Oil in the Sand

This afternoon I got a chance to start looking over the May issue of The Alantic, which arrived a week or so ago. "Gas Pains," one of the magazine's preliminary articles this month, is quite an interesting piece, so I thought I would discuss it briefly. The author, Robert Bryce, reveals that the U.S. military is using 1.7 million gallons of fuel per day in Iraq (that works out, he says, to approximately 9 gallons per soldier per day, a calculation that removes from the equation the JP-5 fuel used by the Navy to power its ships and planes).

Bryce argues that the amount of fuel used in Iraq is partly the result of a horrible cycle. As insurgents attack convoys of lightly-protected tanker trucks and unarmored vehicles with IEDs (improvised explosive devices), the Pentagon up-armors the vehicles to keep them safer from the roadside bombs. But the up-armoring process means the vehicles must be fitted with larger engines and suspension systems, and thus require more fuel. So more oil and gas must be trucked in, by convoys - which, you guessed it, get blown up by insurgents.

"Given the longer the fuel supply lines, the greater the vulnerability for our military," Bryce writes, "logic would suggest we try to reduce our fuel requirements." The Pentagon, however, has gone ahead with development and purchase of vehicles "with little or no consideration to their fuel efficiency," meaning that today fuel may comprise as much as 70% of all tonnage transported into the war zone (according, Bryce says, to a 2001 Defense Science Board study).

Bryce provides some startling statistics about the fuel economy of some of the most common American military vehicles. Bradley fighting vehicles go less than two miles on a gallon of fuel, while the M1 Abrams tank is even worse, able to travel less than one mile per gallon. A tank commander Bryce spoke to said he and his men have come to realize "the more fuel-efficient we are, the more tactically sound we are" (it's much easier to operate flexibly and quickly when you don't have to be followed around by giant, slow tanker trucks).

Following that Defense Science Board study, Bryce says, the Board "recommended that the Pentagon make fuel efficiency a key consideration when buying a new weapons system. The Joint Chiefs of Staff dismissed the proposal ...". The report's chairman, former astronaut Richard Truly, told Bryce "The thing we were trying to get across was that this doesn't have anything to do with moral values. [apparently the military isn't allowed to take such things under consideration ...?] It has to do with running the g-dd--n military with as little fuel as possible ... so that instead of having ten fuel trucks, you have five." Bryce concludes by quoting Truly as saying that the "prevailing wisdom at the Pentagon is that 'fuel efficiency is for sissies.'"

As I mentioned in a March 31 post, some conservatives and neo-cons are finally coming around to the idea that fuel efficiency is indeed not for sissies, forming an odd coalition called Set America Free. This sounds like just the issue for this group to take on! How about it: Frank Gaffney, James Woolsey, give your ole buddies over at the Pentagon a call and start persuading them to stop pouring oil in the sand.