Militia
With the expected breakdown of law and
order, the economy and central governments the rise of bandits, raiders,
low-level warlords and roving bands of warriors (not soldiers) will begin. This
return of low and medium intensity warfare into the mainly civilian areas of
countries has a few responses. Knights and a feudal system were highly
successful, so were their counterparts in Japan,
but for a primarily urban population, based in towns or cities there is another
good option. Militia that only have to defend the city and the surrounding
countryside, have the backing of the concentrated manpower, technical skills
and resources of an urban area will be adequate to deal with low-medium
intensity threats without needing the level of time and resource inputs of a
professional army.
Land
The primary mode of warfare, Sea and air
are ultimately in the service of objectives on land in all but a handful of
cases and provide logistical, reconnaissance or protection roles. Land warfare
will be changed by peak oil but the question is how? The major components of
modern land warfare are the gun, artillery (which is the same basic tech just
bigger and slightly altered) and motorised vehicles. The gun is a relatively
simple tech that’s been in use for at least 600 years in one form or another
and a lot of the advancements aren’t dependent on fossil fuels but precision
machining and metallurgy which can be preserved in a post peak world.
Artillery, “queen of the battlefield” that is gunpowder based has been around
just as long and is certainly possible on a low-tech scale (cannons have been
made out of ice and wood). While the tech is slightly different from guns,
especially in the modern forms, the principals are the same and the tech base
as well. Motorized vehicles, either; transport, tanks or APCs, are different
matter since there underlying tech is the combustion engine which is almost
entirely fossil fuel dependent. The engines can be run on biofuels and most
likely the future analogue of them will be powered by such but that will come
with tradeoffs, especially in the world of logistics and the civilian support
structure. These components are the ones most likely to suffer, both motorized
vehicles and the support structures, and modern armies’ high consumption rate
will be a hindrance to its ability to function in a post-peak world. Various
solutions such as using bikes, increased train use and reduced consumption of
key resources could help mitigate these problems.
Navy
Naval warfare is very different from land
and has its own problems and strengths. First, navies are expensive and you get
what you pay for, cheap navies are highly ineffective at even pirate hunting
and are barely worth the cost. Good navies can be built at a lower resource and
tech level but the infrastructure necessary doesn’t exist as now. So what will
post-peak navies look like? Two things define naval eras; their weapons
(boarding, ram, cannons, turrets, etc) and their main source of motive power
(oar, sails or engine). Oars for warships only make sense in close waters, like
the Mediterranean (there were oar-powered galleys in the Crimea war). Wind has the
advantage of being free, the sails were expensive though, and were still used
on the first steam powered warships to give strategic advantages (lower fuel
use) so it should steadily become more important. While engines have tactical
advantages and aren’t dependent on the vagaries of the wind they will lose
prominence due to the increasing need to use biofuels which are expensive,
limited and less energy dense. My bet is that engines will stay on coastal
ships, think torpedo boats or some classes of destroyers, and potentially the big ships of the line that will
come back with the changes in aircraft and missile tech. Weapon systems will
most likely shift back to shells delivered by cannons or turret and away from
missiles as the needed tech fades away. Metal, or metal clad, hulls will be
essential since explosive shells, which are not a fossil fuel dependent
technology, because shells shred wooden ships (maybe construction tricks could
change that but I apart from cross laminated timber I haven’t heard anything
that could potentially do that).
Air
The only unique form of warfare the
industrial age has produced (space warfare hasn’t happened yet) has several
pathways available to it. The simplest is that the tech and abilities stop existing completely and in some places this is a certainty especially where its use in warfare is minimal and no domestic use is available. It can also stagnate in its current form; this is unlikely
due to the jet engines reliance on high fossil fuel consumption that biofuels
won’t be able to substitute. It can regress into a much earlier form, this will
certainly happen in some parts of the world and even advancing down other paths
will look like this in some way. Lighter than air could quite easily make a
comeback in this situation, especially with the decline of missiles, and its
advantages will count for quite a lot. The other is alternate forms of air
travel that either haven’t been invented yet or have only been tried now, the
synergy aircraft project or solar planes for example, and would allow a dynamic
airforce. Buts its role and abilities will be diminished and its current status
as a separate force will almost certainly disappear and it will become an
auxiliary of armies, similar to artillery and other attachments, and for navies,
escort carriers or island/shore based. Its role will also change back to mainly
reconnaissance with relatively minor transport, attack or defence roles (there
will still be dogfights, just in a different setting).
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