End of Oil, the End of Conventional War?

If fossil fuels are that depleted, following choices can present themselves:

We can go back to fighting like the way the Romans did. Good old mano to mano hack and slash. Civilization would collapse anyway to medieval style.

But before that can happen you would need to exhaust every drop of oil, along with other means to generate it. There are still reserves of oil. What is being depleted is oil that can be cheaply obtained because there are existing wells or its easy to drill. There are more oil reserves out there, but because of where they are located, it would cost more money to obtain each drop. There are oil reserves out there that won't be viable for exploitation, for example, until oil reaches $200 a barrel, and even more if the prices reach $300 and $400 a barrel. When a certain price point is reached, it would be more economically viable to synthesize fuel out of coal, limestone, sandstone and shale rock. This is actually good for the US, Germany and China, the three having the largest deposits and production of coal. Nazi Germany was trying to synthesize fuel out of coal during the big war.

The result won't be that fossil fuel powered platforms still won't disappear, but it becomes more and more expensive to operate them. The greatest impact would be on the gas guzzlers, platforms that require gas turbines to operate them.

For example with tanks, gas turbine powered tanks like the M1 series would be seriously affected, but it won't be that bad to the relatively more efficient diesel powered tanks the rest of the world uses. The US Army may have to reconsider to re-engine their tanks to diesels or build the next version of Abrams with diesel engines. Diesel fuel is relatively easier to synthesize out of coal, and there are other means to produce it, like bio-fuels.

Ships will have to go out of their CODAG propulsion, into nuclear-steam power, coal fired fired steam power, or pure diesel (CODAD). Submarines can go either nuclear, fuel cell AIP, or Stirling. Even conventional SSKs with diesels have been relatively efficient at the start. Submarines would probably be the least affected of all naval combatants.

Air power would be the most seriously affected because it has no other choice. There is also the double whammy of vastly increasing platform cost with each generation of manned fighters that they may price themselves out of the picture, replaced by stealthy UAVs and cruise missiles. Unless some new technology replaced fossil fueled gas turbines, conventional manned air power may obsolete itself out of existance, or go back to gliders and propeller aircraft. With that gone, so are air bases and aircraft carriers as well, and the carrier battle group as we know it.

But rocketry on the other hand, won't be scratched, but kerosene powered boosters will be phased out. Cruise missiles will still be there but powered with some other liquid fuels. Wars will be decided by surface launched missile power in conjunction with UAV support. We will skip air power for space power, since we can launch satellites without the use of fossil fuel, though we need to eliminate kerosene powered boosters. The combination of ballistic+cruise missiles cued by satellites will replace the conventional bombers and strike fighters, and in response, interceptors will be made against such satellites, forcing the first wars in space.

Based on this, you can create a scenario of late 21st century war. I can imagine navies for example, using large nuclear powered battleships and arsenal ships packed with VLS launchers for long range cruise missiles and ballistic missiles. Some of these may be intended to strike at surface targets, others at sea targets, but can also be directed against targets in space. They can probably launch their own satellites too. Destroyers, frigates, corvettes and FACs will still all exist, though gas turbines will be replaced with other engines, and more so the nemesis of all surface ships, the submarines, the most unchanged species of all.

Its possible to draw a scenario where modern technological warfare is still possible, albeit by combining the twin strategies of making fuel usage much more efficient and thrifty, along with substitution. using nuclear power, coal, synthetic, biofuels, and non-fossil fuels.

Question: given the reliance on space, what happens if a country simply launches tons and tons of debris into orbit with the specific purpose to deny adversaries the use of space.

In other words, what happens to your late 21st century scenario without space?

And why can't you have aircraft that use batteries recharged from nuclear power?

Originally Posted by Roger604

Question: given the reliance on space, what happens if a country simply launches tons and tons of debris into orbit with the specific purpose to deny adversaries the use of space.

In other words, what happens to your late 21st century scenario without space?

The debris matters is greatly overrated. Space is that vast, and it will take a lot more than tons of debris. The dangers is there, but the mathematical possibilities are very small and they won't stop a satellite from operating in a period of time. Its exponentially more efficient to just use kinetic kill interceptors.

And why can't you have aircraft that use batteries recharged from nuclear power?

And the batteries can be used to do what? To make something move, you need Newton's third law. You need to throw a lot of material backward before you can move forward.

Originally Posted by kovona

My Question: Will the future depletion of fossil fuels make conventional war too expensive to wage? Hence the End of War.
If we are to believe what the hippies are saying, our reserves of fossil fuels will be gone in 50 - 75 years from now.
What happens then? Will major military powers like the US or China have developed and field alternative technologies to power their tanks, fighters, surface ships etc. by that time?

There are many sources of fuel and energy. Nuclear, solar, wind, biofuel, hydrogen, etc. Fuel can be produced from algae. There's a company working on producing fuel from carbon dioxide.

First car to run on algae biodiesel:
http://gas2.org/2008/01/21/breaking-...tion-possible/

DIY Algae Bioreactor:
http://people.tribe.net/algaegirl/bl...7-24103cabad8c

Biofuels will indeed be a critical element, especially with the ability to manufacture biogasoline upon others.

Fuel is the weakness of all armies. If the Cold War went nuclear, oil refenieries would have been critical targets. Even in conventional wars they would be targets.

Question: Why invest in more fuel guzzling engines like M1 Tank (turbines) when there was the possibility of restriction in fuel supplies? Does not make sense to me. The risks outweight the benefits.

Towards the middle to the latter half of this century, you may have wars over resources, or Resource Wars. Fighting over oil, uranium, even just drinking water, will be the issues of the day.

In such scenarios, tankers, refineries and oil rigs will be prime targets. Any expression of naval and air power would either be in the protection or destruction of such assets. Next in value to energy supplies would be resource, as in metal and mineral supplies.

With submarines for example, while the Cold War has changed the submarine's role to doomsday assets, the Resource Wars will revert the submarine back to its known WWI and WW2 role---commerce raider. You can imagine the economic havoc a submarine can do, if it blows up a major tanker or off shore oil rig, or hit a refinery with cruise missiles. Imagine if submarines are in the hands of "angry" nations, or those out to make a statement.

I was thinking abou this question as well, so I made this thread, which has a lot of relevant input.

"Greening" Forces for Victory

Guns will still be there, so for a while we won't be running out of bullets and fighting with bayonets. Don't forget armies still have a large arsenal of ammunition for everything ranging from guns to artillery. We would perhaps once we run out of missiles rely on WWII stuff like anti-aircraft guns etc.

Oh yea, theres a game thats based on resources war that just released this year. Its called Frontlines Fuel of War.

I think some of you have misunderstood my question. While yes, synthetic oil and some reserves of crude will be still available, we are still looking at an amped up price for building and fueling a modern military in the future. We need to look at the political and strategic part of the equation.

We must not forget that the entire human economy is currently based on cheap oil, and the metals, plastics, electronics etc. needed to make a tank or ship are all connected with oil (mining, processing, manufacturing, distribution...). Even a nuclear power naval vessel still needs fossil fuel to be built if not fueled. (even then, uranium probably needs be mined and transported by oil-running machines)

And that is the point of this discussion. What happens to the system when there's no cheap oil left? Even if you do manage to overhaul the world's dependence on crude with alternatives, synthetic fuels and biodiesels are still much more expensive than crude in the old days when world powers began amassing their modern armies. Compounded with the higher living costs and economic recessions bought by dwindling fossil fuels, can governments and politicians really afford to upkeep their military any longer?

crobato: While the ancient ways of war will be practical in such scenario, will it be accepted socially by our developed nations to have men fight in such way.

I think that the trends that are already visible in worldwide military development will accelerate. Western militaries, the militaries of the "have" countries, will increasingly look to smaller, higher-tech forces to replace the armoured divisions of the past. More and more emphasis will be placed on Special Forces and other more elite units in the context of much smaller militaries. In the "have not" countries, the Third World etc., we will see regimes relying less and less on large conscript armies, or at least on large conscrpit armies that use traditional force structure. As it becomes harder for poorer states to maintain large standing armies it will be easier for instability and ungovernability to spread in the Third World. This in turn will lead to the further spread of irregular and militia-style armed groups (like the Mahdi Army, Pakistani Taliban and innumerable African rebel groups).

Fortunately for those of us in the West, the trend towards smaller more elite forces will probably improve our ability to fight against the groups I described developing in the poorer world. However experiences in Iraq have shown us that to win a guerilla war it is often necessary to have very large numbers of troops.

This scenario will be negated for the world's richer countries by mass use of renewable fuels.

I think the originl post makes some good points. End all war? Obviously not. But reduce war, I hope so.

But as oil becomes scarser, people are more likely to fight over it. I know it's been said many times and is only partly true bu isn't oil what some of the largest current conflicts are about?

I think that the military, in any country, will likely be one of the first sectors to fully embrace non-oil fuel, or one of the last. Air Forces will continue using petroleum fuel for the foreseeable future.