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

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the something-to-think-about dept.

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."

27 of 409 comments (clear)

  1. Interesting. by MrQuacker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    1. Re:Interesting. by necro81 · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    2. Re:Interesting. by drooling-dog · · Score: 4, Funny

      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...

  2. Independence Day had it right... by drachenfyre · · Score: 3, Insightful

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

    1. Re:Independence Day had it right... by Bengie · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Independence Day had it right... by Joce640k · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

      --
      No sig today...
    3. Re:Independence Day had it right... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

  3. Détente? by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

    I heard that the Cold War was over!

  4. Re:Necessary by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

  5. Re:Irrelevant by Lumpy · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  6. Re:Cooling canvas tents? by MrQuacker · · Score: 3, Informative

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

  7. Solar Power? by KnownIssues · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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?

    1. Re:Solar Power? by TWX · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --
      Do not look into laser with remaining eye.
    2. Re:Solar Power? by Dails · · Score: 4, Interesting

      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.

  8. Re:Cooling canvas tents? by Lumpy · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

    --
    Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
  9. Does anybody really believe this? by nharmon · · Score: 5, Informative

    ...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.

    1. Re:Does anybody really believe this? by ledow · · Score: 4, Insightful

      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.

    2. Re:Does anybody really believe this? by jeffmeden · · Score: 5, Informative

      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.

    3. Re:Does anybody really believe this? by jafac · · Score: 3, Insightful

      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.

      --

      These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
  10. Interesting by TheDarkMaster · · Score: 5, Insightful

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

    --
    Religion: The greatest weapon of mass destruction of all time
  11. Re:It's mostly officers... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

  12. Solar panels, really? by HBI · · Score: 4, Informative

    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.

    --
    HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
    1. Re:Solar panels, really? by the_raptor · · Score: 4, Interesting

      "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.

      --

      ========
      CINC, 4th Penguin Legion
    2. Re:Solar panels, really? by radtea · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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?

      --
      Blasphemy is a human right. Blasphemophobia kills.
  13. Re:Irrelevant by Thud457 · · Score: 5, Funny

    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?

    --

    the preceding comment is my own and in no way reflects the opinion of the Joint Chiefs of Staff

  14. Re:Cooling canvas tents? by Toze · · Score: 4, Insightful

    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.

    --
    No OS on the planet can protect itself from a user with the admin password. - Yvan256
  15. Re:And you are complaining, why? by SleazyRidr · · Score: 5, Insightful

    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.

    --
    Is 1563649 a prime number?