Defense Department seeks energy advantage
Officials speak at ASU on ways to make operations more efficient
Horizon Energy Systems consultant Steve Neil on Tuesday visits a self-contained military
outpost, or SCOP, developed by Arizona State University students working with General
Dynamics at ASU's Polytechnic campus in Mesa
The Republic | azcentral.com
The Defense Department wants universities and private industry to help soldiers save energy, making them more lethal and reducing risks to their operations, officials said at a Mesa conference this week. Military officials invited enterprising businesses and researchers to Arizona State University's Polytechnic campus for a two-day event called "NetZero and the Tactical Edge."
"For the Department of Defense, it has become very clear to us in the current fights, in Afghanistan and in Iraq previously, that we need to change the way we are using energy and the energy we are using in some cases," said keynote speaker Sharon Burke, assistant U.S. secretary of Defense for operational energy plans and programs.
She said that all branches of the military are seeking ways to make their bases and remote outposts more energy-efficient, as well as their vast fleet of vehicles. That includes using alternative fuels and solar power and making more efficient use of the diesel generators that power remote outposts on the front lines.
In 2011, the Defense Department spent about $21billion on energy, mostly fuel for vehicles, and burned about 1.8million gallons of fuel per day in Afghanistan alone, Burke said. To get fuel to all the remote stations in that country costs from $15 to $40 per gallon, once the logistics of the military-escorted supply lines are factored in, she said. "There is the money that it costs us but also the combat force that you have to put on your supply lines," she said. "And the simple vulnerability of having that many target points on the battlefield. This is about saving fuel and also about saving lives. And it is about saving the combat power for where we really need it to be."
Burke said the Defense Department has always operated under the assumption that whatever its energy needs were on the battlefield, they would be met, and the issue is as old as warfare itself. The military's ability to quickly "project force" in remote areas is critical for national security, she said, but it has led to energy-intensive operations, especially on the front lines, where fuel is needed for everything from vehicles to diesel generators that power the communications and other strategic equipment used by soldiers.
About 13percent of total energy demand in war zones is for electricity to provide air-conditioning and heating, according to a study by the Marine Corps, Burke said. Learning to use energy more efficiently will help the military in places beyond Iraq and Afghanistan, she said.
"We owe it to our 21st-century war fighters to have an energy advantage," she said. "It is time to grow this advantage now. We need to integrate these lessons learned into our future planning." She said the Defense Department's primary goal is still national security, not to promote alternative energy. But better energy technologies can help it achieve that goal. "The real question is 'How does energy fit in?" Burke said. "It is not 'What can Defense do for energy?' but 'What can energy do for the Department of Defense?'" About 200 people attended the event, mostly from private businesses working on technologies that they hope could be used by the military. The conference let the Defense Department meet with those businesses and discuss ways to test the equipment and get the most useful technologies available to the front lines, said Col. Peter Newell, director of the Rapid Equipping Force in Virginia. The goal of the Army program is to get innovative technology in the hands of soldiers as quickly as possible.
"We measure the savings in energy at the tactical edge in lives saved, not in gallons of gas," Newell said. "In the very far reaches of the battlefield, the guy who bears the biggest burden is the same guy who wins the war. We need to do everything we can for him." The first step in addressing energy on the battlefield has been to figure out where it's being used, something that doesn't traditionally get much scrutiny from the Defense Department. To help the business officials at the forum better understand the energy issues on the battlefield, military consultants shared details of how forward operating bases and combat outposts in Afghanistan work.
The military on average has one casualty for every 20 or 24 convoys it operates in Afghanistan, said Bill Garland, a consultant who previously worked for the Rapid Equipping Force. Supplies also can be dropped from airplanes on remote locations, but this can result in damaged fuel containers and puts soldiers at risk when they leave their outposts to retrieve the drops, consultant Brandon Bloodworth said. Helicopters also can deliver supplies, but they put soldiers at risk during takeoffs and landings.
He said that conserving just 500 gallons of fuel at the outposts can cut the need for one helicopter resupply trip and make a big difference in cost and risk to soldiers. At the outposts, he pointed out several areas where better technology could save fuel used in generators.
The outposts are usually made from plywood with no insulation, which doesn't stand up well to the harsh winter in Afghanistan, he said. That puts added loads on the heating units soldiers use. He also pointed to several issues of equipment not being properly sized. In many cases, large generators only are used at a tenth of their capacity for electricity to power small water pumps or appliances, wasting gallons of fuel that could be powering more.
Sometimes soldiers don't understand how generators work and go out of their way to reduce the energy load on them, rather than use them in the most efficient manner, with high, steady loads. "We have the best fighting force out there, but energy is one of the areas we can improve, and we owe it to them to do that," Bloodworth said.
One of the vendors at the event was General Dynamics C4 Systems of Scottsdale, which belongs to a forum that collaborates on military technology issues called the Edge Innovation Network.
Through the network, ASU undergraduate students helped develop a prototype self-contained outpost, or SCOP. The goal was to reduce the frequency of resupply trips for fuel and water.
The prototype uses solar panels to generate electricity and low-power appliances. The structure itself is an insulated tent, which can collect rain or snow water from the top and store it in bladders. It has a purification system for the water.
"The goal was to get as close as possible to a renewable resource," said Ron Wood, an enterprise manager for the Edge Innovation Network and a General Dynamics employee. "Our project shows this is possible."
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Defense Department seeks energy advantage
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