Ensuring no one pays the 'ultimate price' for fuel becomes new goal.

AuthorMagnuson, Stew
PositionTactical Power

* Tactical generators.

The two words may induce yawns for some, but improving their efficiency has become serious business in the U.S military during the past six years.

Small, medium and large electrical generators are needed to power forward operating bases in Afghanistan and Iraq. These generators are the largest consumer of fuel on the battlefield.

And this fuel often must be trucked in at a high price. There is the so-called "fully burdened" price of fuel--the actual cost of buying, moving and protecting a gallon of petroleum, which is estimated at somewhere between $15 and $42 per gallon depending how much security is needed. And then there is the ultimate price of fuel--the lives of men and women in uniform lost when ambushed during convoy operations.

"Where we are today is basically where we were 40 years ago with generators," said Michael Padden, the Army program manager for mobile electric power.

Solar, wind, waste-to-fuel, fuel cells and turning garbage into electricity are all on the table, he said. "There is a lot of stuff going on, but no standardization. There is a lot of potential, but at the same time, no one is looking at it holistically," he said at the National Defense Industrial Association Power Expo in New Orleans.

A House Armed Services Committee's subcommittee on readiness hearing on the Defense Department's efforts to reduce fuel costs reflected Padden's assertion.

William Solis, director of defense capabilities management at the Government Accountability Office, testified that the department lacks an effective approach to reducing fuel demand--especially at remote outposts that rely on generators because they cannot connect to a local power grid.

"Managing fuel demand at forward-deployed locations has not been a departmental priority and its fuel reduction efforts have not been well coordinated," Soils said.

Commanders at forward-deployed locations have received little guidance from the Defense Department, they don't have viable funding mechanisms for fuel reduction projects and there is no one person in the Pentagon who can be held accountable for managing the problem, Solis said.

A director of operational energy, whose office was created in the 2009 Defense Authorization Act, has yet to be appointed.

And yet as Padden said, "There's never been more interest in power and energy than there is today."

Attention has increasingly fallen on generators, which are consuming more fuel on some bases than trucks, fighting...

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