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For several years the US Government spent more on fuel to air condition tents in the desert than it did on NASA. I'm not talking about the tents themselves, or

For several years the US Government spent more on fuel to air condition tents in the desert than it did on NASA. I'm not talking about the tents themselves, or the soldiers living in them, their supplies or assistance after the war. All of that cost more. I'm just talking about fuel for air conditioners.

Gustomaximus 5y ago
That's incredible, cost of war aside, you'd think solar and batteries would be used if only for the: 1) ability to redeploy 2) one-time shipping event for setup 3) ability to self sustain on supply issues.
- chefkoch 5y ago
  That would be a massive amount of solar, if a tent AC has 7kw and a standard panel has 180w theoretical output.
  - londons_explore 5y ago
    A standard 2x1m panel now has an output of more like 450-500 watts. Technology has moved on since the days of 9% efficient panels!
    - bborud 5y ago
      So if we assume the sun was shining whenever the AC needs to draw 7kW, that would mean roughly 30m^2 of solar panels per 7kW AC. So roughly one (american) football field of solar panels for every 180 or so 7kW AC units. (Rounding generously since this is just a thought experiment to look at some lower bounds.You'd probably need a lot more solar panels than that (3x?), plus battery infrastructure, plus some way of cleaning the panels etc. for this to be practical)
      - londons_explore 5y ago
        If you actually wanted to solar power the military, you'd design stuff the be energy efficient from the start. That would probably consist of all buildings having 3 inches of insulation on all sides so that you need far less cooling. Then you have the solar cells built into the roof, and the batteries built in too, so the whole unit is "dump this anywhere in the world and it makes habitable space". Grid connection optional - and if provided can be used to automatically balance electrical load between buildings. This probably weighs less than a tent plus generator plus fuel.
        nradov 5y ago
        It's not practical to build insulated buildings at forward operating bases. They don't have the time, materials, or equipment. Everything has to be flown in by helicopter, or transported in truck convoys over terrible roads under constant threat of roadside bombs. Tents are light and can be erected in minutes.
        matthewdgreen 5y ago
        "The Army has a $95 million contract to foam up to nine million square feet of building space in Iraq, of which about 60 percent has been completed. The Army also let a $29 million contract to foam structures in Afghanistan. So far, 150,000 square feet have been foamed. It takes a mere 26 days to recoup the costs of the foaming through the fuel savings." https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives_by_bringing_new_life_to_an_old_technology https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives...
        bborud 5y ago
        Have you taken some time to consider why forward operating bases make use of tents rather than what, for all practical purposes, would be houses?
        Gravityloss 5y ago
        Even just putting two tents on top of each other already improves the insulation a lot, because of the air layer. This was used already during the second world war over here. In reality in general it's hard to do things that make sense as a whole - large organizations can only optimize invididual parts.
- kongin 5y ago
  Solar pannels don't work at night and you can't ask the enemy to attack on sunny days.
  - throaway46546 5y ago
    I think there might be a correlation between sunny days and AC usage.
    - kongin 5y ago
      You also use AC to heat the tens at night in the desert.
  - nix23 5y ago
    There's that crazy idea called batteries. For "bigger" stuff one could produce hydrogen during the day (for fuel-cells or straight up burning in combustion engines). But yeah i would too, not use solar-panels in a warzone.
    - bborud 5y ago
      Why would you want to introduce complex, hard to move storage technology that produces and consumes enormous amounts of explosive gas, and has much, much higher energy loss than both thermal and electrical storage? Whenever hydrogen turns up in discussions about energy storage people tend to forget physics and the infrastructure reality of dealing with electrolysis, compression and liquefaction and powercells ... which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption.
      - nix23 5y ago
        >which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption. It's just one thing, storage huge amounts of energy in liq. hydrogen is easier then in batteries (who are explosive as well) and heavy. But again...i would not use one of those technologies at all in a War-zone..all of them are way too complex for the field.
- Someone 5y ago
  You can’t cover solar arrays and they have large area, so hitting them from distance is fairly easy. How easy is it to design a solar array that stays operating (with reduced capacity) after a few mortar hits? I would guess solar arrays in space that beam energy down are a better solution for military bases in times of war. The USA is actively working on that (https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-plane.html https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-pl...)
  - parineum 5y ago
    FYI, this is the "space laser" part of the "jewish space lasers" of Marjorie Taylor Greene that left everyone laughing about how (wrongly) absurd space lasers are and forgot about the anti-semitism. She basically said that a system like you've mentioned was tested, misfired and started wildfires. It was then covered up by some Jewish guy on the board.
- garmaine 5y ago
  Not in 2003.
- newsclues 5y ago
  If an advanced invading army requires solar power, as an freedom fighter u I’m going to lob mortars and snipe those panels.
  - Gustomaximus 5y ago
    Also exactly what was happening to the fuel convoys heading across Afghanistan. I think better having people target your equipment in a base where its easier to have defence and a perimeter, than over a regular and long supply line.
    - newsclues 5y ago
      Better to have attacks on a base where you can mount an effective defence rather than letting your supply line get ambushed? I don’t know if it’s better or worse but different with different risks.
throw0101a 5y ago
Per retired brigadier general Steven Anderson, who did logistics for Petraeus in Iraq: * https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-... The DoD position: > Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan says that in fiscal year 2010, the Pentagon spent approximately $15 billion on energy for all military operations around the world. The Pentagon says when it comes to Afghanistan, it spent $1.5 billion from October 2010 to May 2011 on fuel. That fuel was used for heating and air conditioning systems, but also for aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, combat vehicles, computers and electricity inside military structures. On Anderson (at the time): > Anderson advocates for increased energy efficiency for military structures in order to cut down on the need for long, dangerous fuel-transport missions. […] Anderson says experiments with polyurethane foam insulation for tents in Iraq cut energy use by 92 percent and took 11,000 fuel trucks off the road. […] > In February 2011 Gen. Anderson has joined the Relyant corporation as Senior Vice President, in charge for the company’s presence in Washington, D.C., managing the organization’s strategic planning and military business development. Relyant is a global provider of construction and insulation projects, life support, demining, logistics/procurement, security, and IT communications. It should be noted though that these additional costs are spent regardless of the volume of supplies sent over supply lines, as the convoys do not carry only fuel, but also food, ammunition, batteries, spare parts, building supplies etc. nevertheless, a green approach could significantly reduce volume, and costs and risk of such operations. * https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html

Gustomaximus 5y ago

That's incredible, cost of war aside, you'd think solar and batteries would be used if only for the: 1) ability to redeploy 2) one-time shipping event for setup 3) ability to self sustain on supply issues.

chefkoch 5y ago
That would be a massive amount of solar, if a tent AC has 7kw and a standard panel has 180w theoretical output.
- londons_explore 5y ago
  A standard 2x1m panel now has an output of more like 450-500 watts. Technology has moved on since the days of 9% efficient panels!
  - bborud 5y ago
    So if we assume the sun was shining whenever the AC needs to draw 7kW, that would mean roughly 30m^2 of solar panels per 7kW AC. So roughly one (american) football field of solar panels for every 180 or so 7kW AC units. (Rounding generously since this is just a thought experiment to look at some lower bounds.You'd probably need a lot more solar panels than that (3x?), plus battery infrastructure, plus some way of cleaning the panels etc. for this to be practical)
    - londons_explore 5y ago
      If you actually wanted to solar power the military, you'd design stuff the be energy efficient from the start. That would probably consist of all buildings having 3 inches of insulation on all sides so that you need far less cooling. Then you have the solar cells built into the roof, and the batteries built in too, so the whole unit is "dump this anywhere in the world and it makes habitable space". Grid connection optional - and if provided can be used to automatically balance electrical load between buildings. This probably weighs less than a tent plus generator plus fuel.
      - nradov 5y ago
        It's not practical to build insulated buildings at forward operating bases. They don't have the time, materials, or equipment. Everything has to be flown in by helicopter, or transported in truck convoys over terrible roads under constant threat of roadside bombs. Tents are light and can be erected in minutes.
        matthewdgreen 5y ago
        "The Army has a $95 million contract to foam up to nine million square feet of building space in Iraq, of which about 60 percent has been completed. The Army also let a $29 million contract to foam structures in Afghanistan. So far, 150,000 square feet have been foamed. It takes a mere 26 days to recoup the costs of the foaming through the fuel savings." https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives_by_bringing_new_life_to_an_old_technology https://www.army.mil/article/20777/army_saves_fuel_and_lives...
      - bborud 5y ago
        Have you taken some time to consider why forward operating bases make use of tents rather than what, for all practical purposes, would be houses?
      - Gravityloss 5y ago
        Even just putting two tents on top of each other already improves the insulation a lot, because of the air layer. This was used already during the second world war over here. In reality in general it's hard to do things that make sense as a whole - large organizations can only optimize invididual parts.
kongin 5y ago
Solar pannels don't work at night and you can't ask the enemy to attack on sunny days.
- throaway46546 5y ago
  I think there might be a correlation between sunny days and AC usage.
  - kongin 5y ago
    You also use AC to heat the tens at night in the desert.
- nix23 5y ago
  There's that crazy idea called batteries. For "bigger" stuff one could produce hydrogen during the day (for fuel-cells or straight up burning in combustion engines). But yeah i would too, not use solar-panels in a warzone.
  - bborud 5y ago
    Why would you want to introduce complex, hard to move storage technology that produces and consumes enormous amounts of explosive gas, and has much, much higher energy loss than both thermal and electrical storage? Whenever hydrogen turns up in discussions about energy storage people tend to forget physics and the infrastructure reality of dealing with electrolysis, compression and liquefaction and powercells ... which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption.
    - nix23 5y ago
      >which ultimately charge batteries so you can buffer energy to deal with varying consumption. It's just one thing, storage huge amounts of energy in liq. hydrogen is easier then in batteries (who are explosive as well) and heavy. But again...i would not use one of those technologies at all in a War-zone..all of them are way too complex for the field.
Someone 5y ago
You can’t cover solar arrays and they have large area, so hitting them from distance is fairly easy. How easy is it to design a solar array that stays operating (with reduced capacity) after a few mortar hits? I would guess solar arrays in space that beam energy down are a better solution for military bases in times of war. The USA is actively working on that (https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-plane.html https://www.livescience.com/microwave-beam-military-space-pl...)
- parineum 5y ago
  FYI, this is the "space laser" part of the "jewish space lasers" of Marjorie Taylor Greene that left everyone laughing about how (wrongly) absurd space lasers are and forgot about the anti-semitism. She basically said that a system like you've mentioned was tested, misfired and started wildfires. It was then covered up by some Jewish guy on the board.
garmaine 5y ago
Not in 2003.
newsclues 5y ago
If an advanced invading army requires solar power, as an freedom fighter u I’m going to lob mortars and snipe those panels.
- Gustomaximus 5y ago
  Also exactly what was happening to the fuel convoys heading across Afghanistan. I think better having people target your equipment in a base where its easier to have defence and a perimeter, than over a regular and long supply line.
  - newsclues 5y ago
    Better to have attacks on a base where you can mount an effective defence rather than letting your supply line get ambushed? I don’t know if it’s better or worse but different with different risks.

throw0101a 5y ago

Per retired brigadier general Steven Anderson, who did logistics for Petraeus in Iraq: * https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning https://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-... The DoD position: > Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan says that in fiscal year 2010, the Pentagon spent approximately $15 billion on energy for all military operations around the world. The Pentagon says when it comes to Afghanistan, it spent $1.5 billion from October 2010 to May 2011 on fuel. That fuel was used for heating and air conditioning systems, but also for aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, combat vehicles, computers and electricity inside military structures. On Anderson (at the time): > Anderson advocates for increased energy efficiency for military structures in order to cut down on the need for long, dangerous fuel-transport missions. […] Anderson says experiments with polyurethane foam insulation for tents in Iraq cut energy use by 92 percent and took 11,000 fuel trucks off the road. […] > In February 2011 Gen. Anderson has joined the Relyant corporation as Senior Vice President, in charge for the company’s presence in Washington, D.C., managing the organization’s strategic planning and military business development. Relyant is a global provider of construction and insulation projects, life support, demining, logistics/procurement, security, and IT communications. It should be noted though that these additional costs are spent regardless of the volume of supplies sent over supply lines, as the convoys do not carry only fuel, but also food, ammunition, batteries, spare parts, building supplies etc. nevertheless, a green approach could significantly reduce volume, and costs and risk of such operations. * https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html https://defense-update.com/20110627_costly_aircondition.html