Among the Costs of War: $20B In Air Conditioning

TechkNighT_1337 submitted one of the most well spun little news nuggets I've read in awhile: "The amount the U.S. military spends annually on air conditioning in Iraq and Afghanistan: $20.2 billion. That's more than NASA's budget. It's more than BP has paid so far for damage during the Gulf oil spill. It's what the G-8 has pledged to help foster new democracies in Egypt and Tunisia."

Comments

Interesting.

[MrQuacker]

Funny how being green and efficient is considered a weakness instead of a strength.

A gallon of fuel you dont need to use, is one you dont need to carry or convoy in.

Re:Interesting.

[alen]

"if it aint broke don't fix it"

you wouldn't believe how many times i have heard this when i was in the army. unlike civilian life where everything has a return on investment and everyone is trying justify projects because they save money overall, it's not done in the military. ask for more money and complain if you don't get it

Re:Interesting.

[necro81]

This is the major reason why the military has been investing heavily in green tech. A gallon of diesel fuel at the front lines in Afghanistan costs the military something like $400 because it first needs to be shipped in-country, then trucked through hostile territory on roads, and sometimes lashed to a mule and packed in. Plus, supply convoys are ripe targets - casualties due to roadside bombs these days are comparable, if not higher, than actual combat. The military realized this a couple of years ago, looking at the single-walled canvas tents they are cooling with A/C run from diesel generators in a 110 F desert. Being one of the biggest users of, well, everything in this world, their economies of scale and opportunities for savings at home and in theater are huge. They have been working on it, but it's a huge infrastructure and logistical change to undertake. If anything, it should give us all pause to realize how big a job the rest of the world will have to change our own infrastructure and habits to become more efficient.

Re:Interesting.

[GameboyRMH]

That is one of the worst sayings. If we followed it, all progress would stop.

Re:Interesting.

[AmiMoJo]

We could use choppers to ferry stuff around, but it is much more expensive than sending out some guys in a jeep or hummer. Plus it looks like we are afraid of the Talibhan.

There was an interview with an army officer on the radio a month or two back where they asked why they try to defuse roadside bombs instead of just blowing them up from a safe distance. This was in the context of yet another bomb disposal expert being killed, on his last day of service no less.

The answer given was that by defusing the bomb they get intelligence about who is building them and where. If they can catch all the skilled bomb makers they can eliminate the threat.

That sort of thing is why it is so hard for us to win in a country like Afghanistan. Military might is not enough.

Re:Interesting.

[sorak]

So, no progress is bad. Spending every penny you have on progress is bad...If only there were some gray area, in between, where we could have some progress, without starving to death because we spent every penny of our country's GDP on research...If only someone would invent moderation...

Re:Interesting.

[kisak]

Wasn't it the brilliant republican mind Dick C. that stated back in 2001:

Energy conservation is just "a sign of personal virtue" and relying on renewableswould threaten "our way of life."

Got to wonder what could have been achieved had there been a bit more focus on renewable energy 10 years ago.

Re:Interesting.

[snspdaarf]

So, no progress is bad. Spending every penny you have on progress is bad...If only there were some gray area, in between, where we could have some progress, without starving to death because we spent every penny of our country's GDP on research...If only someone would invent moderation...

I would, but I don't have any mod points.

Re:Interesting.

[wvmarle]

I recall a story on /. even about spraying foam on the tents to save energy, particularly in hot areas like Afghanistan and Iraq (and cold in the Afghan winter when you have to heat the place).

The rest of the world may have it easier, as individuals can do it individually. When I save on energy, I see it in the next bill, clear incentive. When a soldier saves energy, well it may mean extra effort. And this problem can be seen for most companies as well: individuals don't have a (financial) incentive, no reward for saving energy. It has to be the company that top-down enforces new habits, and some companies do, as it can help their profit. But many are too big to actually care enough, or to actually enforce such regulations.

For the US army it's definitely worse, as it has a virtually unlimited budget (they can always ask the government for more, and if recent history is anything to go by, get it). There is no financial gain for them, at all. The only reason for them to do it is that it's so hard to get the fuel where it has to be, and running out may be deadly for the people on the front line.

In traditional wars it's even not as much of an issue, as the supply lines tend to be behind the front lines, and thus firmly in your own hands. Insurgents are something new, something traditional armies just can't handle well. Supply lines suddenly run through enemy terrain, and are always in danger of being cut off. Resources become scarce, and oops maybe we should do something about it and use less of them.

Re:Interesting.

[mugurel]

Yeah, but don't forget a large part of that money is borrowed.

Re:Interesting.

[trum4n]

Efficiency is progress.

Re:Interesting.

[Joce640k]

looking at the single-walled canvas tents they are cooling with A/C run from diesel generators in a 110 F desert.

If only there was something they could put on the outside of the tent to keep sun/heat out...

Re:Interesting.

[Joce640k]

You misspelled "stolen"

(from the future generations who'll be footing the bill)

Re:Interesting.

[Joce640k]

This is exactly why the military budget needs to be slashed. Laziness shouldn't be rewarded with taxpayer money.

Re:Interesting.

[alder]

Efficiency is progress.

Efficiency as beauty is in the eye of the beholder...

Re:Interesting.

[Big_Breaker]

They should come up with a tough flexible fuel container that can simply be dropped from a cargo plane and retrieved close to a base. I'd drop them at night when our night vision capability gives an advantage. Too bad diesel and other fuels doesn't like to freeze. A fuel'sicle would be handy.

Re:Interesting.

[wvmarle]

I wouldn't be surprised if disbanding the army (and navy and airforce) would solve (most of) the US budget deficit... it's not just because that most countries are smarter than trying to occupy some faraway country. It's just too damn expensive!

Re:Interesting.

[drooling-dog]

With the low humidity there, it would seem that evaporative cooling would work well. Of course, you still need water, but Evian is cheaper if you buy the big 24-packs...

Re:Interesting.

[NervousWreck]

The saying is great advice. The problem is that people think it applies to improvements. In terms of cost vs. benefit there is no reason to go through the hassle of fixing/replacing something if what you fixed is will give you the same crappy benefits for the same obscene cost as before you started. Actually improving something whether in terms of efficiency or features is another story.

Re:Interesting.

[SETIGuy]

We already have lots of containers of fuel mixed with a thickening agent. The containers are even built to be dropped from an airplane. They aren't designed to aid air conditioning, though.

Re:Interesting.

[swb]

Is it laziness, or is it "I was just out on patrol getting shot at and avoiding land mines for the last 14 hours and I get to to it again every day for the next six months and I don't really feel like exerting some effort to save Uncle Sam $5 at this point."

Re:Interesting.

[SETIGuy]

A gallon of diesel fuel at the front lines in Afghanistan costs the military something like $400

$4 for the diesel fuel. And $396 for someone at KBR to sign a piece of paper claiming they delivered it.

Re:Interesting.

[atrain728]

Keeping combat troops serving overseas in moderate comfort for 10 years? Seems like money well spent to me.

Re:Interesting.

[Anonymous Coward]

Typical daily June-August high temp at Bagram AB, Afghanistan while I was there (2002) was about 120F (~49C). Khandahar typically reported in the low 130's. I've seen 140F (60C) when passing through Kuwait and Qatar (yes, I know the world record temperature is Death Valley at 130-something. These were the functional temperatures we had to endure over asphalt/concrete/hardpacked earth, conditions which obviously don't meet weather station standards).

There in Bagram, we were lucky if the air conditioner kept our tent down to 90F (~32C) during the day, which I was stuck sleeping through, since I worked the night shift. The air conditioners cooling our hastily-constructed HQ building, managed to keep the temperature down to the low 80's... at night.

With temperatures like those, it's no wonder the peoples over there are constantly irate.

Re:Interesting.

[scot4875]

The ones getting shot at wouldn't be the ones responsible for putting forth the effort to implement more efficient, cost saving changes. +1 for the nice appeal to emotion anyway, though.

--Jeremy

Re:Interesting.

[Grishnakh]

It's a good saying, but it's misapplied, and it's missing the corollary "if you can make a substantial improvement, then do so".

If we're spending more than the entire budget of NASA on freakin' A/C in Afghanistan, then something is clearly "broken".

Re:Interesting.

[DerPflanz]

I like "if it ain't broke, pry it open and find out why" a lot more.

Re:Interesting.

[jo42]

A gallon of diesel fuel at the front lines in Afghanistan costs the military something like $400...

The solution is very simple: Get the fuck out of Bumfuckistan!

There is absolutely nothing there worth pissing away billions of dollars, millions of gallons of oil and thousands of lives.

Re:Interesting.

[marcosdumay]

Shut up! Extremism isn't broke, so let's not "fix" it.

Re:Interesting.

[marcosdumay]

Only if they decide to pay.

Re:Interesting.

[marcosdumay]

Disbanding the army wouldn't solve (at the short term) all the US budget deficit, not even most of it. But it could increase the US GDP by virtue of breaking less windows, and that could solve most of the US budget deficit. That, of course, assuming that your government would invest the money on something usefull (like letting it with the population, for example), instead of breaking other windows with it.

Re:Interesting.

[x6060]

Um, who do you think winds up doing the work? Ill give you a hint, you arent going to see even a first lieutenant out there slogging foam on tents... Also they dont get to just hire someone to come out and do it for them.

Re:Interesting.

[fahlesr1]

Funny how being green and efficient is considered a weakness instead of a strength.

A gallon of fuel you dont need to use, is one you dont need to carry or convoy in.

The military found that air conditioning improves the combat efficiency of its personnel. This isn't about making soldiers more comfortable during their down time, its about keeping them sharp and focused which helps to keep them alive. The military is extremely conscious of the costs of getting fuel to forward positions, but it is also aware of the huge advantages to keeping its people at their best.

I propose a simple experiment. Try doing some task that requires mental concentration in 100 degree heat, then do it again at some temperature you are comfortable in. See which one takes longer and how many mistakes you make each time.

Re:Interesting.

[BeanThere]

Well there does come a point called "insolvency" where you literally can't pay back anymore because the debt becomes larger than the amount that can theoretically be siphoned off economic productivity of the people. At that point not all of it will ever get paid back, and one either has a partial controlled default, a catastrophic default with bond market carnage, or what has been called "default by stealth" which involves printing more money to lower the value of the amounts that get paid back. The US is flirting dangerously close to that point. What should be kept in mind is that what is being robbed from future generations, is not a number, but quality of life ... we'll all be poorer in our retirements, less able to get by on a month-to-month basis, less able to send our kids to college etc. regardless of which path to insolvency is followed.

The future generations will unfortunately be forced to pay, because you bet that the corrupt bankers that seem to own Congress aren't going to just give up this lucrative source of income.

Note also that insolvency is 100% mathematically inevitable if you keep spending more than you produce (unless the economy grows faster than the difference as a result - which it isn't by a long shot), so unless we stop spending the only question is "when" and "how".

Re:Interesting.

[WNight]

FYI, You're off on all of those by a huge factor.

Trillions of dollars, billions of gallons of oil, and millions of lives.

Re:Interesting.

[Mindcontrolled]

Nope. Efficiency is in the eye of the thermodynamicist, and that eye is a lean, mean analysis machine.

Re:Interesting.

[netwarerip]

They should come up with a tough flexible fuel container that can simply be dropped from a cargo plane and retrieved close to a base. ...

It would be even cooler if you got a free container drop after every 3 kills. Some with fuel, some weapons, or healthy stuff.

Re:Interesting.

[CPTreese]

Its called a CDS bundle, They've even developed a disposable parachute that costs about $300. However operating the cargo aircraft is usually around $20,000 an hour

Re:Interesting.

[CPTreese]

When I was in Iraq we were able to use a double layer tent that seemed to help. Believe me, if Soldiers had the option to further insulate our living areas, we would in an instant. I find it a little arrogant to think that we didn't do it because it was extra work. I've worked harder than most people in a developed country can even imagine. The primary problem is the supply system doesn't allow for the purchase of spray foam, we need an NSN before it can get ordered.

Re:Interesting.

[CPTreese]

wow, I certainly hope I am misunderstanding your comment, are you calling the Military lazy?

Re:Interesting.

[vvaduva]

What could have been achieved? More environmentally friendly ways of killing people?

Re:Interesting.

[ego centrik]

_they buy diesel to cool their tents to defend an oilfield?

Re:Interesting.

[SETIGuy]

If they didn't cool their tents with diesel, the oilfield wouldn't be worth defending.

Re:Interesting.

[vux984]

Keeping combat troops serving overseas in moderate comfort for 10 years? Seems like money well spent to me.

Having combat troops in afghanistan for 10 years in the first place however is not.

Re:Interesting.

[NoOneInParticular]

So, no progress is bad. Spending every penny you have on progress is bad...If only there were some gray area, in between, where we could have some progress, without starving to death because we spent every penny of our country's GDP on research...If only someone would invent moderation...

I would, but I don't have any mod points.

I have, and right after I post this I'll give you some!

Re:Interesting.

[NoOneInParticular]

Yep, I've always wondered. So, we've spent a trillion dollars in Afghanistan. Their GNP is 25 billion a year. Can't we just freaking bribe them by given them an extra 25 billion a year for the next 40 years, save a few lives, and pocket the interest?

Re:Interesting.

[wvmarle]

Yes of course I know, I was being simplistic as in "army costs something like a trillion a year, which is roughly the current budget deficit". If you were to really disband the army sure you would have extra cost in the short term.

The point is just that armies and war cost a lot of money. Really a lot. And they just don't contribute (much) to the overall economy as an army is mainly about destruction (the "broken window fallacy").

Re:Interesting.

[Aqualung812]

And when they want another 25 billion, what then? Pay it or invade someone that has 20 billion more money invested into weapons? GOTO 10.

Re:Interesting.

[EdIII]

If only there was something they could put on the outside of the tent to keep sun/heat out...

Well..... aluminum foil would work pretty well. Not for camouflage purposes, but it would reduce the heat.

Re:Interesting.

[NoOneInParticular]

And what if they will not subsist and don't want to be a democracy? Spend another trillion dollars?

Of course you don't pay another 25 billion if they ask for it: you threaten to take away the 25 you gave them in the first place! First you make them dependent, then you've got them. It is really not that difficult. Get them addicted to cheap money. Has worked wonders for making the entire western world fat, happy and obedient.

Re:Interesting.

[RockDoctor]

Can't we just freaking bribe them by given them an extra 25 billion a year for the next 40 years, save a few lives, and pocket the interest?

Hear that knocking at the front door? That's the NRA Thought Police coming round to take you away for thinking thoughts that don't involve shooting people who differ from you. Don't bother going out of the back door ; the FBI are there to convict you for your dope dealing, but they're in a race with the CIA who want to put your fingerprints onto your brand new copies of Das Kapital and Mein Kampf before "returning" them to your bookshelves.

You don't want to think about what the NIH are going to do ; just hope that you're dead before they get hold of you.

Skeptical

[Anonymous Coward]

I'd like a second source for that number

Re:Skeptical

[blackraven14250]

It's more like $2 billion per week....

Re:Skeptical

[clonan]

(5) You must use armored convoys or fly it in while paying hazard pay to the drivers to get the fuel to the isolated bases since placing the bases near population centers would incite additional strife in the local population plus the intense use of computers in the field requires cool temperatures and therefore LOTS of fuel for ACs
 

Independence Day had it right...

[drachenfyre]

You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[wintercolby]

No, but I do believe that air conditioning in the desert for all those troops would indeed cost this much.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[yarnosh]

Especially if the structures they're air conditioning are mobile and not well insulated.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[ShavedOrangutan]

You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

Throw enough CMMI at the hammer or toilet seat, and yes I do think it cost that much.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[x6060]

Wait, you think all of the troops get air conditioning? Its actually very few and far between.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Capt James McCarthy]

I know folks bitch about the costs, but where are those funds going would be the question to ask. I have no problem with the Govt spending on equipment and services that support U.S. businesses and create jobs. It's a bit of a vicious circle though. Shift that money to social services, and you'll have the same scenario, but just a different industry.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[jittles]

Not many of the structures get air conditioning at all. But they do bring server farms and whatnot with them that do come in air conditioned trailers. Now the Air Force on the other hand, well I hear they don't go anywhere without A/C ;)

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Anonymous Coward]

If those are space-hammers and space-toilets, then yes... I do think they do.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[GameboyRMH]

And then a big chunk of that money goes to the executives of those companies, who then spend a big chunk of it on Italian yachts and supercars, Panamanian hookers and Colombian cocaine. And then all the lower-paid workers spend a big chunk of their share on Chinese junk from Wal-Mart (or the Apple store) and American cars built in Mexico and partly paid for with bailout money, and the cycle continues...

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Bengie]

Money spent in a war is mostly wasted as the bulk of the money is invested into something with zero return. A small percentage trickles back in to the private sector via private sector purchases and services, but the bulk of the money is paying men/women to stand around shooting at people or blowing things up.

If you instead dumped that money into social services, even if largely abused, it would at least be invested directly back into the economy and we would retain nearly all of that money in some form.

When in college a few years back, the current estimated cost of 3 year of war would have paid for 10 years of nation wide free college AND health care. It's insane. Could you imagine a more educated and healthy populace? GDP would skyrocket after a few generations. Instead we're off fighting religious wars.

Nothing against our proud men and women serving abroad, just something against our government.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[LordNimon]

Maybe they should be called the Air Conditioning Force.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[squidguy]

I've you'd have joined the military you would have both free college and health care, so in a way your assessment is correct.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Duradin]

The hate is strong with this one.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[wintercolby]

No, I don't think that all troops get air conditioning, but I also think that we have a massive presence in each country.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[ifiwereasculptor]

Being a soldier for health care seems deliciously ironic.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[weirdcrashingnoises]

now that is some dry humor...

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Bengie]

It's not "free". You have to be in the military, which is part of your payment. You're still working for it, but yes, a small percentage of total costs is going into college/health care for the military personnel.

Pulling a number out of my.... And the other 90% of costs is going into fueling jets, making nuclear subs/ships, building tanks/vehicles, ammo/fuel, and transportation.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Joce640k]

Tinfoil and/or drywall burns?

If they had any brains they'd do what the people who live in hot countries do - dig holes and live underground. They'd be safer from mortars, too.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Sparrow1492]

Umm, I hate to break it to you, but the days of the $20K hammer are long gone. The military shifted years ago to put small item purchasing back in the hands of the units to eliminate all the BS layers of cost. If a unit needs a hammer today, they take a credit card down to Home Depot and buy one for $20.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[atrain728]

We should just give it to the poor instead. They'd never spend money on hookers, cocaine, or Chinese junk from Walmart.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Anonymous Coward]

As a former member of the military I can tell you that they do spend that much money (well maybe not that much but close) on these things. The reason why is that the military has EXTREMELY high standards and has very detailed specifications that must be met for each and every piece of equipment that goes into active duty.

For example, I was flight crew on the E3 AWACS and had to go thru several rounds of maintenance and rebuilds of the airframe and avionics (don't forget the powerplants) and to be able to maintain an air frame over a 30-40 year lifespan, with all of it's components, sub-systems and redundancies requires that the manufacturer's design, testing and implementation process be incredibly exhaustive. On top of all of this, these machines are run by children. Remember the vast majority of operators of this type of equipment are under the age of 21. You haven't seen documentation and training unless you've been in the military. It is thorough, exhaustive and focused.

Now I don't excuse the cost overruns and I realize that many military programs have a lot of waste in them, but just imagine if you had to build a software/hardware system that could not fail, had well defined interfaces and had the ultimate pluggable component system, runs in any environment (hot, cold, freezing, boiling, extreme altitude, etc.), was upgradeable and repairable while running, was fully redundant times 3, could withstand an EMP pulse, internally generated enough power to run an airborne radar system that, while on the ground, could generate enough power to detonate fuel in a vehicle within a 30-40 yard radius or literally burn you alive, could refuel while in the air, house 25-30 people safely, fly at subsonic speeds and be maintained by children just out of high-school.

It is non-trivial to say the least. The complexity, attention to detail and completeness dwarfs anything I have ever seen in the civilian world. That's why it costs so much damn money for military equipment.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[GameboyRMH]

I see your point. Too bad there are no options in between the two extremes...

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[ajs]

Just to remind people, those two examples (along with the old coffee maker example) are taken insanely out of context, and neither the hammer nor the toilet seat were as expensive as you're quoting.

If I recall correctly, the hammer was a copper alloy that was required in a condition where the small sparks that could be thrown by a standard iron hammer could have been catastrophic, but where a rubber mallet would not have been sufficiently hard. The toilet seat was for a destroyer, where combat conditions and weather could have resulted in the toilet water (and or results of active use) being sloshed all over the ship, so the seat cover had to lock down, water-tight. The coffee maker was for long-range bombers, and one of the requirements was that it needed to not spill any coffee at various negative G-forces.

This is all off the top of my head, but I recall looking over the specs long ago and thinking, "wow, that's actually a pretty economical solution."

The military buys a lot of generic stuff, but from time to time, they have requirements which make prices kind of crazy. I think it's generally worth it to outfit the military well, though obviously, it's a good thing to look for waste... just apply the right contexts.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[craash420]

Tinfoil no, drywall yes.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Overzeetop]

Actually, all of the money goes back into the economy. You might say it's even creating money, since we're having to print more than we have just to fund the government.

Point is - every dollar that is spent in war, and everywhere, ends up in the economy in somebody else's pocket - and most of that money gets spent over and over again.

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[SharpFang]

Wait. Copper alloy hammers have been in use for centuries in metalworking, used for shaping without creating dents.

  And a toilet seat that closes tight... ships use vacuum toilets anyway, so give it a seal and allow some vacuum and the toilet will stay locked. And if you're not satisfied with that, add a couple of magnets, how hard can it be?

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[danbert8]

Umm, maybe I'm deaf and can't hear the woosh, but http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Broken_window_fallacy

Re:Independence Day had it right...

[Narnie]

+1 perspective

When's /. due for a modpoint revamp?

Détente?

[Anonymous Coward]

I heard that the Cold War was over!

Re:Détente?

[Noughmad]

It is. Unfortunately, the Cold lost.

Cooling canvas tents?

[YeeHaW_Jelte]

How are these tents built up? Is this just a canvas tent, no insulation whatever?

That would be rather ... stupid. It should be quite simple to construct something portable with at least a modicum of insulation.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[MrQuacker]

Yes, thats the point. Thats why they now spray foam on them. Going from none to foam reduces energy use by 92%.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[Lumpy]

They are better than that. Tents typically are covered with the "space blankets" and then covered with another tent. to cover the space blanket. it makes a MAJOR difference as the reflective mylar will reflect 90% of the heat back out.

Now expecting our military to have the brains to do that..... nope... the guys on the ground doing it themselves? yes, many of the grunts are far smarter than the officers.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[Anonymous Coward]

The military wasn't really ready for the wars that we got in to, plain and simple. We were still equipped for cold war style traditional warefare that we thought that we were constantly preparing for, arming for, and training for... for some 50 years. A war in europe or the like against an eastern European front based military threat. We were not prepared for a sustained war in the desert heat against a guerilla warfare enemy. Our equipment, from electronics, weapons systems, and vehicles do not like the environment over there... nor do the troops. We used the tents and equipment that we had because we had that supply already, might as well use them and to order and potentially design new equipment would cost a lot of time and money as well. Supplies are limited and there isn't exactly a home improvement store around to pick up some lumber and insulation...

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[denbesten]

TFA makes it clear that they cut energy use by 92% through the use of polyurethane.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[kulnor]

So we saved $184B! Nice!

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[vlm]

It should be quite simple to construct something portable with at least a modicum of insulation.

No, it isn't quite simple. It is very easy to construct permanent structures that are well insulated. Portable? No.

Let me know if you ever find a highly insulated car, RV, tank, train passenger car...

Most insulation either does not tolerate vibration, water, impact, is toxic when on fire, is toxic or semi-toxic to transport and apply by untrained personnel, or the lifetime under combat conditions is so short that disposal becomes an environmental problem (so... we poured out a slab of canned instant foam in the desert... how long till it biodegrades? I'm guessing the earths crust will subduct into the mantle before it degrades completely...)

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[Sniper98G]

The two most common tents in use are the "Alaska" and the "Base-X" both of witch are constructed of two layers of synthetic fabric separated by an air space. The air space is there just to increase the insulative value of the tents.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[squidguy]

There are a couple different types of tent in use over in the sandbox - the majority are canvas shells with some sort of tyvek-like inner shell...and ductwork for A/C. Some of these have been foam covered. There are also shelters which are more heavily insulated sans foam. A lot of the troops are living in containers or wooden structures, some in local buildings. The Hajjis typically sleep on the roofs, since it is the coolest place at night.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[petermgreen]

TFA is not clear whether it was 92% for the structures that were treated or 92% overall, nor does it say what proportion of structures got treated (it implies that not all of them where).

Also while the article isn't clear it looks from the pictures like the polyurathane foam treatment makes the tents single use which could create logistical complications of it's own (if you want to be able to move at any then you have to have a new set of tents in local storage).

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[h4rr4r]

I bet if we built them some electric plants and showed them an AC unit they would fight for us. AC, McDonalds and flat screen TVs that is what we need these people lusting after.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[Toze]

Many of the grunts have to deal with practical problems that officers do not, and find immediately workable solutions because there are millions of them, and they share tricks they figure out. It's a small free market of ideas, so good ideas frequently spread quickly. Of course, so do bad ones.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[mlts]

You might be surprised. There are some thin insulation types that one can use in cars, RVs, and other places that do an excellent job. Aerogels used as insulation are extremely useful (Thermoblok is one brand with 10.3 per inch of insulation for the R-value). combine that with reflective Mylar, and it becomes an ideal insulator for RVs and such.

The key is getting this technology into combat theaters.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[PhxBlue]

Well, yes, but the worst ideas generally come from the top: you know, that five-sided building next to the Potomac?

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[SETIGuy]

Yeah, it was supposed to have four, but they let officers build it.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[leromarinvit]

Funny how you call it a "free market of ideas", when the main mechanism at work seems to be cooperation rather than competition, isn't it?

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[EdIII]

Well I can't wait for this story to hit the US nationwide :)

Bad economy. People have very little disposable income. Summer Heat Waves in the South West where average temperatures are now over 100F.

When your ass is pissed off, sweaty, and in a dark room trying to survive at 85-88F because you can't afford an electric bill higher than that and fucking Wall Street and AIG gets bailed out... but you have to sit in the heat.... and the military gets a 20B budget to A/C their asses over there?

I'm thinking that some people might be *slightly* miffed. Yes Sir. I am.

Re:Cooling canvas tents?

[Toze]

Uh, the ideas are in competition with each other. "Free market" means there's no force (besides the reality of desert conditions) biasing selections, so "insulate tents" compares well and gets adopted more than "rub self down with cactus."

Re:Necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

Acknowledged that it is the cost of doing business.

It is too much $$, the United States is not here to spread democracy among those assholes.

Here is my pullout plan:

1. Pack everyone and everything up
2. Leave.

Re:Irrelevant

[Lumpy]

And honestly causes problems.

The enemy is not lounging in AC comfort, they are used to the heat and can operate in it at peak efficiency.. Our troops are not acclimated to the environment and therefore are operating at less than 100% It's a small drawback but in wars even 1% can make a huge difference.

Ac does not make them better at killing the enemy. AC actually makes them less effective at killing the enemy. Anyone that claims they can exit a 80 degree low humidity environment and enter a 110 degree environment and are AS EFFECTIVE as they were in the 80 degree environment is a flat out liar.

It's mostly officers...

[Anonymous Coward]

Grunts and ground pounders tend to sleep in insulated tents. They all don't have AC units, only the officers and command centers do.

They, of course, need it to cool the computers down, but in reality, a lot of the grunts don't have AC, it's a privelege. It's only for the fat commanding officers who graduated from west point and haven't seen any combat.

Re:It's mostly officers...

[Anonymous Coward]

This is not true. I was deployed to Iraq in 2005 - we had 4 ac units for a 10 man tent. All of our battalion had the same. We happened to be grunts and ground pounders. Our tent with E-3 to E-5's had zero additional insulation, and happened to have a series of shrapnel holes from a rocket that detonated 6 feet outside the front door.

The AC units struggled to run as they were constantly filled with fine silt. We power washed them every few weeks to keep them operational. The generators powering the tents ran constantly of course, but I would hope they ran on cheap local fuel.

Without knowing what all research went into creating this $20 B figure, it's hard to know how accurate it might be.

Coolgardie to the rescue?

[chomsky68]

Why all those aircon units which are running on fuel? A cheaper solution was invented in the outback: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe

Re:Coolgardie to the rescue?

[vlm]

Why all those aircon units which are running on fuel? A cheaper solution was invented in the outback:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coolgardie_safe

The problem is transporting 10 gallons of water to evaporate is more expensive than transporting 1 gallon of diesel.

I suppose you could "recycle bodily fluids" if your drinkable water demands were more than 10 times higher than your AC diesel fuel demands, but no one wants to go there.

Re:Coolgardie to the rescue?

[geekoid]

The majority of costs is moving the liquid.

Re:Coolgardie to the rescue?

[chomsky68]

I agree, although on the other hand you don't need to transport the 10 gallons of water from the other end of the world. (But it would also mean that some oil companies would loose profit). And since I used to leave in the bush for a short while, I can say the 10 gallon of water is more likely around half a gallon.

Solar Power?

[KnownIssues]

From every photo I've seen of Afghanistan, it looks to me like they have a surplus of sunlight. I understand solar power can't replace fuel for everything, but couldn't it dramatically reduce the cost of cooling troops? What are the roadblocks and/or definciencies of alternative sources of power?

Re:Solar Power?

[janestarz]

From TFA:
"Why does it cost so much? To power an air conditioner at a remote outpost in land-locked Afghanistan, a gallon of fuel has to be shipped into Karachi, Pakistan, then driven 800 miles over 18 days to Afghanistan on roads that are sometimes little more than "improved goat trails," Anderson says."

Bringing in solar panels would reduce costs in the long run, but the transport investment would be the same or higher. I agree that there are greener ways to handle this. Personally, I think it's insane they provide air conditioning at all.

Re:Solar Power?

[TWX]

What are the roadblocks and/or definciencies of alternative sources of power?

Probably bureaucracy and lack of familiarity and/or comfort with the technology in question.

It take that military a long, long time to change things. They go through conceptual processes, design processes, review processes, redesign processes, certification processes, and that's for things that get developed quickly and that officers want. When officers don't want something or don't understand the nature of the technology, or when they don't think their enlistees can manage the tech, things go a lot slower.

This is partially why the military tends to look for variants on an existing theme. M4 versus M16. All of the versions of the M72. It's much easier to go with the same or with similar. Throwing in a whole new technology, at least as far as their usage, is not nearly as easy for training or simplicity.

Specifically for solar panels, keep in mind that they're fragile, and it wouldn't take much (oh, like a single bullet) to destroy a fairly sizable panel. It would be easy for an enemy, with a few well-placed shots from an iron-sights sniper rifle, to destroy all of the solar panels and thus to destroy all of the cooling. If they're trucking in fuel for things that can't solar-power anyway, it makes sense, to them, to continue to truck that much more fuel in for everything else that uses power.

I don't necessarily agree, and I think that with effort a certain degree of ruggedization of solar panels should be achievable, but right now they're not interested, and that'll be that.

Re:Solar Power?

[Anonymous Coward]

- 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. But he adds there's a lack of enthusiasm for a greener military among top commanders.

"People look at it and say 'It's not my lane. We don't need to tie the operational commanders' hands' — things like this," he says.

WTF? SO to hell with saving the money of the American taxpayer because some crusty-ass commander isn't comfortable with being green? I've worked in the solar field and they do have solar power augmented air conditioning units.Lastly,these aging Harvest Falcon tent cities are no more advanced than when I was a grunt back in the first gulf war. The military brass needs to pull their heads out and spray-foam every facility.

Re:Solar Power?

[Dails]

That's all true, but for as inefficient as it may seem, there are reasons for all of those. IAAAMO (I am an American military officer), and I can attest to the nature of the American military; we are an incredibly capable organization and almost unstoppable at the tasks we are equipped and trained for, but we were never designed to be agile or efficient. I'm a naval officer, so ships are what I know, and ships are damn expensive. Not just building, but designing, testing the designing, reworking requirements, testing requirements, adjusting for how much training would be required for the equipment vs how much we can do, ammunition and fuel consumption rates vs. supply capabilities, etc. The ships on the water now were on the drawing board twenty years ago (some of the tech in them is newer and could be installed on them because of the long dev time). We (the Navy) have fewer than 300 ships. Imagine an army of 300,000, each one with a set of gear. You want to change one piece, it's not one piece, it's 300,000 pieces. You want a new tent? It's not a new tent, it's 50,000 new tents. You can call it waste in government if you like (I know you didn't), but it's really just the nature of operating an enormous organization. You think lean, corporate giants where profit is king are different? They are not. Ask anyone who works at Raytheon, Microsoft, Apple, Maersk, etc.

Re:Solar Power?

[vlm]

Probably bureaucracy and lack of familiarity and/or comfort with the technology in question.

Also political. Its hard to build a stable reliable solar plant that is not permanent. Installing solar plants is an admission we will never leave. Which seems to pretty much be the truth, making it a good idea. But its hard to get people to admit that.

Specifically for solar panels, keep in mind that they're fragile, and it wouldn't take much (oh, like a single bullet) to destroy a fairly sizable panel. It would be easy for an enemy, with a few well-placed shots from an iron-sights sniper rifle, to destroy all of the solar panels and thus to destroy all of the cooling.

I can tell by your other commentary you are either in / involved with / or really close to someone in the US military, and this shows it too, in a different way, the high tech elaborate American style solution. The preferred anti-solar weapon is not an elaborately trained and experienced sniper with an expensive rifle, or even a drive-by clown with an AK, its simply an otherwise unarmed child carrying a simple rock. The guards aren't going to shoot a cuddly cute little kid for carrying a rock on national TV and newspaper front pages, are they? And as economic warfare, they'll win if we deploy $500 solar panels and they deploy ... rocks.

If they're trucking in fuel for things that can't solar-power anyway, it makes sense, to them, to continue to truck that much more fuel in for everything else that uses power.

That's the key... People who have never been to the sandbox always emphasize the heat, and forget that the nighttime temps drop to about the dew point, which is really freaking cold in a desert. So the mass media emphasizes the AC demands, /. reflects by writing about powering the AC with solar panels, and meanwhile the troops shiver all night and eat cold food and can't run their reverse osmosis water purifiers at night...

Re:Solar Power?

[DigiShaman]

Moving any military equipment is going to be extremely heavy as it's often very hardened for many types of environments. Also, photovoltaics are extremely fragile, collect dust, and the lead acid batteries are heavy too. The only thing solar has going for it is that it's a readily available power source for part of the day. In remote places like Afghanistan where you want to setup sensors and relays, it could provide a strategic value where importing fuel would not.

Re:Solar Power?

[glwtta]

What are the roadblocks and/or definciencies of alternative sources of power?

Lack of incentive. Do you really get the impression that the military here is strapped for cash?

Re:Solar Power?

[mrchaotica]

Installing solar plants is an admission we will never leave.

Why couldn't we let the Afghans use it after we're gone?

I don't necessarily think solar is the best idea for forward operating bases, but building solar power plants for military and subsequent civilian use in places like Kabul could generate goodwill (just like other infrastructure improvements).

Re:Solar Power?

[squidguy]

Solar panels work great until they take shrapnel or bullet damage...and Hajji likes to shoot both rockets and fire into the sky to celebrate.

Re:Solar Power?

[silas_moeckel]

Do you realize how big the solar panel farm would need to be? How fragile it would be? Strapping solar panels to the tops of the tents might reduce the need for AC mostly by shading the tents not the power they would produce. If you want solar on those scales your looking at heat concentration, and you then have a huge issue of power storage.

It's the same core issue of most of the renewable they are not baseline generators and never will be.

Re:Solar Power?

[geekoid]

They are using solar. In fact that they use solar material the can be stapled to a wall. It rolls up for easy transportation. It's still expensive, and doesn't provide a lot of power, but it works well for keeping there portable electronics charged.

The military has and is putting a LOT of money into solar. They want to move to is as much as possible. I expect the infusion of money from the pentagon is allowing a LOT of research to go on. If the real reason solar has become efficient enough for wide scale usage is money, in a decade we will all have solar.

Re:Solar Power?

[geekoid]

BS. The military does use 'alternative' power, and they are adapting more of it.

Re:Solar Power?

[h4rr4r]

So you put a sheet of plastic in front of the panel. No different then stopping hail.

Re:Solar Power?

[jeffmeden]

The Afghan/Iran border area is ripe for wind power production, and some areas of southern Afghanistan are good solar prospects. But getting the needed equipment in place and protecting it might cost more than the return it provides. If the US would just take over Iran already (come on, you know they are itching to) the problem would be solved by putting a refinery in Afghanistan and piping in crude. Then, there is abundant energy locally and the nation as a whole becomes wealthier due to the energy production. Win/win, except if you are a desperate dictator or religious figurehead residing in Tehran.

Re:Solar Power?

[vlm]

Installing solar plants is an admission we will never leave.

Why couldn't we let the Afghans use it after we're gone?

Our bases are mostly in good tactical locations, as opposed to good civilian locations. So that means we're supporting the home team on the inevitable civil war front. Maybe we want to, maybe we won't in the future.

Even worse, now we'll raise a generation of 3rd worlders who think "solar power = American Imperialism, American Imperialism = bad, therefore solar power = bad" which is exactly the wrong idea for improving their lifestyle.

Again its all political.

Re:Solar Power?

[Ritchie70]

It's the same at big corporation.

I work IT for a large company 's US division. We have around 14,000 US location.

So if I come up with a solution that costs $100 per, someone has to come up with $1,400,000. There's no such thing as "cheap" in that sort of environment.

Re:Solar Power?

[marcosdumay]

Are you sure that solar pannels don't survive bullet damage? I'd expect them too, being modular...

Re:Solar Power?

[marcosdumay]

The 3rd worlders are way smarter than you think... If they see your army sucessfully using solar panels, they'll more likely think "Hey, even those slow bureocratic and inefficient (not on that exact terms) imperialists can make that thing work, why can't I?"

Re:Solar Power?

[x6060]

Thats not true at all... A normal fragment of shrapnel travels roughly 4-5,000 feet per second with top end velocities of 25,000fps. Fast enough and with good enough armor penetration that up armored Humvees dont stop most shrapnel, they just lessen the impact.

Re:Solar Power?

[BeanThere]

No, it couldn't, because solar equipment is much more expensive than fuel-based or other forms of electricity generation. The "roadblock" is that it would cost a shitload more, and then we'd be talking about $30bn and not $20bn.

Re:Solar Power?

[chainsaw1]

The Marines have been investing hugely in solar.

What everyone seems to miss, is that there are more requirements to the military being there than sitting in an efficient house. They need to be mobile, they need to be survivable, and they need to be able to do all their OTHER jobs as well. Tents have one wall because they have to be set up and down easy, and have to take up minimal storage space when waiting for the next force deployment (all of which also have costs). That's why the military doesn't drive troops around in a Prius--they don't take IED or RPG blasts well. The HMMWV proved that.

You can only make something more efficient for a specific job to a certain point before its other requirements have to sacrifice. For instance, if you invest in solar-everything now, what happens to those systems when they are deployed in a future defense scenario near the Northwest Passage?

Re:Solar Power?

[SharpFang]

I can assure you the wall of a fuel truck is no less suspectible to iron sights sniper rifle fire (old common soviet 7.62x54r Mosin-Naganat from IIWW will perfectly suffice) and shooting it can wreak much more havoc at a base than damaging all the solar panels.

Re:Solar Power?

[CavemanKiwi]

Solar panels work great until they take shrapnel or bullet damage..

So do gas tanks.

Re:Solar Power?

[operator_error]

The word Hajji means a person who has made, or is in the process of making a religious pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina. This pilgrimage itself is called the Hajj. The Hajj terminal in Jeddah is the largest airport in the world. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/King_Abdulaziz_International_Airport

In the context you have used, you are referring to a violent person. Hajjis have nothing whatsoever to do with violence, they are religious pilgrims.

Re:Solar Power?

[Duradin]

Self sealing fuel tanks, the wondrous technology of WWII.

Re:Solar Power?

[AlienIntelligence]

So you put a sheet of plastic in front of the panel. No different then stopping hail.

You have a solar panel powered by hail?

-AI

Re:Necessary

[ledow]

Sorry - your military-grade communication and data equipment can't handle a temperature range inside a tent and has to be specially protected? Then it should have its own built-in ruggedisation and cooling.

Seriously, you think that soldiers should have air-conditioned rooms except possibly in a hospital? Unless the locals all have A/C and unless you're NOT siting your camps properly, I find that tricky to believe.

As a comparison - I'd be interested to know how much, say, a foreign military that's helping the US over there, but originally from a colder country (say the UK) is spending on A/C over there. I'd be seriously disappointed if it was rounded down in millions and came to greater than zero.

Doesn't suprise me

[Bob the Super Hamste]

This doesn't surprise me. The tents or building the troops are in probably aren't all that well insulated and they are probably using window ACs as well. Add in breakage and the low efficiency of the setup and it seems to be a reasonable value. I am not saying this is a good thing, but given the waste in government it doesn't surprise me one bit.

Just the buildings

[pablo_max]

Have they considered only air conditioning the building and vehicles rather than the whole countries? I assume that would be cheaper.

Re:Irrelevant

[Chrisq]

Ac does not make them better at killing the enemy. AC actually makes them less effective at killing the enemy. Anyone that claims they can exit a 80 degree low humidity environment and enter a 110 degree environment and are AS EFFECTIVE as they were in the 80 degree environment is a flat out liar.

Or a Masai Warrior

Does anybody really believe this?

[nharmon]

...Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security account for far more spending than the $107 billion the Pentagon says it will spend in Afghanistan next year.

So of the $107 billion we will spend in Afghanistan, $20.2 billion of it is for air conditioning? Seriously, almost 20% of our war cost?

But the devil is in the details. The calculation takes into consideration all sorts of services that are not solely used for air conditioning. Escort, command and control, medevac support...all are resources that support multiple purposes and not just creature comforts for soldiers. That would be like me saying the annual cost of maintaining my vehicle includes the band-aids I keep in the medicine chest because I occasionally scrape my knuckles loosening the drain plug.

In other words, we do not spend $20 billion on air conditioning. Instead, the cost of every resource that has any tangential effect on air conditioning has a combined cost of $20 billion. Wake me up when NPR posts some information that is actually useful.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[FatSean]

Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security account for far more spending than the $107/yr to be pissed away into Afghanistan with no benefit for Americans not turning a profit from this war already.

Let's not forget the costs not factored into $107Billion/yr: life-long care for the thousands of crippled soldiers returning from this waste of time and effort.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[MrQuacker]

Well, then look at the direct costs. How many gallons per hour do the generators and AC use? How many generators are in use. And how much does the average gallon of fuel cost to deliver.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[ledow]

Well, air-con isn't very energy efficient. So you're getting a shed-load of energy from somewhere. If you're talking entire camps hooked up, that's dozens KW's of capacity all day long, every day. A/C is actually quite a substantial chunk of any business's electrical cost that has it installed.

Now if you are indeed running mobile sites via fuel-based generators, that's a shed-load of inefficiency and cost again there. Ever run a petrol- or diesel-generator? Works out about 5-10 times more expensive than grid electric. Not to mention that if you're without it even for an hour, the A/C has to "warm-start" and pull a ton more energy than normal.

Now you're in a "hostile" country, you can't plug into the grid, and your fuel has to be DRIVEN in, using more fuel, in batches that will last you, say, a week at a time - it will form quite a significant chunk of your transport to move that much fuel around. Loading, movement, weight, unloading, fuelling, etc. That's a lot of work to cause, just for a liquid only intended to cool tents (and I imagine actual fuel costs for transport are a fraction of what would be used in A/C).

Add in losses, thefts, inefficiencies, the fact that fuel in those countries probably hasn't been bought at the local petrol station (but, ironically, comes from oil shipped from the Middle East to the US only to be refined and then shipped back again at great expense under military escort), that you're cooling a tent (the stupidest thing I ever heard), that the equipment use is probably unmonitored (so nobody is really aware if one unit is on all day, every day for no reason), etc. etc. and I can quite believe it.

Soon, this will become another one of those "and the Russians used a pencil" sayings - I bet every other military just has their soldiers adapt to the same conditions as the people they are fighting - cheaper, more sensible, more efficient and a lot greater sense.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[nharmon]

I suspect the direct costs are not more than we spend on NASA, and thus not anti-war news worthy (thrown out there based on the big bold quote from Sen. Manchin).

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[antifoidulus]

The war in Afghanistan costs a hell of a lot more than $107 billion, maybe $107 billion this year, but it almost a 10 year old war. Secondly, the number given in the summary is aggregate over both Iraq and Afghanistan, not just for one year.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[nospam007]

"Works out about 5-10 times more expensive than grid electric."

Not to mention that using explosions to turn a generator to create electricity to generate the energy for again turning a pump in the AC unit wastes 3/4 of the energy.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[dogmatixpsych]

The $20 billion is for Iraq and Afghanistan, not just Afghanistan. Those two wars are projected to cost $163 billion in 2011, which puts "air conditioning" costs at 12% of overall costs. But you are precisely right, the $20 billion spent per year on air conditioning is a perfect example of lying with statistics.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[MrQuacker]

Really? Do the math, the numbers grow quite rapidly. Assuming very conservatively that a gallon of diesel costs $25 to deliver to an FOB (closer to $400/gal at times). Using an example number of 1000 gallons used per hour across all Afghanistan. That's $600,000 per day right there. $219 million a year.

Plug in actual consumption numbers and watch the costs soar.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[nharmon]

That $219 million is still two orders of magnitude less than what NASA gets in funding per year; so yes, I really doubt we spend more on air conditioning our tents in Afghanistan than we do on NASA.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[geekoid]

NASA budget is 17 Billion, approx.

A gallon of few cost a hell of a lot closer to 400 a gallon then 25 gallon.
And the assumption that only 1000 gallons of fuel an hour is used across Afghanistan is laughable.

The original poster clearly has no experience dealing with large amounts of people spread across vast distances in rugged terrain.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[h4rr4r]

Social Security is self funding. I see no War Tax on my paystub.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[theIsovist]

To be fair, NPR did post the breakdown of this cost and explanation in the article, near the top. It's also a quote from Steven Anderson, who is "a retired brigadier general who served as Gen. David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq." I would argue that man knows what he's talking about, and more importantly, it's his words, not NPR's.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[nharmon]

I am not seeing where NPR posted the breakdown of this cost. The only explanation was General Anderson's statement of including "escorting, command and control, medevac support".

In fact, if you read the transcript of the interview the article is based on, General Anderson does not say if the $20 billion figure is per year, or over the whole ten years we have been at war.

Finally, just because General Anderson is an expert and "knows what he's talking about", does not mean he is being honest. Argument from authority and all that.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[jeffmeden]

Reading, it's fundamental! NPR pointed out that the $20B per year is for Iraq AND Afghanistan. Please add the cost of the Iraq war to the $107B before dividing the $20B figure by it to come to a percentage of total cost. Then, you will arrive at the actual percentage of the war cost spent on air conditioning (*based on the criteria for this report.) It's also worth noting that this figure came from none other than Gen. David Patreaus' chief logistician in Iraq, Steven Anderson. So no, this isn't a "liberally biased anti-war puff piece" like the NPR detractors would have you believe; this is a figure from someone very high up *inside the Defense Department*.

Or, you can turn off NPR and go back to being told what to think by some other news outlet. Your choice.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[StikyPad]

Hmm, yes, I bet feeding them is even more expensive. They should just farm/hunt for their food like the people they're fighting too. It certainly doesn't make sense to spend money to provide a tiny bit of convenience for people who volunteer to risk their lives living in harsh conditions away from family, loved ones, and friends in a foreign country, to give them a cool bed to sleep in at night when they're not performing patrols that make them vulnerable to snipers, IEDs, and ambushes.

For fuck's sake, even if it really did cost 20% of the entire budget for A/C, I don't really see a problem with that, but then I'm not a pretentious cock sitting halfway around the world criticizing the energy efficiency of someone who's sitting in Afghanistan for the 16th straight month because I'm not doing shit to bring him home. If you want to save money, pressure your politicians to get us out of Afghanistan, or if you think we should be there, then kindly STFU.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[kmac06]

The opening line in TFA says "annually".

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[ledow]

Sorry, but the risks associated with carting THAT MUCH SHIT around the world so that someone can sit in 20-something heat rather than 30-something heat (which is basically what they are for), putting dozens or hundreds of extra lives in danger so that a handful can feel slightly cooler, of them being acclimatised to a (ironically named) Legionnaire's disease-risk, cool environment when they have to take an instantaneous temperature hit the second they need to leap into action, etc. are vastly worse than them being slightly warmer while doing the same bloody job.

A/C is a *fucking* luxury, especially for a soldier who has to wade through shit and blood for most of the day. I'd much rather they didn't have A/C and they had vastly less shit and blood to wade through, and fewer people's blood on their hands (did you not read the article where is says how many people are killed in THOUSANDS of convoys that would be totally unnecessary, or in vastly reduced numbers, were all that fuel and equipment not carted around the world for the sake of an officer not getting a little sweaty under the armpits?).

I don't give a shit for energy efficiency - I give a shit about them being an effective and worthwhile military, where money is going on DEFENCE (which possibly, I suppose, could include attack under certain situations) doing the minimum amount of work necessary so they can actually go somewhere else useful and be redeployed to somewhere where they are making a difference instead. Not one barging into the very countries that are producing the oil (with the impetus of protecting American supply lines) that gets shipped to the US to be refined and then carted via military personnel back into the same bloody "war zone" that the US themselves voluntarily created and sustain in a foreign without any declaration of war ANYWHERE, no "enemy", no "target", nothing - in order to keep a tent 10 degrees cooler when, as pointed out in the article, that would fund an awful lot of extra help, extra equipment and potentially a lot less time "in action" for thousands of troops posted there, pretty much unnecessarily.

If they are being shot at, they need better armour and armament, not A/C. Military costs take up more than any other government-funded thing combined (including pensions, healthcare - in countries bright enough to supply it for free, education, etc.) For instance, that's a fifth of the UK's entire healthcare budget, just on A/C - and we treat EVERYONE for free. If the people dying in hospitals in the UK (including wounded soldiers) don't need that amount, and that expense, of air-conditioning, I very much doubt that the military does either.

It's not a question of cutting them to the bare minimum, or denying them rest-time. It's a question of pissing away money that would be better spent elsewhere and would have VASTLY more of an effect on their health, security, pensions, etc. than funding thousands convoys to carry a flammable fluid into war-zones for the sake of a handful of degrees Celsius.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[jeffmeden]

Finally, just because General Anderson is an expert and "knows what he's talking about", does not mean he is being honest. Argument from authority and all that.

Here is what you were looking for: "[Anderson]'s in the private sector now, pitching green solutions to the Pentagon - things like foam insulation, which the military has tried, spraying this stuff on to tents to make those air-conditioning bills go down."

He has a clear motivation to try to make the cost of Aircon (and energy in general) sound as large as possible. Now that doesn't mean it's not true, only that it is subject to bias. But then again, we have no problem letting the beef industry tell us what's OK to eat, or the coal industry from telling us what's OK to breathe; why should we have a problem when a fine upstanding capitalist like Steven Anderson tells us what to do about our energy problems?

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[Have Brain Will Rent]

$107 billion a year to fight a war in Afghanistan??? Geez, take a tip from IT and outsource it to China or India.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[jafac]

Well; also, factor in the cost of the salaries of the accountants and filing clerks that track the logistical operations to make sure all of that fuel is supplied, especially to critical ops locations like field hospitals, and command centers where shelters MUST remain cool 24x7. This is why hammers cost $200. And this is why wars like this one, in particular, are particularly futile, as far as economic ventures go. It is an extremely cost-inefficient way to jack up someone's ego.

We could have saved ourselves hundreds of billions by hiring the best doctors in the world to surgically attach a giant horse penis to George Bush, thus resolving his psychological inadequacy issues, without all the waste and bloodshed.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[nharmon]

You're right, the $20 billion figure is for Iraq and Afghanistan. Thank you for pointing that out.

Total expenditures for Iraq and Afghanistan are expected to cost $170.7 billion this year, so the General is really claiming that we spend 11.9% of our war costs in Iraq and Afghanistan on air conditioning tents (and not the 18.9% figure I mistakenly came up with).

Still, 1/10 of our war cost is air conditioning? That is still beyond believable.

Oh, and according to Senator Mark Udall, $20 billion is what the Department of Defense spends as a whole on energy each year. Apparently this all goes to running air conditioning. *eyes roll*

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[Threni]

Don't criticize soldiers abroad - that's what you're saying, right? No matter what they do. They're there, and you're here, and people here can't criticize soldiers there.

You can, of course, criticize the locals who are fighting the foreign invaders, even they they're also in the same location, and the same distance from you, and even worse conditions, against a much more powerful army, because...

Just because.

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[shutdown -p now]

$107 billion a year to fight a war in Afghanistan??? Geez, take a tip from IT and outsource it to China or India.

But if you outsource it to China, then the war will be over in less than a year (after they steamroll over all resistance with the heaviest guns they have at their disposal, collateral damage be damned). And then, what are all the poor security companies and Halliburton are going to do?

Re:Does anybody really believe this?

[strikethree]

"Soon, this will become another one of those "and the Russians used a pencil" sayings - I bet every other military just has their soldiers adapt to the same conditions as the people they are fighting - cheaper, more sensible, more efficient and a lot greater sense.

And like the Russian pencil thing, it is plain wrong. Do you know what happens when the "lead" breaks in a pencil? A conductive piece of graphite goes floating about in zero gravity and could end up shorting out a very important circuit.

Do you know what happens when a server is operating in 50C (as it gets where I am deployed at) dusty weather? It dies within days, especially if it is doing any real work (as it should be doing). Cisco switches seem to survive a lot better as I have had one hit by an AK47 round and all it required was a cycling of the power (while it was operating in 39C temps).

Interesting factoid. Did you know that from March 2003 to December 2004, no tents of any sort were air conditioned? Lowering heat stress on combat troops is very important regardless of the electronics they take with them. That is what makes them better able to do their job.

Re:Necessary

[metalmaster]

Here is my pullout plan:

1. Pack everyone and everything up
2. Leave.

I think it's quite clear that we are in too deep to just pack up and go. Im sure if we pull out the current standing regime will raise hell on the civilians "just because." In addition, it might give those leaders the balls to try something on our home soil again.

20 Billion sounds like a bunch of money, but if it makes the lives of those fighting men and women any easier i say let em have it. I dont agree with this war, but I sure as hell respect the men and women who are doing their best to serve this country.

Remote the DVR's!

[rjlouro]

Well, according to yesterday's news, they could probably pay for the air conditioning if they stopped recording tv shows.

Calculation - could be possible

[captainpanic]

Let's assume that a barrel of oil (equivalent) energy costs 1000 dollar - instead of the normal 100. The US army brings it to its destination in expensive convoys.
Let's also assume that the infrastructure costs as much as the energy: 2000 dollar/barrel of oil equivalent energy. (The result of both is probably more).

Then they would consume 10 million barrels of oil equivalent per year, or about 1.2 billion kg of oil, or about 5*10^16 J/yr, or about 1.6 GW in energy...

Which seems an awful lot.

Then again, we must realize that the US employs lots of people (not just their own soldiers), and probably provides housing for even more. Could it be possible that they house 1 million people: soldiers, supporting units, Blackwater, but also local forces, local police and all necessary bureaucracy? Then we're just talking about 1.6 kW of power per person... which seems not unreasonable. It's just the result of lots of people, and very expensive energy.

-- Just a back of the envelope calculation. If you arrive at the same order of magnitude, then we agree.

Re:Calculation - could be possible

[Bozzio]

Let's assume neither of us are asses.

Re:Calculation - could be possible

[SleazyRidr]

Actually someone posted earlier that it costs $400/gallon to get fuel to the front lines. That's more like $10k a barrel. So even if we take half that just to get to the base, then even if you've been overly conservative in the number of people it's still a possibility.

Dang...

Interesting

[TheDarkMaster]

We spend more in cooling air than exploring outer space ... Well done, humanity ... /ironic

Re:Interesting

[Mr_Nitro]

yeah :(

Re:They don't use air conditioners...

[countertrolling]

That would consume more water than gasoline

Solar panels, really?

[HBI]

Things are done like they are for a reason.

The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not. They aren't kept at 68 degrees F - more like 80-85, but it's better than 105-130F outside. The ECUs also act as heaters in mountainous environments - Afghanistan, for one.

A TOC (command post) is a tent complex surrounded by concrete barriers and/or concertina wire. It's powered by generators. The wire and barriers are to stop potshots from firearms and to offer some protection against mortars/grenades/rockets. The wire isn't intended to harm, it mostly sticks to your skin and clothing and prevents you from going inside the post. The generators are used because they fit inside the perimeter.

Reflective blankets aren't used because the reflective blankets stick out like a sore thumb from the air, or the ground.

Insulation is not sprayed on the tents because they, you know, move...

Solar panels - envision putting a solar panel outside the perimeter. Envision carrying around solar panels and setting them up where you operate. Impractical from a logistical standpoint and could not be secured efficiently against attack without extending the perimeter to perhaps double or triple the circumference, with all the associated costs in additional manning for force protection. A nonstarter.

The same arguments apply to LSA - the places soldiers live - but with some modification. Some are fixed and might be amenable to alternative power sources, but the perimeter guard issue rears its head again. You can't beat generators for portability.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[the_raptor]

"The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not."

Harden up sweet heart. Somehow British, Australian, Canadian, and other Commonwealth troops ran riot across Northern Africa and the Middle East in two world wars without their armies collapsing from heat stroke. Air conditioned tents are just a creature comfort like having fast food vendors on the bases is. It has nothing to do with military effectiveness (it probably detracts from it as the troops won't be properly acclimatised for when they are off base).

Alexander the Great CONQUERED Afghanistan and his troops were probably lucky to have woollen blankets and had walked all the way from Macedonia conquering what is now Iraq and Persia along the way.

P.S. The Soviet army response to their soldiers complaining about having to sleep in the snow with just a great-jacket was to make them spend more time training in the snow so they got used to it.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[radtea]

Impractical from a logistical standpoint and could not be secured efficiently against attack...

For a moment there I thought you were talking about about taking 18 days to truck fuel over 800 miles on roads that are described as sometimes being not much more than "improved goat tracks"! But then I realized you are just imagining how impossible everything that is NOT being done is, rather than comparing it realistically to what IS being done.

Remember, the current program has cost something like 1000 American lives due to fuel convoy attacks, and is a logistical nightmare. Pretending that greener alternatives are impossible because they are ALSO logistical nightmares that will cost American lives is an unimpressive and unconvincing form of argument.

Although it's still more impressive than this completely incoherent quote from some clown who thinks that war is a good solution to the worlds's problems: '"Remember, we're talking about 30,000 troops," he says "I don't think that hundred-billion-dollar price tag should be the determining one."' What does that even mean?

Re:Solar panels, really?

[Bryan3000000]

And I guess someone might get shot for suggesting spraying millions of gallons of water per day into the air for evaporative cooling - in the desert.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[asylumx]

So what if Alexander the Great conquered Afghanistan like that? It's not under Greek control now, is it? Maybe that says something about how important it is to treat your people like people instead of like livestock. Same story with the soviet army. Look how well things have turned out for them...

Also, were their armies all-volunteer? Our is. It takes some degree of respect and accomodation from the higher-ups to keep the incoming stream of volunteers at a reasonable level.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[the_raptor]

If the higher-ups really respected their soldiers they wouldn't put them in ridiculous situations at the behest of politicians (ie trying to do both Iraq and Afghanistan with not enough troops for either one). Also paying a living wage so that junior enlisted with families didn't need to rely on food stamps would probably help.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[HBI]

Look at the casualty statistics for your answer. If you want lots of incapacitated soldiers from illness and death from exposure, stop air conditioning.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[HBI]

Quote out a system that will deliver ~ 200kw of power in the middle of a desert that doesn't involve generators. Oh, and make it redundant, too, with a manual transfer switch. Since things break in the field, and repair shops aren't around the corner. Then add up the weight and space. Then tell the Army that they can't set up their stuff in the shade of the north side of a hill.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[SleazyRidr]

Dude, solar panels are flat, they could be hardened up if you're willing to take a hit on the efficiency, and then you could put them on stilts above the tents so you don't need any extra space.

These are all solvable problems. Of course, by not insisting on killing brown people on the other side of the world at once you'd solve them all at once, but I'd be willing to work towards a compromise solution.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[SleazyRidr]

They're shiny, people could see you and shoot at you.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[uigrad_2000]

Remember, the current program has cost something like 1000 American lives due to fuel convoy attacks, and is a logistical nightmare. Pretending that greener alternatives are impossible because they are ALSO logistical nightmares that will cost American lives is an unimpressive and unconvincing form of argument.

Solar panels are heavy. They are big. They are prone to damage by wind. They do not generate power at night, so they must be accompanied by large batteries or capacitors. They produce a trickle of power, and are not well designed for powering heavy machinery.

Are you suggesting that a mobile site in the desert should be surrounded by thousands of square meters of generators? Are you out of your mind? The are well suited for science fair projects, or convincing the masses that you are "green", but certainly not the right choice for mobile military installations.

In case you want to do the math yourself, be aware that a south-facing solar panel in Britain generates 0.022kW / square meter. Sure, you'll do better in the desert, but comparing this to diesel powered generators is just laughable.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[alen]

like all warlords, alexander used a lot of troops from conquered states. it's not like the same group of greeks marched through asia

Re:Solar panels, really?

[couchslug]

Yours is the only major post here that doesn't sound like the Slashdot equivalent of a Fox News rant.
(I've deployed to Kuwait, Turkey, KSA, Abu Dhabi, and Bahrain during Desert Shield/Storm, Southern Watch and Northern Watch.)

How dare people on a supposedly tech forum not bother to study a bit before they post? They ought to don a combat load and body armor, or perform ordinary vehicle maintenance in that level of heat and methinks they'd shut their hole promptly. Just staying hydrated takes considerable effort.

Think "bad summer in Arizona" heat stress levels, then add the requirement to work and fight in that heat.

When I went to the AMARC boneyard for Battle Damage Repair Training (hack holes in aircraft and fix them with what ever is handy) there were reports of locals dying in their sleep when their AC went out. Observing work/rest cycles in that heat are vital to performance and health.

Foam:
Foaming the tents isn't a bad idea for those which will be left in place. The idea that tents should be recovered isn't strictly true. They are going to get torn and nasty and likely left in-theater anyway.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[radtea]

Quote out a system that will deliver ~ 200kw of power in the middle of a desert that doesn't involve generators...

If you'd RTFM you'll see a claim that energy use could be reduced to 8% of current usage via relatively simple insulation methods, so your 200 kW should be 16 kW, or which may still be too much for solar (I make it about 3m x 100m of panels with realistic efficiency etc) but which reduce that 1000 American lives to 100.

Why you are suggesting that power usage must remain high is perplexing in the extreme, when everyone knows that efficiency increases are always the best way to deal with problems of high fuel consumption (except in those very rare cases where all possible efficiencies have been squeezed from the system, which is manifestly not the case here.)

Re:Solar panels, really?

[radtea]

Solar panels are heavy.

I just re-read my comment and can't see anything in it about solar panels. Why are people responding to it as if I did?

Insulation, passive cooling, and a host of other approaches are the obvious ones to take to this problem. It is likely some fuel will still be required, but less fuel is better--according to TFA, up to 92% better.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[Premo_Maggot]

Things are done like they are for a reason.

The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not. They aren't kept at 68 degrees F - more like 80-85, but it's better than 105-130F outside. The ECUs also act as heaters in mountainous environments - Afghanistan, for one.

A TOC (command post) is a tent complex surrounded by concrete barriers and/or concertina wire. It's powered by generators. The wire and barriers are to stop potshots from firearms and to offer some protection against mortars/grenades/rockets. The wire isn't intended to harm, it mostly sticks to your skin and clothing and prevents you from going inside the post. The generators are used because they fit inside the perimeter.

Reflective blankets aren't used because the reflective blankets stick out like a sore thumb from the air, or the ground.

Insulation is not sprayed on the tents because they, you know, move...

Solar panels - envision putting a solar panel outside the perimeter. Envision carrying around solar panels and setting them up where you operate. Impractical from a logistical standpoint and could not be secured efficiently against attack without extending the perimeter to perhaps double or triple the circumference, with all the associated costs in additional manning for force protection. A nonstarter.

The same arguments apply to LSA - the places soldiers live - but with some modification. Some are fixed and might be amenable to alternative power sources, but the perimeter guard issue rears its head again. You can't beat generators for portability.

You were on the right track with the thermostat but then you went off course after that. Reflective blankets are actually used in our tens, under a layer of tan fabric. The tents are actually very energy efficient. Solar panels are not really an option as regularly occurring dust storms or indirect fire would regularly mess up the solar panels, and would be a logistical nightmare. Tents that are to remain stationary are regularly foamed, not only because of the insulation it provides, but because it also keeps the high level of dust outside. This is a link to the types of tents and ECU's we use: http://www.alaskastructures.com/

Re:Solar panels, really?

[Animats]

Things are done like they are for a reason.

Right. The energy-efficient alternative is big, fixed base camps. The American military (especially the Marines) tries to avoid being tied to fixed base camps, because a base camp doesn't project power - it just sits there and has to be defended. To accomplish anything useful, troops have to go where the enemy is and put bullets in them.

Hence the need to air-condition tents in the middle of nowhere.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[jeffmeden]

"The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not."

Harden up sweet heart. Somehow British, Australian, Canadian, and other Commonwealth troops ran riot across Northern Africa and the Middle East in two world wars without their armies collapsing from heat stroke. Air conditioned tents are just a creature comfort like having fast food vendors on the bases is. It has nothing to do with military effectiveness (it probably detracts from it as the troops won't be properly acclimatised for when they are off base).

Alexander the Great CONQUERED Afghanistan and his troops were probably lucky to have woollen blankets and had walked all the way from Macedonia conquering what is now Iraq and Persia along the way.

P.S. The Soviet army response to their soldiers complaining about having to sleep in the snow with just a great-jacket was to make them spend more time training in the snow so they got used to it.

The Soviet empire also collapsed not long after their sojourn into Afghanistan, so using them as an example of how to win a war and keep your country whole is probably not where you want to go with this argument... As for the rest, no "empire" held Afghanistan for long after conquering it, and as for the risks of heat stroke they are quite real and quite expensive when you have to take a man off duty for an indeterminate period while he recovers. Air conditioning also addresses a key issue not mentioned (the purpose for which it was actually invented): reducing airborne insects and pathogens to prevent diseases. Heat might be tolerable, but someone who catches Malaria can't be ordered to "tough it out" and soldiers are most susceptible (and least likely to wear repellent) in the confines of their tents.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[BeanThere]

The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not.

Absolute nonsense, people have been living in deserts (and fighting wars there) for literally thousands of years without the existence of air conditioning.

I think the real problem is that the US force is a volunteer one, so they need to offer some comfort and perks in order to maintain morale and convince troops to actually go over there and get shot at. If every soldier had a much more miserable experience from sweltering in the blistering heat, many more of them would likely decide to quit. Think of it as a job perk.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[chainsaw1]

Ok, ill bite

The average combat load in WWII was about 45lbs.
http://www.google.com/search?q=combat+load+WWII

The average modern combat load now is close to 80 lbs
http://www.military.com/forums/0,15240,106567,00.html

Further, I would wager that the troops were moving about more in North Africa since there isn't much there worth defending from an Axis or Allies viewpoint. In Iraqistan we are fighting against the population and for the population at the same time (like the Viet Kong). This requires permanent presence as opposed to obliterate and move tactics.

Also, while temperatures both reach similarly very hot, Kabul Afghanistan is at about 6000' elevation, which exposes it to more solar radiation and provides less airflow to cool everything.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[jafac]

Actually, the smart answer to "let's reduce casualties" is to stay home.

Note: we went to 'stan to kill bin Laden. He was found, and killed, in PAKistan. And anyone who believes he was NOT being sheltered and protected by high-level officials there since early 2002, who were also taking US State Dept. counterterrorism money, is in complete denial.

If only we could go to the "Complaints Department" and ask for a complete and full refund for this idiotic fiasco. They got Air Conditioning, and they were utterly ineffective, at 10 times the cost. The Afghans got their children murdered, and they now get to chuckle as they watch us leave, the way the Soviets, and British left.

And we're going to be paying INTEREST on this debt for the next 100 years. While we're paying higher petroleum prices, because we burned it all trying to keep tents cool in the fucking desert wasteland at the end of the world, last desperate stand of every fucking dying empire that ever binged, puked, and choked to death on its own vomit.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[mullen490]

I was in Iraq and Kuwait on a tour in 2004. I've woken in my own pool of sweat after the generator went down for the 5th time that day, so it doesn't surprise me at all to hear that people die in their sleep when the A/C is out. Sleep is when it's most needed...you can barely sleep in a tent with A/C, let alone without.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[DarkOx]

Lots more people died in those wars too. A soldier who has gotten a good nights rest in comfort, and is healthy is going to be more combat effective than one who is sick from living in a festering pit of disease amongst his comrades and spent his nights suffering awake from heat or cold rather than resting.

  I don't think we really need to do a study to know that. How do perform on the job after you have been kept up all night? Had it been at all practice to air condition troops in WWI and WWII from a technical and logistical stand point I am sure they would have been.
We could hardly air-condition residential building back home at the time though. Fuel constraints would have made it impossible.

I suspect if our supply lines got cut and fuel runs short in the middle eastern theater the A/C would be the first thing they turn off, today.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[Techie_79]

What you need are statistics on terrorist casualties from heat related illness - they don't have air conditioning. Then compare this to casualties from the fact that it is a fucking war. Native architecture is usually the best for the climate, what do their tent cities look like?

Re:Solar panels, really?

[sdguero]

The difference is that we consider one dead soldier to be an issue. Alexander likely lost thousands to the weather when he conquered Afghanistan. Since some of my best friends are in the military, I prefer the way we do it.

Re:Solar panels, really?

[ShakaUVM]

>>The tents are air conditioned with diesel-powered ECUs because people get heat related illnesses when they are not.

Man, maybe we should just copy how the Afghans do their air conditioning, eh?

Re:Solar panels, really?

[Falconhell]

During WW2, the B-17 carried a small bomb load compared the its British equivalent, due to lots of excess weight for creature comforts. It seems nothings changed in the US armed forces!

Re:Solar panels, really?

[chainsaw1]

The "natives" don't have statistics. People just die in the streets from whatever, and you're not going to know why because no one can afford the autopsy necessary. Or are we going to spend another $10B on autopsies just to get some data?

I recommend taking a trip to Afghanistan and figuring out for yourself what it's actually like there. Then, I would ask you to note who is more effective in the combat situations. If spending $20B on A/C make for better fighters that can win a significant majority of the engagements they are put in, then yes it is worth while.

Also, you should look up information local customs for the amount of work accomplished in a day. Most of the people in iraq and afghan only work part of the time, and rather force others (wives, children, other villagers) to do it for them. Talk with people who have been over there. Not all people are lazy as such, however it's a larger group than the average person in the US (and that's saying something). Not sure about you, but I don't need as much A/C if I'm not going to do much of anything all day long.

Long story short, there is a LOT that goes into these spending decisions ans system design. Don't deride expenses based on rolled up statistics from a single theater of war when much of the military need extends beyond those confined boundaries.

Re:Gotta love the Military!

[nospam007]

"To think we could have 2 NASA's going right now! "

Very funny.
The annual NASA budget is less than the AC cooling fuel cost for_1_ year.

Re:Necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

"20 Billion sounds like a bunch of money, but if it makes the lives of those fighting men and women any easier i say let em have it. I dont agree with this war, but I sure as hell respect the men and women who are doing their best to serve this country."

I think the most respectful thing that we could do to help the men and women serving their country is not to send them off on unjustified wars for dubious reasons. They should be put in harm's way only for GOOD REASONS. Yes, they should get the resources that they need when we ask them to fight, but we -- the voting public -- are on the hook for the decisions that send them there, and we and the political leaders representing us have not been doing our job properly.

Questioning the vast resources that are thrown after bad strategic decisions is not disrespectful of military personnel. It is a reminder of just how bad the original decision was: no realistic estimate of cost, no realistic estimate of duration, no realistic estimate of what the response of the host people would be, no realistic planning of what to do after "winning", no strategic sense to it at all, just fairy-tale expectations that it would be comparatively easy to reach a faux "Mission Accomplished" goalpost. We've learned a very hard lesson, paid for in the price of those soldiers that have died.

Money

[defective_warthog]

slashdot is _just_ now picking up this story!

These wars are being fought to keep people working which makes money for who? It's not about terrorism, it IS about MONEY.

Who makes those air conditioners? Who makes those generators? Who makes the bullets, mortar rounds, etc.? The US has what a million or so in uniform (who makes the uniforms?), it IS about the MONEY.

War is generally good for the economy but not so good for those being shot at on both sides.

How to have a good economic environment without killing each other has been and will continue to be an essential problem to solve.

Re:Money

[geekoid]

No this War is not good for the economy.
Massive wars are, but have you seen in military roll up like was done during either of the World Wars? no.

Yes, the war is a vast conspiracy by the manufacturer of AC units. well done.

Re:Irrelevant

[Anonymous Coward]

"you can live without AC for a little, but you can't live without water."

So AC has existed forever? are you really that stupid? You can live without AC FOREVER... Simply go and ask the poor, or any of the tribes in south america or any of the people living in the desert...

and I dont see anyone saying that our troops are being denied water. Are you just making crap up?

Lumpy is 100% correct. the enemy is fighting without AC and is not having problems just up and dying without it (they die when we send them ordinance at high velocity.)... SO you are saying that American soldiers are limply little girls that REQUIRE AC?

I dare you to say that at a army base.

disgusting

[Mr_Nitro]

There is no argument that hold for this totally fake and wanted war system. After ten years what's new there? absolutely nothing. Same as when the russian were there. They are just burning citizens money and making the riches richer. If NASA or any other organization for serious scientific research would have half of the whole war budget in those countries now we would have amazing technologies unlocked and a surely a big amount of new discoveries in base research. All this just makes me sick... we could have permanent moon facilities..and a mars base...pump 100billion a year for 10 years... and it's sure.

Re:Necessary

[Lumpy]

Exactly, the guy does not know anything at all about data or comms gear. Even corporate Cisco switches and routers will operate at 160 degrees for a very very long time. I have a set that MELTED the rj45 jacks and it was still running, the temperatures sensors in the closet during the fire were off the scale (Above 255 degrees) for 6 hours during the fire until they cut the power. Military grade stuff can do this in the direct sun while being shot at and peed on.

Re:It's for hospitals ... move along now, okay ?

[kilfarsnar]

...said the AC with no citation.

Re:Irrelevant

[Thud457]

You can live without AC FOREVER..

Sir, I would like to receive your pamphlet. Is there some sort of ritual I will need to perform?

it's called being self-sufficient

[Thud457]

I don't think the CIA will get onboard with that plan since it interferes with their heroin supply.

bullshit

[ArchieBunker]

You have obviously never worked on a vehicle or done home improvement projects. Its one of the best rules to live by.

Re:bullshit

[GameboyRMH]

Hah I've done plenty of both, that saying only applies if you have no idea what you're doing.

Re:bullshit

[toxonix]

I only use this adage on others. As a rule, I break everything with the intention of fixing it, but usually just as a way to pass the time while still feeling fruitful. If someone notices the hypocrisy in this, I use the old adage "Don't do what I do, do what I say."

Re:bullshit

[tragedy]

Errr, so you're saying that you never change your oil or waterproof your deck? You just wait for your engine to go and your deck to rot, then fix them?

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[kdsible]

"Our soldiers are over there fighting for not just our freedom....." How do you figure this? If they lost how would that affect YOUR freedom.

Re:Necessary

[squidguy]

Most of the network gear isn't MILSPEC, it's commercial off the shelf. Usually it isn't the network gear that gets overly flaky when hot...it's the rest of the computing infrastructure.

Death by Powerpoint

[sourcerror]

Well, they need some hardware to run Powerpoint on.

"A PowerPoint Ranger is a military member who relies heavily on presentation software to the point of excess. Some junior officers spend the majority of their time preparing PowerPoint slides.[10] Because of its usefulness for presenting mission briefings, it has become part of the culture of the military,[9][11] but is regarded as a poor decision-making tool.[12] As a result some generals, such as Brigadier-General Herbert McMaster, have banned the use of PowerPoint in their operations.[10] In September 2010, Colonel Lawrence Sellin was fired from his post at the ISAF for publishing a piece critical of the over-dependence of military staffs on the presentation method and bloated bureaucracy.[13]

According to Jim Nelson, who served as a civilian translator with the Russian and American peacekeepers in Bosnia in 1996, one of the Russians said, "If we ever had a war, while you are working on your PowerPoint, we would be killing you.""

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Death_by_PowerPoint

http://voristrip.tumblr.com/post/230887512/death-by-powerpoint

Re:Necessary

[deadhammer]

Im sure if we pull out the current standing regime will raise hell on the civilians "just because."

Some democracy you guys installed there.

In addition, it might give those leaders the balls to try something on our home soil again.

Again? What "again"? Afghanistan was only invaded because they were sheltering bin Laden and al Qaeda, not because they caused 9/11. What actions did Iraq instigate on American soil?

Comment removed

[account_deleted]

Comment removed based on user account deletion

US motor industry nearly tanked

[Kupfernigk]

Which is why the US auto industry came close to disappearing. The Japanese, Korean and European car makers believe in continuous development, and they fixed things like high fuel consumption and poor quality before US car makers perceived them as being broken. "If it ain't broke don't fix it" only works if you have a very market-oriented view of what "broke" means.

Nowadays Germany turns out passenger cars in volume with both supercharging and turbocharging for light weight and high efficiency, and Japan turns out reliable, efficient hybrid power trains. The US is having to play copy and catch up.

As for your sig, that is nonsense. If you live in a city, how do you get food, water and shelter? You have to pay. If you think that the water companies and landlords don't use coercion, then you probably think the Tea Party is a rational and progressive political movement.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[MYakus]

People voluntarily enter into contracts with landlords, there is nothing that forces you to do business with one person or another. People also contract with utilities to get power, water and sewer service. While it is possible to go "off grid" for certain things, laws enacted and enforced by the government limits you on how you get to interact with your neighbors in terms of the kind of crap you get to spew. Also, cardboard boxes get cold in winter. The US car industry problems are largely caused by the UAW (which owns just under 50% of GM). With $2000-$3000 added to the price of the average UAW built vehicle, corners get cut elsewhere. I'm buying Japanese these days. The article had some important non-leftwing points as much as people would like to frame this as a leftwing/green/anti-military thing. Conservation can produce good results; reducing the amount of fuel needed to operate a living quarters. With mil-spec stuff, it's always trade-offs though. Weight, cost to purchase, cost to operate and durability always fit in. It's not a bad article in that regard.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[afidel]

Ford probably sells as many turbocharged cars as any European badge and will probably sell as many as all of them combined by mid decade as the ecoboost line moves into every model.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

As for your sig, that is nonsense. If you live in a city, how do you get food, water and shelter? You have to pay. If you think that the water companies and landlords don't use coercion,

It is nonsense, but not really the way you're thinking.

For instance, landlords don't "coerce" you to pay rent. If you don't want to pay rent, then don't. Of course, you'll be evicted, but no one's forcing you to pay rent if you don't want to. You can be homeless if you choose. More importantly, you're not forced to pay any particular landlord. If you don't like landlord A, then you can go talk to landlord B and rent from him instead. Or landlord C or D ad infinitum.

The key is monopolization. With the government, you don't have a choice whether to pay taxes or not, you must (if you earn income, or if you buy anything; even the homeless guy has to pay taxes if he buys food, and if he doesn't buy food he dies). You also don't have a choice about which government to pay taxes to. It's not like you have a choice of three different, competing governments to pay your taxes to.

While it's usually the case that water companies are run by the local government, or contracted to a monopoly utility company, that's never the case with food or housing. You can choose who you pay your food and housing money to.

Now, of course, comes the whole issue of monopolies. The Tea Party and other libertarian extremists think that you can somehow have competition in everything, including electric power (with multiple power lines going to every house), roads, etc. How they proposed to have three different residential streets going to every house, each with a toll booth at every driveway, I have no idea.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

Ford and GM both make a lot of cars in Europe, for the European markets, which they don't sell here. Many of their models have even been derived from their European designs. A lot of Americans complain a lot about this, but the problem is the American market. It costs a fortune to get any particular model approved for sale here, and a "model" only has one chassis, transmission, and engine. If you offer two transmission choices, that's two different models. Two engine choices and two transmission choices, that's four different models, and four times the cost.

So manufacturers don't offer that many models here, and only ones which will sell well. Over in Europe, a particular Volvo for instance might have 7 different engine choices (4 gas and 3 diesel). But over here, only one.

Some mfgs do sell diesels here: VW is the biggest one in cars. The Big 3 all sell giant diesel pick-ups, but not cars. The problem is the market: Americans simply don't like diesel, unless it's in a giant pick-up truck. You can offer it for sale, but they won't buy it. The VWs get fantastic fuel efficiency (like 44mpg for the diesel Jetta wagon), but the sales aren't all that hot. There's a couple of problems: 1) Diesel models cost more. I imagine this is because the engines are more costly to build. Americans don't want to pay $5k extra for a car when they're only going to keep it for 2-3 years before the lease expires or they get tired of it. Europeans keep their cars longer. 2) Diesel fuel costs more. I'm not sure why this is, but it's stupid because diesel fuel is less refined than gasoline, and costs less to produce from crude petroleum. I'll bet it's cheaper in Europe (relative to gasoline). 3) Diesel typically has less power (but way more torque) for a given engine size; Americans all want cars that go 0-60 in 4 seconds, and diesels aren't so great at that. 4) Americans don't care that much about fuel economy. They'll complain when their 400hp pickup truck with a lift kit gets 8mpg, but it's someone else's fault, and they just live with it while they commute 50 miles each way. Usually they blame the Democrats for not allowing the oil companies to drill anywhere and everywhere, as if that's really going to bring the gas prices way down.

Ford is being smart not offering diesel cars in America, because the sales volume wouldn't be worth it. Of course, it'd help a lot if the stupid federal government would change the rules so it wasn't so expensive for a mfgr to offer models with many different engine options. Then they'd probably offer a lot more, or at least make them available as custom order options.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[geekoid]

"With $2000-$3000 "
do you think Japan is full of magic faeries the spew pixie dust to make cars?

Do you think the Japanese don'e have those costs added to their cars?

Buy what the hell you want but don't make up nonsense.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Mindcontrolled]

As long as you don't live in a dictatorship, you can easily flee the coercion to pay taxes - just leave the country and move to Somalia. As practical as avoiding the landlord's coercion to pay rent and go homeless, but still the option is there.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[eudaemon]

Yeah the "I'm not keeping it that long" mentality is the issue. I think the economic downtown and rising gas prices may shift consumer attitudes, though. Personally I do plan to keep my next car 10+ years, so my car *will* be a Diesel - the heavier engine blocks and components required by higher compression ratios simply last longer. The only reason I'm thinking about replacing my current car is that it's developing electrical problems - probably some part of the wiring harness has chafed and shorted, and no 15 year old car is worth the investment to fix that. Owning many used cars and now one 15 years from its purchase date, I can state drive train is only part of the puzzle. At some point door and window seals start to wear out or stiffen and crack, leather wears down and wears out, and components never designed to exceed 100,000 miles are at or beyond the end of their life -everything from belts and hoses to air conditioning components. South Texas is a particularly brutal environment for cars, so I'm sure mileage varies on that, but when the seals between door handle and door are gone and it rains 50" a year, that's a problem. Potentially much more of a problem than whether your car burns diesel or gasoline. Anecdotal evidence suggests my car only lasted as long as it did because it's German. My point is the manufacturers may want to increase quality in other areas before investing in powerplant changes, even though I myself would love to see diesel be much more popular.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[shilly]

And you are somewhat correct but not wholly correct.

You do indeed have a choice of government, which includes a choice over what taxation and what level of taxation. In the US, different state governments have different tax regimes. Outside the US, there are many, many other tax regimes to choose from...and lots of people do. The West Indies are full of tax exiles hiding money. It's even more blatant in Europe: Lichtenstein, Switzerland, Jersey, arguably London.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[MYakus]

The difference you are looking for is legacy costs for UAW retirees. Note that this was largely made solvent when the government took over GM and Chrysler and took equity from bond holders, non-union retirees, and stockholders and transferred it to the union. 20,000 non-union retirees had their pension taken over by the government at a massive loss to them in benefits. So, it is possible that the legacy price of UAW labor has been transferred to non-union workers, equity holders and tax payers. It didn't go away.

Having taken seconds to do a Google lookup, here are a couple of articles that explain the situation up to the government seizure. http://mjperry.blogspot.com/2007/07/uaw-pricing-themselves-out-of-market.html offers a decent explanation about the "legacy" costs of union workers that have to be factored in to the purchase of a UAW car. http://livingeconomics.org/article.asp?docId=107 points to an article that describes how union legacy costs American car buyers for charges that Japanese car manufactures do not (as of yet) have to consider. The costs haven't gone away. There wasn't a UAW "haircut" in the takeover of GM and Chrysler.

Are you happy now? You made me use Google today.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[triffid_98]

Ironically US auto companies learned this in the late 1950s when Studebaker, Packard, and other car makers didn't pay money to retool and build different types of cars, while GM and Ford did decide to change and build cars with the times, such as muscle cars.

GM and Ford were large companies who could afford to retool every year, and those other companies couldn't? I'm sure they would have liked to if that were an option.

These days I don't see that (at an equivalent price point) GM and Ford are any worse than their competition. Just like any other brand they have good cars and bad cars.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[bolthole]

you left out

5) diesel is a "dirty" technology; our air is bad enough from all the large trucks without having more diesel cars adding to it.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[sumdumass]

Actually, I believe those numbers were the number thrown around at the time of the auto bailout and was cited as reasons to why the Unions had to make some concessions. It's not that just because the employees are unionized that the costs are there, it was the extra costs of irregular demands by the UAW to why those costs were there. One of those demands was that X amount of employees being permanent full time employees when the plants in question only needed seasonal employees. What ended up happening was 15% of the plants work force would show up to an enormous break room and do an honest days worth of nothing for an honest days worth of pay.

I don't think those numbers were made up at all. Not cited, and I didn't bother citing them either- might be an issue. But they were tossed around as legitimate at the time of the bailouts.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

There is the issue of practicality. It takes money to leave the country; at the very minimum, a plane ticket, or at least a bus ticket to the border, depending how far you are.

Anyway, the other issue is that you have to find a place that'll take you. There is no "frontier" any more, and all land areas are claimed by nations. Most of them are not that friendly to immigrants, especially illegal ones. You could walk to Mexico, for instance, but illegal immigration is a very serious crime there and will land you in prison, where you will starve to death if you don't have any family or friends to bring you food, because they do not feed prisoners in Mexico. Of course, any time we imprison illegal Mexican immigrants here, the Mexican government is hypocritically criticizing us.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

You do indeed have a choice of government, which includes a choice over what taxation and what level of taxation. In the US, different state governments have different tax regimes.

The differences in taxation between different states is extremely minor, because you pay the bulk of your taxes to the Federal government, which has the same rules and levels everywhere. You might get a 6% income tax in one state, and no income tax in another, but that's not significant compared to 25-30% tax from the IRS. Plus, states with no income taxes usually have high sales taxes to make up for it, or high property taxes, etc. The cost-of-living differences between states are much more significant than just the tax differences.

And as I said to someone else, yes, you can move to another country, but only if that country will have you. Most countries have pretty strict immigration laws, and aren't very tolerant of illegal immigrants. If you want to move to Canada, for instance (not that you'll save any money in taxes...), you better either have a good professional job lined up for you, or $300,000 ready to deposit in a Canadian bank.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

You're about 20 years behind the times. Diesel is perfectly clean, well relative to gasoline at least. Europe isn't exactly known for a lack of pollution controls.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[White Flame]

If you like an apartment building, but don't like the landlord, you're just as stuck as if you like the geographical area, but not the government of it. Landlords have a monopoly over the building they own.

Governments are geographical divisions. Choosing to live in a certain geography is no different than choosing an apartment, it's just a different distance scale.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

Not exactly. As long as there's vacancy, you can choose to go with any landlord in the country. You can't choose to go live in any country you want to, however. Give away all your money and assets except enough for a plane ticket, and see how many countries are willing to let you immigrate there.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[shilly]

Why would you move to Canada if you wanted to cut your tax bill? You'd move to a low tax regime, of which there are plenty, and they aren't that fussy about taking you if you're rich. There are tens of thousands of such people living in Monaco, for example. The Caribbean is stuffed silly with them.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

I was using that as an example because 1) I'm somewhat familiar with it, 2) it's in North America, and a short plane ride from all your friends in the States, and because I was illustrating my point that most countries (even famously "liberal" Canada) are NOT friendly to illegal immigration, or immigration in general unless you have something to offer the host country like valuable skills.

The Caribbean is stuffed with very poor countries where there's zero jobs unless you're a scuba instructor. That might work well for you if you're retired, but for people who are still working for their money, the Caribbean isn't a viable place to move. The same probably goes for Monaco too, though I supposed you could work in Nice, France and live there. At least in Canada, there's a lot of jobs, whether you're a software engineer or a doctor or whatever.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[shilly]

Eh? Just a reminder that you originally said "You also don't have a choice about which government to pay taxes to." I said you do. Now you say, it can be difficult to get that choice, and it may not be a very meaningful choice because taxation regimes may not differ that much. True, but it's not impossible, which is what you'd originally claimed, and it is some kind of a choice. You have to buy your food from somewhere too, and you may not have very many choices of outlets for that, either, and the variation between those may also be not materially significant.

So I don't see that you've made your case that government taxation is different in kind from other things we must pay for.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

You're talking in absolute terms, I'm not.

For instance, you do have a choice whether to be subject to any government, or none at all. If you select none at all, you just have to kill yourself. Simple, right? Except that's not a real choice for a reasonable person. An absolutist would argue that sure, that's a choice, but everyone else will want that person committed.

It's the same with moving to different countries. Yes, it's possible to "choose" which government to pay taxes to that way, but it is NOT a reasonable choice.

It's like monopolies. Suppose XYZ is the monopoly provider of electric power in your area. Do you have a choice to not buy from them? Realistically, NO. Sure, you could either go without power, or move to another state, but those aren't realistic choices. Only a Randist would argue they are. Everyone else is just going to say that person is overly argumentative and a literalist, and that any reasonable discussion with such a person is impossible.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[bolthole]

Interesting. But it still suffers from a bad public image problem.

I guess when the US pollution controls start working on all the nasty old diesel trucks and gets them off the road, then diesel will be able to be more accepted by the public here.

oh. and when the smog hovering around the los angeles area, and other major cities, stops exactly matching the color of diesel trucks' exhaust.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[Grishnakh]

Some say that diesel got a bad rap because GM tried to offer some diesel cars back in the early 80s, and they were absolutely horrible, and after that no one wanted diesel again.

Of course, the particulate exhaust problem, especially from buses and trucks, probably was a bigger factor in giving it a bad rap.

However, just like modern gas cars don't stink like cars from the 1950s, modern diesel cars (especially the European ones) don't pollute like the old 80s junk.

But the other problems with diesel I mentioned above haven't gone anywhere. Diesels can't compete in raw HP numbers with gas engines of the same size (though no gas engine has the kind of torque curve a diesel does), and for some stupid reason, it is more expensive per gallon, about the price of premium gas. The first problem has gotten a lot better with turbodiesels but is still a technical limitation, and the second problem is a governmental problem most likely.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[shilly]

That was a really unfortunate analogy to make -- you have previously argued that taxes are different from other payments because of lack of choice, and now you cite electricity monopolies in aid of your argument!

As for the rest of what you say: many people can and do shift to low-tax jurisdictions. Fewer than 1% of a population, for sure, but still many tens of thousands of people, and usually rich people so the impact on tax takes is disproportionately high. So it's not something that is so rare that it effectively never happens, not by any means.

Re:US motor industry nearly tanked

[shilly]

Also, slightly weird to see you saying that *I'm* the one talking in absolute terms. Technically, it's you that's doing this -- you are making blanket statements about government monopolies and ignoring edge cases. I'm saying that the edge cases exist.

Re:Irrelevant

[Sloppy]

First, gather your materials. You will need one gallon of emperor penguin blood, and two pounds of dried arctic tundra flowers. And scorpion venom for the base, raw power (almost everything needs scorpion venom these days so I assume you already have a bulk supply.) Reusable materials include a hooded cloak made from a leopard seal pelt and a totem made from a polar bear skull.

Absolute rubbish

[Kupfernigk]

Most insulation either does not tolerate vibration, water, impact, is toxic when on fire, is toxic or semi-toxic to transport and apply by untrained personnel, or the lifetime under combat conditions is so short that disposal becomes an environmental problem

Thinsulate.

Yurts (properly called "ger")

Many boats are nowadays insulated with thinsulate-like materials, which are very effective. And MBTs are insulated - didn't you know? - because the kevlar that protects to some degree against shrapnel and spalling also provides thermal insulation.

Re:Absolute rubbish

[CRCulver]

Yurts (properly called "ger")

"Yurt" is the term in certain Turkic languages, and "ger" in certain Mongolic languages. Neither term is more "proper" than the other.

Re:Absolute rubbish

[geekoid]

Posts like that is one of the reasons I continue to return to /.

Soviet army in WW2

[Kupfernigk]

Learn some history. In WW2, after the initial German successes they came up against the Russian winter, and Russian troops who were superbly equipped with cold weather clothing. The Russians had Diesel tanks whose engines could be safely heated before starting. German tanks used gasoline and tended to catch on fire when warmed up. The Germans never got their cold-weather logistics together, and they were ultimately defeated in the East.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[teh kurisu]

"Our" soldiers are there because the Americans said "Jump" and we said "How high?"

It's nothing to do with our freedoms, and everything to do with keeping the USA happy as a trading partner. As for the soldiers, well nobody was holding a gun to their head down at the recruitment office.

The Afghans won't see a real liberation for a long, long time. What we have in Afghanistan is what we had in Tunisia and Egypt before the Arab Spring - a government that the West can deal with, and nothing more. Don't expect that to change.

Re:It's for hospitals ... move along now, okay ?

[Joce640k]

How does "reliable" increase fuel bills?

And if all the air-con is in hospitals then something is badly wrong. Either that or you're talking out of your ass.

Re:Don't believe it

[geekoid]

? that's the Iraqi government, not the US military.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[geekoid]

A) Complaining about costs is a good way to find ways to make the cheaper; which they have done.

B) Our freedoms are in no way being impacted by the war in Afghanistan.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[geekoid]

"Lost" they won't loose. They may leave.

However, if they all came many slashdoters would loose their freedom to show off their ignorance by bitching about the cost of AC in Afghanistan

Not so much

[Is0m0rph]

I think my electricity bill was just slightly under that last month in Phoenix.

Re:Irrelevant

[geogob]

you are wrong

and bringing potable water to the outposts is just as challenging

And bringing gallons of diesel to fuel the generators to power the AC units is not.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[SleazyRidr]

Our soldiers are over there dick-waving because some guys who live in a desert were able to make us scared of them. I'm yet to be convinced that it's doing anything for our freedoms, other than making more Arabs mad and breeding the next generation of terrorists.

I support this, BUT...

[WindBourne]

we can do better. AC is needed because the troops do better when rested. They are less likely to get killed or kill the wrong ppl due to faster reaction time.

Our problem is that transportation costs money and time. And all of this power is supplied by transported diesel. In parts of Afghanistan, it was calculated that it costs us ~$400/gal for transportation costs. The efficiency of this is HORRIBLE.

DARPA should be doing an X-Prize for BEAMING as well as storage of energy. That would enable us to provide power not just to troops, but also to provide power to ships in the middle of a battle. An X-Prize approach would only pay for results.

Re:I support this, BUT...

[jafac]

DARPA should be doing an X-Prize for convincing politicians that War is STUPID.

Or maybe an X-Prize for convincing bankers to lend us money for wars at zero interest; so we can just do them this little favor FOR FREE.

Instead of having to conquer nations for them, and then having to bail halfway through the enterprise when paying interest to them becomes so cumbersome that our economy collapses.

Re:I support this, BUT...

[WindBourne]

Not all wars are stupid. For example, we are in Afghanistan because AQ was based there and now is in Pakistan. I would argue that W screwed up by NOT going into pakistan. We should have chased them into there and let it be known that AQ will NOT be given safe haven ANYWHERE on this planet. Sadly, what W just told the world is that even if you are a backwards nation, harbor terrorists, and attack western nations, BUT have a nuke, then you can do anything that you want (real bad lesson). Thankfully, Obama/Biden allowed the DOD/CIA into there, but W was a massive screw up.
Iraq? Libya? We have ZERO business in EITHER nation. As it is, Iraq is going to switch to supporting Iran. When Iran decides to try and destabilize Saudi Arabia or openly attack Israel, we will end up being pulled into that BS.

Darpa's job is NOT to teach pols anything. Their job is to focus on the needs of the military. And up until W, it used to spend a lot of effort at keeping us OUT of wars. For example, DARPA spent a lot of money on AE. Far more than is realized. They have no desire to depend on a nation such as Saudi Arabia, nor a desire to have to fight to protect them. The best way is to avoid wars all together. With W, they changed the focus of DARPA as well as who gets the funding (they send a lot to businesses who waste, waste, waste; They also send a lot of Research to Chinese owned businesses which should terrify any normal person). Since I am no longer in the Research world, I am not sure if DARPA has gone back to what they were doing.

Re:Necessary

[Sparrow1492]

Wait a minute. You can't have it both ways. All through the comments people gripe about the $20K hammer and how bad that is. If you want to buy a router that is MILSPEC to some ridiculous temperature extreme standard then you are going to pay a ridiculous price for it. Today's military deploys with commercial off the shelf equipment, and it is not made to stand up to the extremes of heat and dust in the desert. It's a heck of a lot cheaper to climate control that tent than fill it with custom made equipment.

Re:Necessary

[Lumpy]

Problem is OTS gear handles desert temperature extremes. I have seen it, The military has seen it. Dude the most common laptop is the Panasonic Toughbook as a computer for in the field. and these things work just fine at the temperatures the humans operating them are at on the desert. Hell a LOT of the grunts have crap quality laptops that last in their non air-conditioned tents.

Again, its about people reading the manual and what the warranty covers for temperature range and claiming they are an expert on the hardware.

Even crap level OTS stuff works just fine in 110+ degree heat.

Re:Necessary

[AvitarX]

Interestingly, that's what we ended up doing in pakistan.

Re:Necessary

[shikaisi]

Here is my pullout plan:

1. Pack everyone and everything up 2. Leave.

Reminds me of the dictionary of military jargon doing the rounds of Vietnam in about 1970.

- Strategic withdrawal = rout

- Phased withdrawal = rout with a lack of transport

It's not so outlandish

[Benfea]

The Iraq war has really illuminated the incredible level of fraud by contractors. If we can spend millions to Haliburton to deliver "sailboat fuel" around Iraq (really they were driving empty trucks around and charging the taxpayer), then suddenly a $20,000 hammer makes a lot more sense.

An interesting coincidence...

[Guppy]

Yeah, but don't forget a large part of that money is borrowed.

There was a Chinese economist on NPR recently who pointed out an interesting factoid -- our total expenditures in Iraq and Afghanistan are approximately equal to our total government debt to China.

Military not really smart at all

[hesaigo999ca]

Seeing as these are the people that are supposed to be on the brink of developing technology, and that they are supposed to have some of the sharpest minds working for them, they should already have solar panel receptacles to muster all that energy to supply the air conditioning, and if you tell me that the cost is purely in freeon, then there is an even bigger problem, they should be able to create their own freeon, as again all the tools necessary should be at their disposal.

Seeing as this is one of those expendable or usable sources, and tough to track usage, and that you always need to replenish it, the pentagon probably used that so they could pocket some money from this account, into what ever else they needed....as i am sure that 20 billion is absurd for air conditioning, even at full price.
I am all for great expenditures when the return is warrants it...but this is ridiculous, this is tax payer dollars here, not some money farm growing in the middle of south dakota...(i have seen one, where the money grows on trees, twice a year!!!)

Re:Military not really smart at all

[ErikZ]

Did you find out their power needs and then figure out how much it would cost to buy, move, and install those solar panels?

Did you even figure out how much space they would all take up? Or if solar panels in places which have sandstorms

http://acidcow.com/pics/2326-sandstorm-in-iraq-9-pics.html

is a good idea at all?

Maybe they're smarter than you give them credit for.

Re:Military not really smart at all

[hesaigo999ca]

I really think that pentagon is very good at hiding money from the coffers when they want to, more so then figuring out how to harness the power of the sun.....here knock yourself out.... http://www.abovetopsecret.com/forum/thread60582/pg1

Is it a good idea at all to let the military have such high budgets, especially when the people living there do not spend that much on air conditioning themselves....
so are we to say we are the weaker of the 2 nations as our people NEED air conditioning, when they do not....mmmmmmm.....let me think....nope, i think it may just be a smoke screen as my previous post.....so unless you are willing to do all those calculations to prove to me I am wrong that 20 billion in air conditioning is less then the said needs to operate solar panels to generate electricity...I would query some other posts to troll in if I were you.

Also using up all those sand dunes to operate solar panels (which is already being used by the nations in which our armies are posted) would be really less costly land wise....as sand is free over there........heck they could spray paint solar paint on all 4 sides of the pyramids in order to get as much electricity as possible for all I care, it would still be less expensive then 20 billion...and renewable, not used once....dolt.

So much waste in the military.

[Beelzebud]

America needs to get its priorities in order. We can't have public healthcare because it's evil socialism, but it's fine to waste 20 billion dollars to air condition tents.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[Beelzebud]

I'm sorry, but no one today is fighting for your freedom. Afghanistan tribals are not going to take away your freedom any time soon.

Re:Necessary

[Snarky McButtface]

I think it's quite clear that we are in too deep to just pack up and go. Im sure if we pull out the current standing regime will raise hell on the civilians "just because." In addition, it might give those leaders the balls to try something on our home soil again.

If we packed up and left tomorrow, the current regime wouldn't last six weeks.

Re:Necessary

[marcosdumay]

Yep, and you could have done that with just a bunch of missiles while he still was at Afganistan.

"life cycle cost"

[Anonymous Coward]

You don't actually think they spend $20,000.00 on a hammer, $30,000.00 on a toilet seat do you?

Well ... yeah. I've done cost analyses for the Army before and they're actually a lot smarter than the average consumer (believe it or not!) about understanding the true cost of anything they buy. Just because the dealer let you drive off the lot after writing them a $50K check for that new BMW does not mean the car cost you $50K. It's true cost also includes every repair you have to make, every non-repair maintenance you have to perform, the time you have to spend to get the repairs and non-repair maintenance done, the time you have to spend looking for another car when its time to replace the BMW and the time or money you spend getting rid of the car (returning the plates, cancelling the insurance, arranging to get the car hauled off or selling the car) when you do replace it.

Ever looked at buying a 15-20 year old Ferrari or Porsche and thought "Dang! I can afford that!"? The life cycle cost of those cars is why you really can't afford one.

It's worse for the military because they are spread out across the globe. They may not have access to locally-stocked repair parts so they have to figure in costs to pre-buy those repair parts (before they go on clearance pricing), to warehouse those parts, to move parts around when repair needs turn out not to be evenly distributed ... and then they have to pay military pay rates for the labor for all of that. The various bonuses, health care, residential services, etc involved can make average military labor rates noticeably higher than civilian labor rates.

Then if you want actual MIL-SPEC-quality parts, that's another kettle of fish because hardly any civilian wants to pay for reliably quality anymore so you end up buying from only the higher-end manufacturers...

Re:Necessary

[AvitarX]

I'm not sure of your second point.

As the lots of missile assassination was attempted in Iraq, and it did not succeed.

Re:Necessary

[Anonymous Coward]

Iraq did nothing on American soil. The justification for war was Iraq's overwhelming reluctance to cooperate with weapons inspectors and no-fly zones established after the 1991 Gulf War.

You can rightly claim that the 1991 Gulf War was unjustified, but that ship has sailed. Hussein agreed to terms that he repeatedly breached.

I am constantly amazed at how often this little piece of history is misrepresented. This isn't ancient history. Everyone here was alive in both 1991 and 2003. No one likes war, but what else would you propose? Hussein was metaphorically wiping his arse with the 1991 agreement, so much so that even that president between the Bushes called in the occasional air strike. The UN's approach was basically to send angry letters, and that didn't seem to work.

We had the justification to go in. No, I am not celebrating that in a "yee-ha, go America!" way. I'm saying that in a "sigh, once more into the breech" way. And we met all those military objectives quickly.

We hadn't the justification to build a democracy for Iraq. More power to them if they can get one going. But if there is no kernel of democracy glowing there, democracy won't happen, and there is nothing Bush's no-bullshit attitude or Obama's silver tongue can do to change that.

We're done in Iraq. While we're at it, we should be done occupying Okinawa, Germany, Italy, and other similar places. I'd even say it is time to pull out of South Korea, but you can convince me that the DPRK is a clear and present danger to American interests.

Simple Solutioin:

[Tablizer]

Only invade temperate countries.

Tactical and fixed solar *are* being used

[loimprevisto]

The summary was inaccurate and TFA was fairly political. It took a quote about the cost of doing business in remote areas then labelled all of the $20B infrastructure costs as air conditioning. The military is very, very aware of the costs of fuel convoys and bad insulation, and do what they can to fix it. Just like any new system, alternative energy products take a while to acquire, test, and push out to troops in the field. Several posts in this story write about the lack of alternative energy... it definitely is used wherever practical, but the mission and the logistical considerations don't often make it practical. Aside from the generic solar pannels you see powering various sensors and stuff installed on base, http://www.powerfilmsolar.com/military-products/military-products.php has several products they've been making for the military. I know the 60W folding solar pannels have been used by patrols in Afghanistan and were well-received; I haven't seen the shelters in use, but I can definitely think of a few places they would be handy.

native solutions to temperature control?

[kj_kabaje]

While high tech solutions and energy intensive solutions are often the way the US achieves things and demonstrates military might... perhaps going native might have something lend.  People seemed to have lived (peacfully sometimes) and fought in this region for thousands of years without air conditioning.

Up the thermostat from 72 to 74

[Ralph Spoilsport]

and send the $176,427,000 in savings to ME, Ralph Spoilsport, in unmarked bills in a paper bag by a brown-shoed square in the dead of night. Cuz that's my idea and I copyright it right now, so they better pay me or I'll sue.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[Ralph Spoilsport]

fighting for our freedom? Watch this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3cBiOTvxXcY

Re:Necessary

[KDR_11k]

It's not the current regime that's the problem. The taliban aren't extinct, they're just waiting for an opportunity to seize the country again and the democratic government is not strong enough to prevent that yet.

Outrageous hipocrisy.

[SharpFang]

So much talk about global warming doing so much harm, and when someone finally starts spending some serious money on actually getting some of the air cooler, suddenly protests everywhere!

Re:Necessary

[Overzeetop]

Exactly - it's the outside guys we evicted ten years ago that we don't want to come back.

Costs less than Soc. Security, so it's all right?

[mykos]

From Lawrence Kaplan:

"And anyway, it's not the war that's broken Washington's piggy bank," he adds, noting that Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security account for far more spending than the $107 billion the Pentagon says it will spend in Afghanistan next year.

It's like saying "all these fancy dinners we going to aren't breaking the piggy bank. Our mortgage payment is twice as much as we spent going to four-star restaurants last month!"

So?

[reboot246]

It's all borrowed money anyway, money that will never be paid back.

Armor

[haggus71]

They could afford that much for A/C, but Bush couldn't afford for TWO YEARS to give them proper body armor or armor for their HUMMVE's. Nice.

Kudos

[ErikZ]

This is for all your soldiers in the Middle East:

Stay Frosty

I'm out, see ya.

[greyhueofdoubt]

Slashdot has been getting worse and worse. And this thread just cements it for me. I've deployed to the sandbox three times. EVERY COMMENT (save two or three) in this discussion is arrogant, dismissive, and completely wrong.

It's amazing how you can all be so comfortable expounding on topics you have no experience with.

Check my post history if you think I'm trolling. It's been a good run, but this was the last straw.

-b

Re:I'm out, see ya.

[cffrost]

I'm out, see ya.

Don't let the door hit your ass on the way out. =)

2-party system

[Narnie]

We can't have that! This is a 2-party system, Progress and Republican (or Freedom and Democrat if you sit on the other side of the fence).

On: bunches of pussies...

[Auldclootie]

Nobody needs air conditioning - or fast food. Air conditioned tents for combat personnel? No way! These are only for visiting VIPs, the sick... and for pussies. Sorry, its true. Only US citizens afflicted with consumption mania are likely to fall for this one. Other nationalities will chuckle, shake their heads and move on... A US (or any other nationality) trained soldier is (if successfully conditioned) a highly trained sociopath with a callous disregard for human life and a predilection for stress disorders, rape and suicide... Keeping them cool alone costs 20bn and, as the submitter has pointed out, there are a multitude of better uses for the money. ....Still - its all worthwhile if oil is a few cents cheaper is it not? hint: set your sarcasm detectors to high (despair at the human condition registers somewhat lower)

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[Waccoon]

were able to make us scared of them

I thought it was merely revenge.

I was listening for people speak paranoia about being attacked by terrorists, but they were drowned out by the people calling for bin Laden's head on a pike (and, hey, throw in Hussain's mug for good measure).

Re:Irrelevant

[Mindcontrolled]

Great, now he has the ingredients. You conveniently forgot the part of hunting down a copy of the Necronomicon - the Alhazred original, not the cheap Dee knockoff - and drawing the summoning circle from p. 366 with the penguin blood, positioning himself inside the circle and repeatedly chanting "IA! IA! AZATHOTH! IA! AZATHOTH MANA-YOD-SUSHAI NEBLODZIM!". When the portal opens, gulp down the mixed ingredients and immortality shall be granted - a timeless, mindless eternal life in the Court of the Demon Sultan himself. Easy, really. MUHAHAH!

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[SleazyRidr]

You don't need revenge unless you're scared of someone. If you're not scared you can take some time to find a reasonable solution, but when you're scared you just lash out to get back at them.

HARDEN THE ---- UP

[wintermute000]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=unkIVvjZc9Y

says it all really.

The US military seems to be the only military in the world that spends money providing 'hometown' fast food outlets to overseas troops amongst other things. Seems like the ideology seems to bend reality to suit US mindset vs adapting to the reality of local conditions. I recall reading similar things about construction costs in Vietnam war.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[Waccoon]

I wasn't aware that fear is the only emotion that fuels revenge.

Re:And you are complaining, why?

[SleazyRidr]

Perhaps not the only emotion, but it's definitely the major contributor. You only really get angry when you're scared.