A Greener, Meaner Military.

The U.S. military is the most powerful fighting force on the planet. Despite all our setbacks in Iraq and elsewhere, most Americans remain confident that our military is strong and capable. Even the nature of our problems represent a backhanded compliment; the heavy use of IED’s, guerilla tactics and other forms of terrorism simply reinforces the impression that no one is actually willing to stand up and face us; no one can. Machinery, especially technologically sophisticated machinery, is what makes the real difference between our military and the militaries of other countries. We produce the jet fighters, the tanks, the submarines and the rest of the high tech equipment that supports your average foot soldier. Given that a great deal of our advantage in war is based on our possession of powerful fighting vehicles, I am troubled by a minor design flaw inherent to almost all of them. Specifically, I am concerned about the fact that almost every fighting vehicle in the American arsenal depends on oil for fuel, and that eventually we will be faced with the time consuming and expensive proposition of replacing every single one of our oil-based machines.

I understand that the exhaustion of global oil supplies is still some way in the future. However, as supplies dwindle, the American military dependence on it will assert itself more and more as a vulnerability. If American fighting vehicles are dependent on oil to function, that makes the American military almost entirely dependent on oil as well. Not only does this make our armed forces vulnerable to energy-based attacks (such as oil embargos), but it also means that, eventually, almost every high tech vehicle in our painfully expensive military will eventually need to be retrofitted or replaced once we have exhausted our planet’s available oil resources.

What will we do, then, when that time comes? Even before we run out of oil completely, shortages and interruptions in supply will likely become a defining feature of our future. On top of the inevitable rise in gas prices and fuel rationing for the sake of the military, we will run out eventually. Are we just expecting to replace everything? Even assuming that we will have invented some new method of powering our vehicles, the expense of refitting the entire military apparatus will be prohibitive. Consider the following American military machines and their price tags:

- M1 Abrams tank; perhaps the most recognizable symbol of American military might, the M1 costs between 2.4 and 4 million dollars per unit; and every M1 tank requires 11 gallons of gas to simply start the ignition, every time.

- M2/M3 Bradley; each of these 3.2 million dollar infantry fighting vehicles runs off a diesel engine.

- F-16 Fighter; the jet fighter has an internal fuel capacity of 7 thousand pounds of jet fuel; with the ability to increase that to 12 thousand by carrying extra fuel tanks. Each plane costs between 14.5 and 18 million dollars.

Only our navy seems prepared for the next generation of mechanized warfare; all of our aircraft carriers and submarines run off of nuclear reactors. However, every single plane on our carriers and every cruise missile on our subs would be nothing more than scrap metal without the tons upon tons of oil required to fuel them.

Eventually, the American military will have to be completely retrofitted, if not outright renewed and replaced. When that time comes, all militaries around the world will be effectively reset back to zero; every country will be in a race to rebuild their capabilities from scratch. By the time that happens, many predict that America’s economic primacy will have waned compared to up and coming powers like India, South Korea and China. We have an opportunity to get a jump on our rivals now, while we are still the biggest and the strongest. Why not take advantage of our current dominance so as to place ourselves in a prime position to maintain a military-technological advantage for generations to come?