery technologies and adapt them to meet defense requirements.
The more we can adapt existing commercial technology, the faster we can modernize warfighter capabilities and quickly deliver technology at the speed of relevance.
I appreciate Secretary Hicks taking the time to get to know GM Defense as we look to partner with Department of Defense on its electric future. As the leader executing the DoD’s priorities, her leadership in the pathway to electrification is inspiring.
DuMont said in a statement
DuMont told National Defense Magazine in a statement that the transition will not be necessarily easy.
There is infrastructure that needs to be put on the bases, there’s a whole rollover of acquisition of these vehicles. But it truly is what we’re doing today on the commercial side [of the automotive business].
DuMont said
Other problems present themselves when going electric as well, according to Sharon Burke, a fellow in the New America think tank’s Future of War project, and former assistant secretary of defense for operational energy:
How are you actually going to power these vehicles if you’re talking about a deployment far from home? You can’t run them off a grid if you’re on a battlefield, so … until you have an answer to that question, you’re not ready yet.
Burke said
Also, obtaining the necessary resources for this conversion could pose a problem, especially since the United States is so heavily reliant on other nations for goods, namely China. Military.com wrote:
The lithium ion batteries so crucial to hybrid and electric cars and trucks now create two major challenges. Disposal of the toxic materials could be a major environmental issue, effectively trading greenhouse gas emissions for other pollution. And China, the top U.S. adversary, controls the global supply.
China reportedly produces about two-thirds of the batteries. The Biden administration and members of Congress have been scrambling to boost U.S. production and domestic mining of materials to make the components, after Beijing rose to global dominance in solar power a decade ago through heavy investment.
Success for Biden’s climate agenda could depend partly on the race for the battery market, as well as the larger trend toward electric vehicles. The Defense Department could add significant weight to the push.
“There does need to be an effort to make sure that there’s a market signal sent, so that that can be mined and processed here,” Hicks said. “That’s part of what we are trying to do on the Defense Department’s side is raise the national security flag to indicate our interests in that.”
And of course, all sources discussing this shift note the price tags on making such a switch, though that seems to have been relegated to a footnote a bit.
In the end, ZeroHedge thinks this is a terrible idea and the effects could be detrimental:
There is no telling how much damage the climate agenda will ultimately do to US defensive capabilities, but the overall trend in energy is more and more centralization. Centralization, as opposed to redundancy, leads to weakness. The reduction of US carbon based energy and the over-reliance on a green electrical grid is expected to trigger skyrocketing consumer prices over the next several years.
Transfer this dynamic of high cost and logistical uncertainty over to the military and you have a recipe for disaster.
The author wrote
AUTHOR COMMENTARY
As I have said before many times over, the whole point of the push EV push has ZERO to do with the environment and going green: it is quite the opposite of that, and is just as bad and even worse some cases when you realize all the mining that is required to just to make one battery and components, that still rely on oil in the production process.
The point of the EVs are about control and mitigation; which was further vindicated in a recent report I did that shows how the EVs fail fuel-economy levels by the EPA. And, the obvious of having to constantly charge them and the length of time it takes to charge.
But this move by the Biden regime is to, just like his former pimp, Barack Hussein Obama, deliberately weaken the military. Already U.S. forces have been reduced to ignominy and made a laughingstock to the whole world; continuously lowering the standards, missing recruitment goals by a longshot, no longer enforcing rigorous physical standards and training, no more yelling, and calling upon for more sodomites to join whilst promoting soldiers with two moms.
This is judgment from the Lord, systemically tearing down the American empire’s forces and making them a joke, and more easily defeatable in combat.
[4] Thus saith the LORD God of Israel; Behold, I will turn back the weapons of war that are in your hands, wherewith ye fight against the king of Babylon, and against the Chaldeans, which besiege you without the walls, and I will assemble them into the midst of this city. [5] And I myself will fight against you with an outstretched hand and with a strong arm, even in anger, and in fury, and in great wrath. [6] And I will smite the inhabitants of this city, both man and beast: they shall die of a great pestilence. [7] And afterward, saith the LORD, I will deliver Zedekiah king of Judah, and his servants, and the people, and such as are left in this city from the pestilence, from the sword, and from the famine, into the hand of Nebuchadrezzar king of Babylon, and into the hand of their enemies, and into the hand of those that seek their life: and he shall smite them with the edge of the sword; he shall not spare them, neither have pity, nor have mercy. Jeremiah 21:4-7
[7] Who goeth a warfare any time at his own charges? who planteth a vineyard, and eateth not of the fruit thereof? or who feedeth a flock, and eateth not of the milk of the flock? [8] Say I these things as a man? or saith not the law the same also? [9] For it is written in the law of Moses, Thou shalt not muzzle the mouth of the ox that treadeth out the corn. Doth God take care for oxen? [10] Or saith he it altogether for our sakes? For our sakes, no doubt, this is written: that he that ploweth should plow in hope; and that he that thresheth in hope should be partaker of his hope. (1 Corinthians 9:7-10).
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Even so-called “poor” militaries are better than this embarrassment called the Department of Defense.
They might not be as advanced as the US, but they’re well-equipped, sufficiently funded, disciplined, physically and mentally fit, and there is NOTHING woke, feminist jezebel, LGBTQ, politically correct, two mommies, or anything else like that. The “poor” troops live up to their mission: serve the country, protect the people and the animals, deter or attack threats, patrol the land, air, and sea, punish evil, and reward good!