Applications - Portable Applications | Military: Batteries and Fuel Cells

This chapter looks at primary and secondary batteries and fuel cells used in current mobile military applications. Existing and promising technologies in the field of energy storage and conversion are presented and briefly discussed. The aim is to provide an overview of which technologies are already available today for these mobile applications and also to point out synergies with civilian applications in which these primary and secondary batteries and, to a lesser extent, fuel cells are already being used.
An important trend is the increased use of secondary batteries. This will become necessary as the increasing demand for electrical energy will lead to challenging logistical problems if only primary batteries are used to meet demand. This increasing energy and power demand of today's and future land warriors can be at least partially solved by the use of fuel cells. The most discussed problem for the soldier and for logistics is the weight of the energy supply. For example, assuming a permanent base load of 20 W per soldier, the corresponding weight of the batteries for a 72-h deployment would be 8 kg. This weight can be significantly reduced by using a portable fuel cell for the soldier's base load requirements.