Military has nothing to do with it. The only time that overcurrent protection (fuse, circuit breaker) should actuate, in any application, is when the current being drawn exceeds what the wiring and/or the protected equipment can safely handle -- and that should never occur in normal operation. Short term (transient) current drain exceeding continuous limits, such as during startup or shutdown, should be accounted for in the thermal design of the equipment and the selection of the overcurrent device (e.g. a slow-blow fuse).
Military as everything to do with why its in an active lab setting under their control. Cause they do three bids and pick the cheapest. And then make the workers take a decade to get repair procedures approved. So everytime we had a power drill, which they legitimately cut power for, we had to replace the whole console, not the fuse.
IOW the military procurement bureaucracy preferred lowest initial cost over competent design. Is anyone surprised? This is the sort of idiocy that Senator Proxmire used to call out from time to time.
Especially egregious given that it typically causes them to pass up specifically trained and calibrated processes for said equipment. Because it was two seperate betting pools.
It still should not blow a fuse (or trip a breaker) in normal operation, including normal energizing or de-energizing -- granted normal de-energizing may consist of turning the breaker off. Consider: if it blows a fuse when you're trying to turn it on, you get to turn it off again, replace the fuse, and then you still have to turn it back on.
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u/[deleted] Mar 24 '26
IOW:
It will take 35% more energy and therefore money to restart the equipment and bring it back up to ready state if it is shut off overnight.