Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

Comment by gerdesj | Hacker News Reader

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"Imagine being able to deploy energy anywhere on Earth and not have to setup a logistics chain to facilitate it."

Logistics is quite a complex beast and you mention "the military". Out of POL (Petrol, Oil, Lubricants) you now have one item nearly sorted - "petrol" ie power source. Your machines also need a few other things to work. Then there is food and water - your army's people need a power source too. Oh and they need a few things to throw at the opposition - munitions.

There's a major war being fought in Ukraine right now. Ukraine is bloody huge and it's all about logistics. Russia cannot possibly "win", where win is take and hold all of Ukraine. There was a huge armoured convoy headed for Kyiv and it stalled because it could not possibly have had enough of anything to run for more than a few days.

As my dad always used to say (Col. (Retd) RAOC): "An army marches on its stomach". That means that Russia may continue to commit acts of barbarism but it cannot possibly achieve its original aims. They have not got the legs.

That's not much comfort for the peoples of Ukraine suffering massive indignity and savage brutality, day after day.

Logistics (fuel, food, tires etc) were definitely a contributor to the convoy’s stalled assault.

As it turns out, there were also a group of Ukrainian Special forces that pestered and attacked that column relentlessly. Kudos to them and their efforts.

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2022/mar/28/the-drone-oper...

> As it turns out, there were also a group of Ukrainian Special forces that pestered and attacked that column relentlessly.

I mean yeah? That is the nature of millitary offensives. The opposition tends to make your life harder every way they can.

When someone says that the attack stalled because the attacking force botched the logistics, that doesn’t mean that they forgot that tanks run on fuel. It means that they couldn’t deliver the supplies needed because their logistics were not resilient to enemy action.

In the very micro level this might mean that a particular Ukranian soldier shot dead a particular Russian fuel truck driver. (Or they blown up the truck, or trapped it, or misrouted it, or caused them enough fear the truck driver decided to run away instead of getting the supplies to the troops.) On the macro level the details don’t matter, there you can say that the logistic failed.

Similarly if during an excercise in your own country the fuel trucks show up a day late that’s not a problem. You spend the day camping next to your tank and the fuel arrives when it arrives. But if the same happens during a real invasion you are a sitting duck the enemy is trying to kill.

Logistics failing and the Ukrainan forces pestering and attacking the column are not two different things. They are one and the same, but on two different levels of abstraction.

> As my dad always used to say (Col. (Retd) RAOC): "An army marches on its stomach".

That saying is a little older than your dad. https://quoteinvestigator.com/2017/10/15/army/

I don't think the phrase "always used to say" implies "coined the phrase". It just means they always used to say it.

Well I was more imagining light infantry operations or recon in forward positions in the early stages of a war. If you need vehicles, you can use EV, then you generally don't need oil and lubricants as well. At least you don't have to airdrop fuel anymore.

"Well I was more imagining light infantry operations"

People need fuel within 24 hours at a minimum. LI need more than most because they need to move fast. I was a once a Devon and Dorset Light Infantryman (cadet). The DnDs used to have a mad pace - 180 per minute. We could get there as required and then get cut down by a single machine gun. That's old school stuff and the world has moved on.

In peace time, it's training. In war time, it's logistics. That's what all it is.

No, it really isn't. Even in peace time you'll need most of this:

You need safe food and safe water for yourself and a chance to consume it. You'll also need water for bathing etc if you can to maintain comfort. To be combat effective you need a lot of energy. You'll also want to be comfortable so let's say 2l water for drinking and 50l for washing if possible. Food - at least 4000 calories per day.

Now you need to do something and that will require munitions and weapons. A tankie will require a lot of fuel, bits of track, lubricants for all the funky stuff. They'll need shells of various types - AP (anti personnel - basically ball bearings to kill people) and APDS types (armour piercing discarding sabot) and the other more modern fancy types with nastier purposes. Anyway - quite complicated and expensive too.

A tank out of fuel and shells is just a quick kill for the enemy.

Logistics is not that simple and we see this in Ukraine.

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