Air Force's Latest Thinking on Energy

Recent DOD Energy Blog posts have shown that the Army is working to bring energy considerations to the forefront of its thinking in operations and installations. The Navy and Marines too, are trying to find ways to run much tighter ships where fuel demand is concerned. But as the tighter ship metaphor probably doesn't work for AF types, here's a new term that's just landed from AFRL: "energy optimized aircraft" (thanks to Steve Iden via Ollie). The goals of the EOA program are to bring more efficient systems to planes and in-so-doing, reduce both fuel requirements and heat signatures in future systems. Nice!

Meanwhile, the Air Force seems to be making progress in the present as well, with some good sounds coming from new Undersecretary Conaton, and leaders past and present, at USTRANSCOM. All of these statements come from "Air Force: to save Fuel, we must change how we Fly" in the July edition of National Defense.

First, Erin C. Conaton, Undersecretary of the Air Force:

We realize it’s ambitious, but it’s incredibly important to set specific goals for reducing demand.

Air Force General Duncan J. McNabb, CC USTRANSCOM points to comparative cost as a major driver for the process-change actions described in the article:

It costs 10 times as much to move stuff by air as it does by surface. Transportation Command has spent nearly $80 million on computerized systems that help plan transportation routes more efficiently. What you have to do is marry the technology with the concept of operations.

And here's an eye opener for you, from McNabb's predecessor, retired Air Force General John Handy:

Moving cargo by sea takes longer but is far less expensive. A single “roll-on roll-off” military cargo ship can carry 300 C-17 aircraft’s sorties worth of equipment.

Numerically speaking, Duncan's 10 to 1 is a major attention getter. But Handy's 300 to 1 is a mind blower. Often, the equations and metrics used to illustrate DOD's energy demand challenges are complex and hard to translate for regular folks. In these statements at least, Conaton, McNabb and Handy make it clear to everyone why the Air Force has fuel on its mind.

Hat tip to USAFA classmate, now USAF BG Ian Dickinson for forwarding this article.

Photo Credit: David Brewster@ Flickr.com

Another Energy Implications Update from the Air Force UAV Files

I don't have numbers that describe drone fuel demand, but we can assume that being smaller, lighter and slower, they get many more MPG than F-15s, F-16s and A/F-18s. However, you also want to factor in the fact that a UAV typical sortie can be five times as long as a fighter sortie, so that may serve to balance things out a bit.

You'll have to sort through some of the variables in your head to imagine future fuel demand implications ... things like:

• how many concurrent, continuous global UAV sorties (40 is the number today)
• how big and heavy are some UAVs going to become
• at what speeds and altitudes will they fly
• will the DOD UAV inventory be counted in the thousands, tens of thousands, hundreds of thousands ... or even higher
• will jet fuel remain the primary fuel source
• will new airframe efficiencies (like those described briefly in the previous post) bring a significant reduction in fuel demand per vehicle

This recent article in the Washington Post paints the UAV's future with a bit more resolution, even as it joins the chorus questioning the viability of the Air Force as an independent service. In this excerpt, the author is referencing some of the different UAV use cases and deployment configurations developed by Colonel Eric Mathewson, principal author of last years's "USAF Unmanned Aircraft Systems Flight Plan, 2009-2047":

The plan that Mathewson produced for the Air Force envisions unmanned planes not only providing surveillance and striking targets, but also hauling cargo around the world. Instead of flying just one plane, a single pilot would probably control as many as four or five planes simultaneously. "If I am doing a surveillance mission where the plane is literally just staring at the ground or at a road for eight or ten hours, I don't need a pilot actively controlling the plane," he said. "So maybe I have a squadron of 40 aircraft but I only have four or five people monitoring them." The Air Force and Mathewson have already demonstrated in training that one pilot can fly as many as four Predators.

There are a lot of organizational culture issues in the Post article, and how they play out may be as important in predicting the future as are the technology factors. With so many variables, it's still too early for me to imagine the energy demand consequences. But it's necessary (and a little fun) to think about it now.

Photo Credit: Zach Tumin on Flickr

Airframe Fuel Efficiency: NASA Attempts to Crack one of the Toughest Nuts to Crack

Hat tip to Ollie - he's been cranking 'em out lately, including an excellent pointer to this article about logistics travails in Afghanistan making Iraq look like a day at the beach. In the meantime, whether they be flown by man, woman, or machine, big things that fly drink a heck of a lot of fuel. GE's been reporting progress on engine efficiency; now here's NASA pushing on the airframe itself:

NASA says the ability to cut drag by controlling the amount of laminar flow— or smoother, boundary-layer air over a wing surface—offers potential improvements in fuel efficiency, range and payload that “far exceed” any known single aeronautical technology. Possible fuel savings of up to 30% for subsonic commercial aircraft have been suggested, should a successful passive natural laminar flow (NLF) or active hybrid laminar flow system be developed.

There's more here in this Aviation Week article. The DOD fuel burden impact of even single percentage point improvements would be massive. Efficiency investments here could yield huge returns: less fuel per mission, or longer but fewer missions. Or more 24/7 eyes and ears in the skies to help our guys on the ground.

Image Credit: Standford University

Future Aircraft Technology: Reviewed, Considered, Critiqued

Thanks to Ollie for pointing this one out. Personally, I'm less concerned about the aviation industry's ability to comply with emissions targets, and more interested in how evolving policy and technology will impact how the Air Force does its job. We've talked about blended wing body and other future concepts here before. This recent article in MIT's Technology Review reminds us of the incremental nature (and limitations) of many of the technologies now on the table.

With these limitations in mind, by 2020, new technologies could make aircraft about 20 percent to 35 percent more efficient, on average, than planes today. Fuselage coatings and adjustable wings, among other things, could reduce drag. Engines that run hotter and at higher pressures would use less fuel, as would engines that use gears to optimize the speeds of different parts of a turbine, and open-rotor designs that resemble and have some of the efficiency advantages of turboprops.

And they're not even beginning to address potentially massive new fuel burdens from ubiquitous and perpetual UAV deployments. We better hope there's a breakthrough in either Star Trek transporter technology or Harry Potter flue powder, because evolving-but-traditional jet planes simply aren't keeping up with the future.

Image: Gizmodo

Future Planes on Approach for DOD Service

OK, they won't be arriving tomorrow, but somewhere between the X-Prize for automobiles and the X-Prize for private low-earth orbit private spacecraft, lies NASA and the CAFE Foundation challenge for "Comparative Aircraft Flight Efficiency."

Combine the quest for more efficient airframes and engines with new fuels and fuel types, with the explosion of UAVs across the mission spectrum and who knows what the hell airplanes, let alone ours and other air forces, are going to look like in a couple of decades.

One thing's for sure: it won't be a simple extrapolation beyond where we are today from where we've been. Using a 75kW electric motor using brushless technology, the all-electric lithium polymer powered plane pictured here just reached 250 KPH. Do you suppose future tankers, fueled with JP-8 or electricity, will dangle extension cords to re-charge power hungry manned and unmanned aircraft?

Photo: DigiSky

Orbits in Vogue in Air Forces Old and New - Implications for Energy and Force Planners?

Choose whatever metaphor you like: sprinters vs. long distance runners; the tortoise and the hare. We are in a liminal zone where supersonic manned aircraft, while not likely to go extinct anytime soon, certainly seem poised to cede control over a great deal of airspace to their more plodding, but persistent unmanned rivals. Here's how the well informed War Is Boring bloggers see it:

As fighters fade, armed surveillance orbits take their place. These orbits can be scaled, according to the threat. You want airborne sensors, capable of loitering for hours, and in many cases able to attack, on short notice.

This article is particularly thought provoking as it describes building two new Air Forces from scratch in Iraq and Lebanon in the era of emerging drone dominance. However, whenever I post on UAVs (which is often, most recently here), I'm not pretending to bring any answers to the table. And what's right for these clean slate forces almost certainly is not right for us. But imagine:

• You're a strategic planner in the Pentagon and you've been tasked with constructing combat scenarios 5, 10, 20 years out
• And imagine you're supposed to be thinking about requirements for airborne tankers, as some most definitely are these days
• Well, how do you modify the proven formulas for calculating how many tankers are required and how much fuel is going to be needed in a combat zone for a given scenario when, by the time we get there, the numbers of very thirsty manned fighters, fighter bombers and surveillance and reconnaissance planes is falling linearly? and ...
• Their smaller, lightweight, fuel stingy replacements are coming on in exponential waves and are staying in the air for days?
• And when I say smaller, consider the MAVs - micro air vehicles the size of small birds - described in a recent AFRL report on UAVs covered in the Air Force Times
• Not to mention the question of where the fuel is going to come from ... and from what (if other than extracts of prehistoric vegetation) it will be made?
• Will there even be a need for tankers for UAVs and MAVs? Will the tankers also be autonomous?

As before, all I can say is "to be continued ..."

Photo of Orbiter micro UAV: Defense Update

DOD & Aviation Biofuels Mid 2009 Update

Dr. Karbuz (as usual) offers an excellent status update on biofuels research from aviation and DOD perspectives. You'll get educated, but once he's taken you through all the milestones and anecdotes of recent progress, it's his first and last words words that drive home the enormity of this challenge:

First ...

Commercial Jet fuel has stringent requirements. Alternatives are expected to perform exactly like kerosene so that aircraft do not have to be modified. They are expected to be environmentally sustainable and cost effective. 

Last ...

All these are good news, at least the cost side. But the scale of required production still remains a problem. By the way, who will invest in biofuels production without having any purchase guarantee or government subsidies?

Here's the full post. And here's a release from SAIC on its algae work for DARPA.

Photo: Reuters

Troubling Tanker Talk

I learned one thing doing source selections at Hanscom AFB in the 1980's in an environment where every award was protested: don't change the rules mid-course. A recent article from  Aerospace Daily & Defense Report comments on the position of Pentagon acquisition chief John Young on the ongoing tanker replacement saga:

Lifecycle cost would be too thorny because of fluctuations in areas outside the Pentagon's control. For example, the price of oil recently dropped, dramatically reducing the lifecycle cost of both aircraft. However, fuel efficiency of the two bids were different, and given the challenge of projecting such costs in the future, Young says the simplest way of conducting a price competition is to focus solely on the up-front price associated with developing and buying the first aircraft.

I wanted to make the case that this procurement, more than any other, should take into account the DOD's own new policy on including the fully burdened cost of fuel (FBCF) in its lifecycle and logistic projections for new systems. But adding that on here mid-course would just be adding to the folly. USAF either needs to award this contract based on the criteria it published when it released the RFP, or it needs to kill this acquisition and start fresh. I'd go with the latter of course.

And this time put fuel efficiency at the top of the requirements list. It's disturbing that leadership is so easily swayed by day-to-day fluctuations in the price of energy, when the overall price trends are clearly pointing up, and at risk of spiking on a moment's notice. Haven't we learned anything from the recent several years of energy-induced budget shock? It's not just the high price, it's the volatility that's beating up DOD budgeting and procurement. See posts here, here, here and here.

KC-135 Photo (from inside F-15) courtsy of USAF & James Gordon

Boeing Going to Biofuels Within 3 Years

It's hard to separate truth from fiction on this one, but apparently: 

Biofuel-powered aircraft could be carrying millions of passengers around the world within three years, according to Boeing. Darrin Morgan, an environmental expert at the US jet manufacturer, said the group was expecting official approval of biofuel use in the near future. "The certification will happen much sooner than anybody thought," he said. "We are thinking that within three to five years we are going to see approval for commercial use of biofuels - and possibly sooner."

Seems similar to the the Air Force's recent certification activities across the entire USAF inventory approving its planes to fly on blended JP8 and synth fuels derived from coal and other sources. As the article points out, the trick for Boeing, Lockheed, EADS and the rest of the aircraft manufacturing and operating ecosystem is not about finding fuels that work with existing engines - they do. It's about making the new fuels, economically and in volomes that might begin to make a difference. So far, they don't.

Photo courtesy of Boeing

FedEx Schooling for DOD

Great article here on the Cleantech Blog.

OK, there are no missiles, tanks or fighters in FedEx. But allowing for some core differences in mission, there are a heck of a lot of similarities, logistically speaking, between delivery giant FedEx and the DOD.

Both use jet fuel and gasoline at prodigious rates as part and parcel (pun alert) of getting the job done. Both are experimenting with efficiency technologies across the enterprise, including hybrid ground vehicles and process improvements like shutting down jet engines whenever possible (and only on the ground) to conserve fuel. On the facilities side you'll find a few solar and geothermal sites. Sound familiar?

I think there's a lot to be learned here, and hopefully, AF and other leaders are taking good notes.

New Air Force Tanker Tanked

Not long ago an Air Force general stood before me on a conference stage and said something that blew my mind: "the mother of the last KC-135 pilot hasn't been born yet."  And that was before the award to Northrop/BAE, the protest of Boeing, the alleged recompete run by DOD, and today's termination of the procurement on the grounds that there isn't enough time left to get it done before the administration turns over.  Maybe today the same statement holds true except substitute "grandmother" for "mother".  

What a total clusterfxck, for the pilots, for maintenance crews, and for the AF logistics and fuel budgets. Only positive thing I can think of is that maybe the so-called Dreamliner 787, with improved, energy-saving aerodynamics and engines,  can now become the base plane from which the future tanker is derived.  3-times delayed, it has some con's to go with its pro's, as described here.

In the meantime (and it may be a long meantime), there are a few lean fueling efficiency things the Air Force can do to improve fuel utilization on its current yet paleolithic fleet of 500 or so tankers.

US Air Force photo courtesy of MSgt Marvin Krause

Army Testing Tilt-Rotor Tech

The oft-cited Defense Science Board (DSB) report (see sidebar) says one of its top 3 game changing energy technologies is the replacement of massively energy inefficient helicopters with tilt-rotor craft like the V-22 Osprey. (Note: an earlier post covers one of the other two, the Blended Wing Body aircraft design.)

The DefenseTech blog recently commented on the Army's decision to begin training with the V-22. While the author cites the undeniable tactical advantages: twice the speed and range of helicopters, the DSB and me are also excited about the huge fuel savings the V-22 brings. This is great stuff ... check it out here.

DOD Photo courtesy of Jim Gordon @ Flickr