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| Gas Pains | |
| 2005-05-08 | |
In addition to the challenges posed by the volume of fuel needed, the Army's logisticians must deal with the sheer variety of fuels. Although the Pentagon has tried to reduce the number of fuels it consumes, and now relies primarily on a jet-fuel-like substance called JP-8, the Defense Energy Support Center is currently supplying fourteen kinds of fuel to U.S. troops in Iraq. In short, the American GI is the most energy-consuming soldier ever seen on the field of war. For computers and GPS units, Humvees and helicopters, the modern soldier is in constant need of energy: battery power, electric power, and petroleum. The U.S. military now uses about 1.7 million gallons of fuel a day in Iraq. Some of that fuel goes to naval vessels and aircraft, but even factoring out JP-5 fuel (which is what the Navy primarily uses), each of the 150,000 soldiers on the ground consumes roughly nine gallons of fuel a day. And that figure has been rising. Some of the rise in consumption is due to the insurgents' use of improvised explosive devices, which account for about 30 percent of all American combat deaths since the occupation began. Cheap, easy to use, and highly effective, IEDs have forced the Americans to add armor to their fleet of Humvees in Iraq. A fully armored Humvee weighs more than five tons—and requires a larger engine and heavier suspension than the non-armored model. The added armor will help protect U.S. soldiers from IEDs and snipers—but it also means higher fuel consumption for their vehicles. Which means, in turn, that more tanker trucks will have to be driven into Iraq—and those trucks will provide more targets for the insurgents, who have become skilled at attacking them. It's difficult to guard them all. It's a vicious cycle: attacks on convoys produce a need for more armor, which produces a need for more fuel, which produces larger convoys, which produce more targets for attack. Over the past six months the Army and the Air Force have had to specially train more than 1,000 additional soldiers to perform convoy security. One tank commander, who returned from Iraq last spring, told me that he had been so concerned about his supply lines that he had stationed sentries at one-mile intervals along the highway in his sector. Logistics is an old and critically important issue in war. During World War II the German general Erwin Rommel's Afrika Korps was stymied in North Africa by a shortage of fuel for its tanks. A lack of gasoline also halted the gallop across France of General George Patton's Third Army in the summer of 1944. The Third Army had about 400,000 men and used about 400,000 gallons of gasoline a day. Today the Pentagon has about a third that number of troops in Iraq—yet they use more than four times as much fuel. Given that the longer the fuel supply lines, the greater the vulnerability for our military, logic would suggest we try to reduce our fuel requirements. But over the past several decades the Pentagon has bought billions of dollars' worth of tanks, trucks, and other vehicles with little or no consideration to their fuel efficiency. In decades past, U.S. Army logisticians assumed that 50 percent of the tonnage moved onto a battlefield was ammunition, 30 percent was fuel, and the rest was food, water, and supplies. Today the fuel component may be as high as 70 percent, according to a study done in 2001 by the Defense Science Board. The insurgents' tactics may not stop the flow of motor fuel to American troops, but they are part of the broader war that is forcing the United States and its allies in Iraq to defend every pipeline, every refinery, every tanker truck, and every fuel depot. Even in peacetime that's a difficult task. Meanwhile, the U.S. military in Iraq is in a bind. It has no choice but to continue fortifying its vehicles with armor and pumping imported fuel into, for example, the Bradley fighting vehicle (which gets less than two miles per gallon) and the M1 Abrams tank (less than one mile per gallon). But all the fuel demanded by those armaments and vehicles creates logistical and military headaches. The tank commander I spoke to told me that soldiers on the ground are beginning to see that "the more fuel-efficient we are, the more tactically sound we are." But U.S. military commanders seem not to see that connection. At the conclusion of its study the DSB recommended that the Pentagon make fuel efficiency a key consideration when buying new weapons systems. The Joint Chiefs of Staff dismissed the proposal in August of that year. Richard Truly, a former astronaut who recently retired as the head of the National Renewable Energy Laboratory, chaired the DSB study. "The thing we were trying to get across was that this doesn't have anything to do with moral values," Truly told me. "It has to do with running the goddamn military with as little fuel as possible and showing the advantages to the warfighter himself—so that instead of having ten fuel trucks, you can have five." Unfortunately, Truly says, the prevailing wisdom at the Pentagon is that "fuel efficiency is for sissies." | |
| Posted by:Steve White |
| #9 I'd have to agree that fuel efficiency is for sissies. In battle, you need big-time power and big-time acceleration, for those moments when you need to get out of craters or power out of an area in a hurry. That means lousy fuel efficiency. That means having gas-guzzling tractor-style engines. Can't really be helped. |
| Posted by: Zhang Fei 2005-05-08 22:18 |
| #8 Reminds me of the discussions about fire control. Iraqi and some coalition forces are discovering that logistics efficiency translates directly into both survivability and lethality. Re fuel: one milblogger noted that it was a serious problem having to stop so frequently to refuel up-armoured Humvees. There's almost no upside to waste, in any case, and big bonuses in flexibility and striking power from being efficient. |
| Posted by: Brian H 2005-05-08 12:49 |
#7 "If wishes were horses, we'd all be eating steak." - Jayne Cobb. | |
| Posted by: Phil Fraering 2005-05-08 12:29 |
| #6 Yep, the only thing missing from this article is our contribution to global warming. Wankers. |
| Posted by: Raj 2005-05-08 11:00 |
| #5 The atlantic monthly is again looking for a reason to be criticaln no suprise here. The title should say "oh My God Those wastefull soldiers and how they trade fuel for safety!" Fuel consumption is a logistical issue that the combat development folks should be aware of but not overly concerned with. Winning our wars and the safety of your soldiers should be the only two real concerns. The Pentagon staff bases decisions on compromise, the last thing I want is energy conservation having any vote when it comes to lethality and survivability of a system. Tell that astronaut to go bact to what he does best, be a spaceman and let the pentagon get back to winning our wars. |
| Posted by: 49pan 2005-05-08 09:42 |
| #4 ...a jet-fuel-like substance called JP-8... Huh? JP-8 is jet fuel. If the author made this simple mistake (and his editor didn't catch it) in the second paragraph how many other errors are there in this article? |
| Posted by: Parabellum 2005-05-08 08:35 |
| #3 I'm not sure what to think about this article. A very close friend, Sgt. Hank Harvey, has been in Iraq for the last year on convoy duty. I e-mail him regularly. What he tells me is for the first 6 months he was there his convoy, including fuel trucks, had to run a gauntlet of fire from the moment they left until they reached their destination. Literally driving 80 miles an hour without lights at night. He told me there was a big drop-off in convoy attacks during the 7th month and for the last 5 months the convoys are almost never attacked. He said some of the initial "attacks" were no more than a single individual stepping out to fire a few rounds from an AK and some of them were more organized. He attributes the drop in convoy attacks to increased air protection and increased depletion of insurgents. It's easier for them to attack civilian targets. It's still no pic nic over there but not nearly as bad as the media make it out to be. He said that really pisses him off because it causes undue worry by his family here. Just my $.02 worth. |
| Posted by: Deacon Blues 2005-05-08 08:19 |
| #2 Horses, lot's and lots of horses. That's the ticket or shank's mare and live off the ground. Sure. |
| Posted by: Shipman 2005-05-08 06:26 |
| #1 sumthin teribly rong ifn we not haver nuff fuel in iraq. reely tho im just not knowin what to post. reely... |
| Posted by: muck4doo 2005-05-08 02:11 |