While most legislators, like lemmings scrambling to the sea, want the Department of Defense to turn its non-tactical vehicle (NTV) fleet electric, two US senators say they aren’t so sure about that. Since Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks announced the aspirational goal of the Department of Defense converting its approximately 170,000 vehicles not destined for the battlefield to be electric, Congress has been on that bandwagon. Now it seems at least a couple of legislators would like to insert some reason to abate rushing headlong toward what could be an acquisition nightmare. It isn’t that the procurement process would be problematic, but rather that the resulting electric military vehicles would depend on the unreliability of a Chinese Communist Party (CCP) supply chain and the odious child and slave labor practices producing the CCP-fabricated electronic components.
DOD Must Ensure Vehicles Are Reliable
To ensure electric vehicles on which American warfighters depend are reliable, Sens. Joni Ernst (R-IA) and Joe Manchin (D-WV) inserted protective language into the Senate version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA). In a press release, the senator from Iowa explained:
“My bipartisan measure in the Senate defense bill prevents the Pentagon from procuring any electric vehicle component that was mined or assembled by child or slave labor, and from investing billions of taxpayer money into an all-electric fleet until they can ensure Congress, and the American people, the supply chain to transition the fleet is not risking our national security.”
When Hicks revealed her goals to see the Defense Department go green and, eventually, wean all military vehicles off fossil fuels, very little was explained about how that was going to be done and how much it would cost. At some point, these policy wishes run into practical realities. The bipartisan provision in the Senate Armed Services Committee legislative language, however, prohibits the department from moving forward with contracts to replace non-tactical vehicles until the Pentagon issues a report detailing important information for the taxpayer. The language mandates the DOD must answer fundamental questions:
- What are the associated costs of exchanging the 170,000 NTVs with electric NTVs and all the costs associated with “infrastructure to support (charging stations, electric grid requirements)?”
- How do life cycle and maintenance requirements costs of electric compare with conventional gas or diesel vehicles?
- What are all the current and projected “sourcing shortfalls for lithium, cobalt, and nickel from NATO and major non-NATO allies?”
- What are the “current and projected supply chain shortfalls” and what impacts would filling the shortfalls have on the National Defense Stockpile?
- How many and what are the components “currently sourced from China?”
Taxpayers would benefit from knowing how much of their dollars are going toward making war environmentally friendly. Additionally, to think NTVs aren’t deployed to the warzone is folly. “It’s an expensive investment for an unreliable product constrained by a [CCP-controlled], child and slave labor-powered supply chain…the NDAA should never prioritize climate politics over national security,” Ernst stated.
(Photo by Daniel Karmann/picture alliance via Getty Images)
Electric Military Vehicles are Going to be Expensive
A quick back-of-the-envelope calculation of what replacing 170,000 military non-tactical vehicles with the equivalent all-electric option isn’t an apples-to-apples comparison, but close. Using the new GMC “Hummer” (like the ubiquitous military High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle or HMMWV) as a surrogate for the average NTV, The Car Connection’s “Electric pickup trucks: A complete guide” estimates the MSRP of the base model at $79,995 without tax, tags, and preparation fees. That puts the minimum off-the-showroom price, with the quantity discount thrown in, at $13.6 billion.
Furthermore, as many in the “rainbows and unicorns” climate change crowd hope, electric NTVs are not likely to be the springboard to having all military vehicles electric. If these folks are thinking tanks and armored personnel vehicles, they will be disappointed. “I’m not sure we’re going fully electric any time soon… If you took the number of batteries with current technology that you would need to move an Abrams tank purely electrically, it’s bigger than the tank,” Brigadier General Glenn Dean, program executive officer, ground combat systems, told Defense News.
It’s apparent the Defense Department hadn’t thought through the conversion to electric NTVs before embracing the policy. The American taxpayer and the warfighters can thank Senators Ernst and Manchin for being the adults in the room.
The views expressed are those of the author and not of any other affiliation.
