Feeding an army (or a navy)
On Napoleon, bread-making machines, and why America needs a big navy and a big transfer of knowledge from the military back to the civilian world
Napoleon Bonaparte generally gets credit for saying that “An army marches on its stomach“, but the world’s great military powers have nearly always had navies, too. And while nuclear power has changed how submarines and aircraft carriers are propelled (giving them, mechanically, the potential to sail almost indefinitely), people have to be fueled, too.
■ This places food supplies at or near the top of the list of hard limits on seafaring range. The US Navy is now testing the use of freeze-dried raw materials and kitchen robotics (like automated bread-making machines) to extend the time and distance ships can go before needing to re-stock on food.
■ Notable news in parallel with this: The Defense Department has concluded that China is out to build a fleet of nine aircraft carriers by 2035. That’s clearly an objective intended to compete with the eleven currently in the US fleet.
■ If this generation wants to be remembered well in the history books, we ought to do two things. The first is to maintain a navy capable -- both in terms of physical assets (like ships) and people -- of maintaining peace and order on the high seas. That’s a non-negotiable state of affairs for a peaceful future.
■ The second is to prove our worthiness as a society by using the lessons learned in the service of warfare to improve the quality of life for people “back home”. We should, for instance, transfer technologies developed to feed and house 4,500 people in a tight, self-contained space to purposes like accommodating refugees, disaster victims, and the homeless. Technologies are not just things like machinery, but also intangibles like processes.
■ We have to do both things in order to call ourselves “good”: We have to preserve hard-won liberties and human progress in a hostile world, and that requires building an awesome and fearsome fighting force. Simultaneously, we have to disseminate the knowledge we gain while sharpening the sword so that we have a society worth defending at home.
