The Military Industrial Transport Complex

As NATO countries commit increasing percentages of their national budgets to Defence, there is an opportunity to use the military-industrial complex to drive wider societal benefits.

In particular, in the area of electric and hydrogen vehicles, significant military demand could help to drive the economies of scale and innovations needed to bring down the cost of those vehicles for the public at large and create the infrastructure required to overcoming issues such as ‘range anxiety’.

Assuming larger military vehicles adopted Hydrogen as a fuel source, for example, could help the transition of HGVs towards Hydrogen with a national strategy of refuelling provision for large goods vehicles in convenient locations based on volume of travel.

The same could be done for electric vehicles, significantly increasing charging provision and developing mass-scale charging, for example by using military car parks as innovation spaces to identify how to provide charging to every car park space.

Such a model could then be rolled out to service stations around the UK to massively uplift the speed and ease of electric vehicle charging.

Similarly, the military demand for electric propulsion across NATO could help drive innovations in battery technology, helping to increase range and recharge time, as well as well as using new materials to reduce cost and Chinese dominance of EV supply chains.

While a ‘Green’ argument would not be popular with the Trump administration, there is no need for such an argument.

Instead, a pure focus on military capability and advantage can be made; countering Chinese economic power, decreasing logistical resupply chains in times of war, and increasing lethality.

Electric vehicles offer a tantalising future of rapid fuel re-supply as drones carrying electric cables could fly out to vehicles, charge them on the move, and then return to a central, highly-fortified generator to wait for their next assignment.

As more counter-drone warfare moves towards laser and electronic weapons, energy to power them will also be key; diesel could be used, but batteries, modular nuclear, and rapid electric recharge offer greater resilience and ability to stay in the fight.

Indeed, even if climate did not exist, these innovations make military sense; a powerful argument to use expanded budgets to push them through.