Battlefield energy.

• Position: Miss - Brief article

* Hulking generators. Thousands of fuel tanker trucks. Massive loads of batteries. The gargantuan energy demands on the battlefield have been a logistical nightmare for the military for a long time. But it became even more of a predicament in Iraq, where the convoys that deliver the energy must travel hundreds of miles on mined roads.

Power can be extracted from vehicles, but they are already taxed by the multitude of electronics and other functions that suck the juice from their batteries.

In 2006, the Army Tank Automotive Research, Development and Engineering Center began a two-year, multimillion-dollar research and development project to study fuel cells. But so far it has not solved the military's battlefield energy woes. Besides the myriad of technological complexities, a vehicle propelled by fuel cells cannot provide enough...