By Emelie Rutherford
The Marine Corps wants solutions from industry in the near term for how to save energy and reduce fuel consumption in Afghanistan, the service’s top officer said last week.
Commandant Gen. James Conway told the Surface Navy Association Symposium that “you will hear us clanging that bell fairly often and fairly strongly in the months” about finding ways to lower so-called expeditionary energy usage.
That bell-clanging will be heard at an upcoming conference in New Orleans, which he said is intended “to identify our needs and challenge (industry officials) in terms of what they can do for us, in a very rapid fashion.”
Conway challenged the Marine Corps last August to lead the other military services in achieving energy efficiency in combat zones. He set a goal of increasing the reusable energy sources the service uses by 25 percent by 2015 (Defense Daily, Aug. 27, 2009).
“The fact is as United States forces we are awfully wasteful of those things that we take with us to an expeditionary environment, and in the process we make ourselves vulnerable,” Conway said last Thursday at the Arlington, Va., symposium.
As more troops head to Afghanistan as part of President Barack Obama’s surge, Conway said he is concerned U.S. supply lines across Pakistan not only consume large amounts of fuel but also make forces vulnerable to interdiction. And he said he wants a more efficient way to get water to troops in the field than sending 40-foot trucks carrying water crossing multiple bridges en route.
“If we can look at our consumption figures and be more realistic in terms of what we have to have, we think we can reduce our requirements and therefore, in some ways, reduce the vulnerability,” he said.
And the price of fuel in combat zones also is a factor, he said. The cost of government-purchased fuel soars from just over $1 per gallon to over $400 a gallon when transported to some remote mountainous areas of Afghanistan, he said.
Looking at what changes are possible in energy usage in Afghanistan, Conway noted that most of the fuel consumption is for climate-control efforts such as cooling troops and computers.
He said trying to air-condition tents during 130-degree days “is a losing proposition” that is not happening effectively.
Conway said he is waiting for “the day industry can provide you a relatively thin liner that you put in those tents and saves 40 percent of the energy, be it heating or cooling, and when you’re ready to go you roll it up in the tent, you move out.”
“So there will be some up-front expenditure,” he said. “But we think we’ve got to bite that bullet for the long-term organic capability, to go anywhere, go to a moonscape, turn it into home and operate.”
Conway reiterated to the audience of Navy and defense-industry officials last week that he wants the Marine Corps to be a forerunner in achieving combat-zone energy efficiency.
“As a Corps we have offered to the other services, give us your best practices, we’ll take the lead on this and then share everything we find out,” he said.