Faster, cheaper, greener — How the Air Force wants to cut fossil fuels out of its jets

[rangerrebew]

  Faster, cheaper, greener — How the Air Force wants to cut fossil fuels out of its jets

“What if you could access fuel from anywhere on the planet, at any time, no tanker required?”

By David Roza | Published Jan 27, 2022 8:32 AM

 
Welcome to What’s Next In War, a special issue where Task & Purpose breaks down what’s on the horizon for the U.S. military.

If you’ve ever grimaced watching the gas meter run up while filling your 12-gallon car, keep in mind that the Air Force runs through approximately two billion gallons of gas every year, at the cost of about $7 billion.

It costs more than just dollars to keep the Air Force’s 5,625 aircraft aloft. For every fighter jet flying over the Middle East or the western Pacific, there’s a long, vulnerable supply chain that often stretches all the way back into foreign oil wells, a dependency that the Pentagon is eager to shake.

“Transporting fuel — whether by air, land or sea — is a necessary risk. But the more we use, the more of a risk it becomes,” wrote Roberto Guerrero, the deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for operational energy in a 2019 op-ed. “If we face external constraints like oil shortages, adversary attacks or interrupted access, our vulnerabilities become even greater.”

https://taskandpurpose.com/military-tech/air-force-jet-fuel-thin-air/

[Smokin Joe]

German inventors Franz Fischer and Hans Tropsch developed the Fischer-Tropsch process for doing so in the 1920s, and the Air Force successfuly tried using it to supplement fuel for heavy bombers and transport jets in the early 2000s. However the service discontinued the project in 2013, partly because the fuels were not yet cost-competitive, according to Inside Defense.

Keep in mind the Nazis used this same process to try to generate enough fuel for the Luftwaffe and other needs. This, ultimately, was a failure. Not that the fuels didn't work, they did, but even using coal as the carbon and heat source, producing sufficient volumes of fuel proved problematic. For this reason, the refinery cluster at Ploesti was the second most heavily defended site in Hitler's domain, with more antiaircraft guns (88s) than any place except Berlin. Bombing raids damaged those facilities, and the goal of the southern push into Russia was the oilfields of Baku, which eventually led to Stalingrad, and the defeat of the Wehrmacht.

We have the resources, and while supply chains are always vulnerable, having the government stop interfering with the development of our own current resources just might be an economical plus. I'm all for developing scalable (and mobile) alternative sources, but let's not ignore the obvious: No matter where the fuel is from, it still has to get to where it is needed. Moving the sources of fuel closer to the conflict will expose the means of production to destruction, not just another tanker load, and if those sources are developed at the expense of more conventional sources, that reserve will not be available if and when it is needed.

(Plus, the idea of mini-nuke plants to power these operations would only provide all the material needed for a 'dirty bomb' in the event the mini-nuke is destroyed, material that might be recovered by our enemies and used against us in some more crude, but effective, fashion.)

[mountaineer]

There's a large supply of unicorn farts on hand. We'll be fine.