Reply With QuoteI think that quartz is the ideal movement for the military, if the battery is changed regularly.
After all solar would not be ideal in countries where long dark winters are the norm.......
Sitting with a Pulsar Gen 2 chrono on my wrist, it made me wonder whether a quartz movement is the right choice for issued watches? Surely with the potential for a battery running out on an overseas deployment or operation, wouldn't it would make best sense for issued pieces to be Ecodrive or Solar?
I think that quartz is the ideal movement for the military, if the battery is changed regularly.
After all solar would not be ideal in countries where long dark winters are the norm.......
There is the possibility of food rations running out, ammunition, the list goes on.
If the battery was to run out, time checks could be made my comms and a new watch/battery supplied later.
That said, it’s all about preparation and I wouldn’t commence an operation without checking my kit.
Quartz is unquestionably the best choice for the military.
I wonder if Eco Drive would be the optimal?
I don't believe that a newly designed/built automatic or mechanical watch would, these days, be approved by the MOD for use on ops and given an NSN.
Please somebody correct me if I'm wrong.
That goes without saying. But my point was about being away for some time, and few of us, let alone the average serviceman who know how to check battery life. Unlikely to be a consideration given the bigger picture. So therein lies a problem.Originally Posted by burnsey66
It has been stated elsewhere that the MoD issued Eco powered Citizen divers watches that initially replaced the CWC quartz divers watches proved to be an unreliable alternative
due to spending most of their life in a box in the stores. When strapped on the wrist they were not charged up and ready to go or had other reliability issues.
I would imagine that most well provisioned units would have spare watches in stores that could be issued on a replacement basis be it for battery issues or damage/wear and tear
issues. Some of the G10's that end up for disposal/sale have had a very hard lives indeed and probably never lasted to their first battery change anyway.
Terry
I used a Seiko quartz dive watch I bought at the ships store in 1980 and used it for 20 years in the US Navy
You can see it on my wrist still works today really had no problems the first dive watch I bought was a automatic it lasted a few months and stopped working then bought the Seiko quartz no problem. I have a few British issued watches in the collection that are quartz maybe they were ahead of there time thinking of having a problem free watch when deployed over seas. Just added this issued Precista diver issued in 93 still keep perfect time.
I would imagine the likelihood of a battery running out is insignificant next to the probability of an automatic movement breaking in the rough and tumble of military life.
Surely a solar G-Shock is the way to go?
They can go 120 days without a charge, and then fully recharge in a few hours. Tough in the field too.
No, imagine the distractions in the field with every soldier stopping shooting to ask "Hey, is that the GZ34242?" and getting the reply "No, I see why you'd think that, but this model is the GY63345 with added orbit of Mars prediction feature and... oh, sh*t, we've been overrun!"
M
I think you'd have a job to find any actual serving soldier who wasn't wearing a G-Shock, except maybe at the regimental dinner.
Is this the finite answer to the OPs question?
+1. By pretty much every metric the quartz powered watch wins out. Exceptions might be operations in areas of high radiation? One reason why NASA still clears the Speedy for EVA duties. A 19th century fob watch is going to last longer than a G-shock when in hard vacuum. IIRC the German Bundeswehr still require mechanical watches? I read recently that the Heuer/Tutima "Bund" chronos were still in active service, albeit in tiny numbers in specialised areas. I'll try and dig up the link.
I say this as someone whose mil watch collection consists of tickers. Well with one exception, an early noughties issued Marathon Navigator. Which at this stage has required two new movements*. Yep. TBH I'd have chucked it ages ago, only I got it through a friend of a friend in the US military(and the tritium lume is brill and it has a radiation symbol on the dial. Yes. I am a child. :D). Funny enough when the chap got it for me, he was quite surprised I wanted it. He told me that the military folks wore Casios, Seikos and Timex. He actually had to jump through some hoops at the time to get one as apparently they weren't in the Px. After he got it our mutual mate pointed out that he could have sourced it directly on a particular US military only website. At that point he was ready to maim both of us. And he was trained to do so. :D Oddly enough mine doesn't have have the issue year, so a production overrun example, even though it came through "official" lines .
*which also illustrated for me how your basic quartz can vary in timekeeping. All have been within the US mil spec, but only just and all varied compared to each other. Two were slow, one was fast.
A few guys I know who served in Afghanistan all wore G Shocks. I sold one of mine to a friends son... survived 2 IED's albeit in an armoured vehicle with it... bashed to buggery and still works well. I can't see a mechanical surviving that too well.
These days cheap is the optimal movement for the military. It's no longer a navigational tool.
It was only ever a navigational tool for a very select few. What it was, for most, was a way of coordinating action. While there are better tools out there for both activities, it would be an unwise military that assumed that their systems might not be compromised on the battle field and planned to be able to fall back on older techniques that can be relied upon. Quartz offers precision that even the best of movements of the past couldn't match and modern military cases don't look cheap to me, they look rugged and functional.
One of the great marketing contradictions (or more accurately achievements) of the Swiss mechanical watch industry is how every second watch advert seems to promote the watch's military or exploration credentials despite them being an obselete technology for the vast majority of situations.
The fact that we are still having this type of conversation four decades on from the quartz crisis is testament to how successful this marketing exercise has been, and continues to be.
Very much so. There would be precious few situations where mechanicals would be superior and even then quartz could likely be made to work if required. Take one area; spacewalks, where the Omega Speedy is still the only one officially cleared for it. When they were first tested(pretty much as an afterthought) back in the 60's if you wanted a chronograph mechanical was the only game in town and quartz were a few years away and quartz analogue chronos a couple of decades away. However for most of the mission critical timing NASA relied on the accutron electronic tuning fork movement, same with satellites of the time and some of them were exposed to hard vacuum and seemed to work fine. I'd bet you could harden a non digital quartz to work fine in space and I'd further bet it would out perform the Speedy across the board.
If I was still serving I wouldn't have a Gshock to big and bulky especially under a combat jacket.
I would most likely go for a Standard CWC G10 on a NATO strap, slim light and reasonably legible.
I wouldn't wear it dial in either as I saw what happens when you present arms and slap the stock.
Around the barracks I would wear something different probably a Seiko diver, but not flashy.
Having an analogue representation of time is the requirement for establishing north/south.
I have a quartz watch specially designed for navigation on the sun. It can be used on either hemisphere.
A quartz oscilator and corresponding tech to drive the display is more rugged/reliable so it is a better tool for navigation.
It can even be solid state, having an lcd analogue display.
Yes, the effectiveness of the Swiss masterstroke to sell their mass produced old tech at ludicrous profits as something desirable is illustrated by the fact that these threads exist.
The 214 Accutron was the first watch movement in space Joint first on the moon and perhaps more amusingly it is the only one that is still on the moon and indeed also still in space. It was the go to watch of the MISS program, the Astronaut training program, the U2 program, the A12 and SR71 programs. It was the first in space in a reusable space plane, well before the Space Shuttle and was both the issued watch and personal choice of most of the early astronauts.
It is a little known fact that the Americans had, in the X15, a genuine spaceplane that, had the Americans had prior warning of Gagarin's flight, and been a tad less cautious, would have been perfectly capable of cracking 100KM and thus putting the first man in space. Had they attempted a spoiler launch, then the astronaut who would most likely have flown it would have been Neil Armstrong as he was flying the X15 at around that time. A little later the US put the same X15, with a different pilot, (also wearing an Accutron of course) into space (above 100km) twice in a a couple of days over a month.
launched in steel in 1962, the Cal. 214 powered Bulova Accutron GMT became the more familiar Accutron Astronaut early in 1963.
Changing a G10 battery can be done in less than a minute using the blunt end of a spoon, so military friendly.
I thought that, then got lumbered with this today.
Requires a special thin battery, case knife, loupe, screwdriver and tweezers.
what is it, can we see the front?
The days when the MoD would shell out for a Swiss mechanical movement are long gone. They can get half a dozen quartz watches for the price of a Swiss mechanical movement and quartz watches are much more robust, unless the electronics get fried in a nuclear blast and then the fact that your watch no longer works is the least of your worries.
Eddie
Whole chunks of my life come under the heading "it seemed like a good idea at the time".
It's an RAF Luminova CWC G10. I didn't take a pic of the front and I'm on the train now! I've got the battery in my pocket so I can order one this week. Will take a pic of the front in a couple of weeks when I'm with the watch again.
Quite so. If the EMP knocks the watch out, in a pretty good Faraday cage, telling the time is pretty low on the priority list
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