More fuel please!(READERS' FORUM) (Letter to the editor)

• Author: Kojro, Chester A.

* In reference to Sandra Erwin's February editorial, "Tough to Free Troops From Oppressive Tyranny of Fuel," I strongly object to the premise that the military needs "greener" systems to overcome the logistics burden of fuel. I also reject the various numbers tossed about.

In recent articles, $400 per gallon fuel was the "calculated" cost for air-to-air refueling, not across the board for support of ground operations. The daily requirement for fuel in Afghanistan is claimed to be 300,000 gallons, yet a Marine brigade supposedly burns 500,000 gallons per day. Unless our total footprint in Afghanistan is only 3/5th of a Marine brigade, these numbers are plainly bogus.

This is important because if you misstate the problem, you will certainly fail to resolve it.

Consider the suggestions offered in the article.

"There is a call to action to reduce dependence on oil in war." Yeah, right, along with "cold fusion" and "teleportation" with "antigravity drive" thrown in. They ain't on the horizon.

"One immediate fix for Afghanistan would be to replace older generators which devour the bulk of the fuel at U.S. bases." This is a false metric. We need lots of electricity. A marginal percentage improvement in efficiency is just that, marginal.

"The best they can do is cut the consumption at forward operating bases." Yeah, tell the warriors at the cutting edge to just do more with less. Thanks a lot!

So far as "hybrid engines to comply with Europe's strict emission requirements," of course the U.S. military is uninterested. Warriors generally don't give a rip about the smoke from destroyed enemy targets so why worry about whether an Abrams' 1,500 hp turbine fails emission standards...