Brain-Aide

The Pentagon has been conducting tests and competitions to end their dependency on fossil fuels. The push comes partially from recognition that the US armed forces are dependent on fuels from politically unstable areas with wildly fluctuating costs. In the last few years the US Air Force has been testing synthetic fuels in a variety of its air-craft; from the top of the line F-22 Raptor to the Cold War era B-52s. But the shift to “green” goes much deeper than fuels.

According to Wired Magazine, current and near-future conflicts will be conducted in relation to strong civic/political stabilization components. The Pentagon has therefore started demonstrating unique, innovative and easily deployable technologies ranging from solar panels to tents to be applied through the stabilization area. As noted by Wired, the effort has brought about a curious (though likely, very limited) linguistic shift towards phrases like “sustainable solutions” rather than the normal military speak.

It should be interesting to see just how many of the technology demonstrators actually make it into the field and to what extent the US Armed Forces will be involved in sustained long term stabilization operations. However, even if the military falters, the spillover effect could still be a slew of cheap, “green” technologies that have easy commercial and civilian application.

This entry was posted on Monday, October 20th, 2008 at 11:26 am and is filed under Uncategorized. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.