All posts tagged ‘Cammo Green’

It’s starting to feel like hardly a week goes by without getting a press release regarding a jet flying on a new biofuel somewhere in the world. The Navy and Boeing did manage to time this latest move well by flying an unmodified F/A-18  Super Hornet on Earth Day with a 50/50 blend of camelina sourced biofuel and traditional JP-5 fuel powering the jet.

The Navy is calling the airplane the “Green Hornet” and today’s test flight out of Naval Air Station Patuxent River in Maryland was the first of 15 planned test flights that will last through the middle of June. The Green Hornet program will test the biofuel blend throughout the operational flight envelope for the F/A-18 Super Hornet. This will include the first supersonic test flights using biofuel. In March, the Air Force flew an A-10 Warthog at Eglin Air Force Base using a similar blend of Camelina based biofuel and traditional jet fuel.

During the Hornet’s 45 minute flight, the aircraft flew as expected with no surprises, according to the pilot. Once the flight test program is complete, the Navy hopes to certify the F/A-18 E and F models to use the blended biofuels throughout the fleet.

Last year, Navy Secretary Ray Mabus announced plans to have an operational strike group burning biofuel for local operations by 2012 and could be fully operational by 2016. If that actually happens, then we’ll really know that the military is going green. Until then, these demonstrations are nice, but not exactly packed with meaning.

Continue Reading “Navy Converts Biofuel Into Noise to Celebrate Earth Day” »

The plume of ash from Iceland’s Eyjafjallajokull volcano eruptions has been a nightmare for commercial airlines, forcing massive flight cancellations and stranding thousands of travelers. But it also appears to have had a quiet impact on military operations as well.

Late last week, the Air Force grounded aircraft at Royal Air Force Lakenheath and Royal Air Force Mildenhall, air bases in the United Kingdom. As of today, mail service there is still delayed. And the Air Force is also being forced to re-route crucial flights to avoid the cloud of ash over northern Europe. 

According to an Air Force news item published today, Air Mobility Command’s 618th Tanker Airlift Control Center has shifted aircraft, crews, and maintenance personnel from bases in Germany to more southern staging locations in Spain. Medical evacuation missions into and out of the Middle East and Central Asia have also been re-routed: Instead of moving casualties from Afghanistan or Iraq to Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, patients are being flown directly to the United States, lenghty flights that may require several in-air refuelings.

In this photo, Air Force airmen are shown unloading a patient from a bus for transfer to the Air Force Theater Hospital at Joint Base Balad, Iraq. According to the photo caption, the 332nd Expeditionary Medical Group at Balad is expecting the average patient load at Balad to increase by about 50 patients per day because of the shift in operations.

Continue Reading “Volcanic Cloud Disrupts Military Operations” »

For the first time ever, the U.S. Air Force has flown one of its jets powered entirely by a biofuel blend. The flight took place at Eglin Air Force Base in Flordia with an A-10 Thunderbolt II — an aircraft affectionately known as a Warthog — burning a combination of a fuel derived from camelina oil with conventional JP-8 jet fuel.

In a bid to reduce dependence on imported fossil fuels, the Pentagon has been looking to new energy alternatives. Under the Air Force’s current energy plan, the goal is to acquire 50 percent of the domestic aviation fuel from an alternative blend by 2016. Terry Yonkers, the assistant secretary of the Air Force for installations, environment and logistics, said in a statement the goal was to encourage a major shift in the way the service powers its aircraft. “Our goal is to reduce demand, increase supply and change the culture and mindset of our fuel consumption,” he said.

The Air Force is the largest user of jet fuel within the Department of Defense, and plans to have all of the aircraft in its inventory certified to fly using alternative fuels by the end of 2012. The current fleet of aircraft consumes 2.4 billion gallons of jet fuel per year. The A-10 test flight went well with “no problems whatsoever” according to the pilot.

Biofuel used in the A-10 flight is referred to as hydrotreated renewable jet, or HRJ. The biomass-derived fuel is created from animal fats and plant oils. The camelina plant, the feedstock for the demonstration flight, is just one of the biofuels being looked at by the military.

Continue Reading “Air Force Debuts Biofuel-Guzzling Warthog” »

For a while now, the Pentagon has been concerned about U.S. dependence on rare-earth metals. Precision weapons, Priuses and iPhones depend on components made from rare earths like terbium, dysprosium, yttrium and thulium. And the dependence threatens more than just national security: It’s a major issue when it comes to developing renewable energy sources.

The House Committee on Science and Technology’s investigations and oversight panel is holding a hearing today on rare-earth metal supplies, focusing on China’s near-monopoly on the stuff. As we’ve reported here before, China has raised concerns by threatening to limit exports. And to make matters more complicated, U.S. mining companies are dependent on China for processing. As a recent LiveScience story points out, U.S.-based Molycorp Minerals has to ship rare earths to China for final separation.

Testimony is embargoed until the hearing begins today at 2 p.m., but you can read a hearing overview (.pdf) and watch a live webcast once the hearing begins.

The hearing will include testimony from Mark Smith, the CEO of Molycorp Minerals, which is trying to restarting a mine in Mountain Pass, California, which is the primary source for rare earth minerals in the United States. (That mining operation closed in 2002.)

It’s not all doom and gloom: China has reportedly backed away from a sweeping ban on the export of some rare earths. And the United States is sitting on significant reserves of rare-earth metals (.pdf), as a U.S. Geological Survey report points out. Perhaps more importantly, policymakers and politicians are now catching on to their strategic value.

Image: Google Earth

Pentagon officials have been talking for years about weaning their jets off of fossil fuels. Now they say they’re only months away from producing a cheap fuel made from algae — for less than $3 a gallon.

In addition to the Pentagon, several airlines have been publicizing efforts to produce alternatives to traditional jet fuel. But other than a few publicity efforts, there has been very little said by anybody flying jets regarding a timeline for production.

Much of the tremendous fuel the military burns each year is used up by the Air Force and Navy’s thirsty jets. Barbara McQuiston of the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (Darpa) told The Guardian, research projects have already produced fuel from algae at a cost of $2 a gallon. 

She said a large scale production operation would come on line in 2011. The facility would be able to produce 50 million gallons a year, and the costs would be competitive with traditional, petroleum based fuels.

The Pentagon has big plans for biofuels — including a green strike group, with bio-powered F/A-18s flying off of the aircraft carrier’s deck. But right now, there’s no company that can produce the stuff cheaply enough or in great enough quantities. Perhaps this Darpa effort will fix that.

Algae based fuels have been touted as a good alternative to the use of food stock for renewable fuels. Recently the EPA said algae-based fuels also reduce CO2 emissions over the production life cycle of the fuel.

Photo: Jason Paur/Wired.com

PORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti — It had been a long morning in Haiti’s shattered capital, and we needed a break. Our small crew — Raymond, my driver, Jean, the Creole translator, and I — stopped at a dingy hotel near the airport to buy a late lunch.

While Raymond and Jean tucked into a plate of griot and fried bananas, I struck up a conversation with some American aid workers at the next table. They were from Food for Life Global, a relief group that had recently arrived from the Dominican Republic to do food distribution.

Food for Life Global distributes vegan and vegetarian meals, and their small team enthusiastically described their plans to serve hot meals to hungry Haitians. It was a sensible-sounding arrangement: For starters, many Haitians lost all of their cooking equipment in the quake. Equally important, donated sacks of rice or flour can end up on the black market. More importantly, they were doing it on the cheap. Krishna Mulder, a Food for Life Global volunteer in a psychedelic green t-shirt and baggy Ocean Pacific shorts, told me he didn’t care if he had to stay in one of Haiti’s improvised tent camps, as long as he was able to deliver food.

“If someone happens to hack me up while I’m sleeping in a camp, and my intention was to give out free food, it’s a life well lived,” he said with dead earnestness.

I had to admire his conviction. Bruce Webster, Food for Life’s project manager, then turned to Jean to explain his their mission a bit further. “Did you know it takes 12 times more energy to produce a pound of meat protein than it does to produce vegetable protein?” he asked Jean, who listened politely while he ate his pork. “It’s very inefficient.”

Webster had a point: Haiti, for starters, has a problem with mass deforestation, and devoting more land to livestock can contribute to topsoil erosion and accelerate the cycle of poverty. But I had to stop myself from interrupting. Both Raymond and Jean had just lost their houses. Members of Raymond’s extended family were killed in the quake. And both of them needed a steady paycheck: At best, I was only providing them a few days of very temporary employment. Was this an appropriate time for an ethics pitch on veganism?

Webster and Mulder struck me as men with very good intentions. And that’s precisely the risk with Haiti. Because the devastation of the earthquake was so complete, it’s tempting to see the place as a clean slate, a chance to remake the place to one’s liking.

Continue Reading “Vegans, Thetans and Baptists, Oh My! Rebuilding Haiti in Our Image” »

Pentagon-backed researchers have come up with a novel new way to purify water: Just add bacteria.

Scientists at Sam Houston State University (SHSU) have successfully designed portable, efficient, bacteria-based water treatment units. Two of the devices are on their way to Army bases in Afghanistan, and the research team is in talks with the Pentagon about sending a working prototype to help relief efforts in Haiti.

The systems, called “bio-reactors,” clean putrid water using the same bacteria you’d find in a handful of dirt. The bacteria filter the water, then eat up the sludge that’s a common byproduct of waste treatment. It’s all done in less than 24 hours, and from devices smaller than a standard shipping crate.

To put that into perspective, an average waste-water treatment process can take up to a month, and produces toxic sludge as an inevitable byproduct.

Researchers isolated a set of bacterium to do the filtering, and they’ve now patented that combination. The Army has already ordered six units, and now that the team has the bacterial combination mastered, they’re confident that the project can quickly be scaled to hundreds of units — assuming the Defense Department keeps up the funding.

Continue Reading “Pure Water for Haiti, Afghanistan: Just Add Bacteria” »

Climate change may be an “accelerant of instability” in future conflicts, and the U.S. military needs to plan for possible environmental catastrophes and resource wars, according to the Pentagon’s soon-to-be-released master strategy document.

The crew at Inside Defense (subscription only, sorry!) got their hands on a “pre-decisional” draft of the 2010 Quadrennial Defense Review, the congressionally mandated, once-every-four-years review of defense policy. The much-anticipated document, slated for release on Monday, is supposed to be a broad “statement of purpose” for the Defense Department. Defense contractors, policy wonks and other national security types will be reading it closely for any possible shift in priorities.

Among other things, the draft QDR suggests the military will have to start planning for operations in which rising sea levels, an ice-free Arctic and higher overall global temperatures may be an important factor. What’s more, it suggests that military planners will have to prepared for the knock-on effects of climate change: forced migration, resource scarcity and the spread of disease.

In parallel, the draft QDR calls for a bigger push for energy independence by the military. The Defense Department, the document notes, is already “moving out smartly” to reduce its dependence on fossil fuels, and to tap more renewable sources of energy.

The 2006 QDR (a.k.a., the “Long War” QDR), by contrast, didn’t leave much room for the environment: It made some mention of the possibility that terrorists might target energy infrastructure, but it didn’t touch on climate change at all. But this focus on resource issues should come as little surprise to Danger Room readers. We’ve written extensively about the military’s interest in solar power, wind farms and other forms of green electricity as a way to avoid vulnerable supply lines and cut down on skyrocketing fuel costs.

It also points to the clout of one D.C. think tank, the Center for a New American Security (CNAS). The think tank — which has pioneered the field of “natural security” — just released a new study on how the Pentagon has incorporated climate change and its effects into the process of drafting the QDR.

In fact, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michèle Flournoy, one of the founders of CNAS, has an article on the official QDR website that outlines a vision of the “contested commons” in sea, air, space and cyberspace. That’s another concept that’s near and dear to the Shadow Pentagon: CNAS yesterday unveiled a major report on the global contested commons in an event featuring Chief of Naval Operations Adm. Gary Roughead, Gen. Carrol Chandler, the vice chief of staff of the Air Force, and Chris Inglis, the deputy head of the National Security Agency.

[PHOTO: U.S. Department of Defense]

Continue Reading “The Greening of the Pentagon’s Master Strategy Review” »

Afghanistan, as we all know by now, is a logistics nightmare: After factoring in all the costs of delivery, it can cost as much as $300 to $400 per gallon to deliver fuel to the battlefield. And when the military consumes 22 gallons of fuel, per soldier, per day, those costs rapidly add up.

Dakota Wood, a senior fellow at the Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, tells August Cole of the Wall Street Journal that the annual cost of deploying a U.S. soldier to Afghanistan is about $1 million. And the fuel costs associated with supporting that soldier account for between $200,000 to $350,000 of that total.

The military is only now taking the first steps to remedy this. In this video news release, the International Security Assistance Force said NATO and Afghan engineers had begun building the first (!) renewable energy test site in Kabul.

The wind- and solar-powered project is at an Afghan National Army depot in the Kabul region. It’s a pretty small project: Five guard shacks at the ANA depot will get heat and hot water from renewable sources. As a backup, they’ll have batteries and diesel power, and the whole thing is supposed to go online in January.

It’s an extremely modest start. In response to a query from Danger Room, military spokespeople at Kandahar Airfield and Bagram Airfield said their bases still depended on generator fuel, and had no real solar or wind power projects to speak of. But it’s not like the military hasn’t been aware of the problem for some time: During the battle for Anbar Province, Marine commanders called for more solar and wind power to cut down on the number of road convoys needed to keep remote outposts supplied.

As Noah has noted before, the Defense Department may be trying to go green at home with massive solar arrays and trash-powered generators, but troops at war still depend on fossil fuels.

Continue Reading “Military (Belatedly, Hesitantly) Going Green in Afghanistan” »

The dwindling Arctic ice cap has launched an international race for control of northern waters: Russia, Canada, Denmark, and even China are hustling to expand their military presence, plant flags and eye those 90 billion barrels of natural gas under the cap. Now the U.S. Navy’s getting ready for the thaw, with a strategic plan to maximize the U.S. stake up north.

The Navy’s Arctic Roadmap (.pdf), written by the recently launched Navy Task Force Climate Change (TFCC), opens with an acknowledgment that worldwide temperatures are on the rise — especially up north.  “The Arctic is warming twice as fast as the rest of the globe. While significant uncertainty exists in projections for Arctic ice extent, the current scientific consensus indicates the Arctic may experience nearly ice-free summers sometime in the 2030s,” the document notes.

Then the Arctic Roadmap sets out a three-phase plan to secure U.S. interests in the Arctic. Because there’s a lot at stake under that melting cap: energy reserves, transport lanes and potential territory disputes.

It’s the latest in a series of efforts by the sea service to cope with climate change. Just last month, the Navy announced its intention to deploy “an energy-efficient ‘Great Green Fleet’ carrier strike group consisting of ships powered either by nuclear energy or biofuels with an attached air wing of fighter jets fueled entirely by biofuels,” Military.com’s Greg Grant reported.

One of the Navy’s main goals in the warmed-up Arctic is international diplomacy and “cooperative partnerships.” But amid rising military competition, the document also reflects preparation for potential discord. The plan includes an assessment of Arctic stakeholders and their motivations, to “determine the most dangerous and the most likely threats” and “provide opportunities for cooperative solutions.” That data will be used in strategic analysis, by applying game theory “to consider the interdependencies between actors and actions.” Then the Navy wants to strengthen key international military and business partnerships, to improve “operations, training and common investments.”

Continue Reading “In Nod to Global Warming, Navy Preps for ‘Ice Free’ Arctic” »