Geiss on Air Force Energy Progress - Sep 2013 Update

Hat tip to OSD's Ollie Fritz again (and again).

Straight up, here are highlights from an interview with Dr Kevin Geiss, DASAF for Energy, from a recent article: "A more fuel-efficient Air Force"

Eighty-four percent of the Air Force’s annual $9 billion energy budget pays for jet fuel, and of that 60 percent is for 900 mobility flights per day moving cargo and people.

Even though the service has no control over fuel costs or the missions it is called to serve, it aims to “get better [energy efficiency] at every flight,” says Kevin Geiss, deputy assistant secretary of the Air Force for energy.

Dr. Geiss outlined some of the service’s energy-saving efforts in a recent interview:

Playing with Power in MOD Hybrid Tactical Vehicles

The DOD Energy Blog has covered on board energy systems work by the US Army's RDECOM TARDEC unit before. Now it appears a sibling org in the UK Ministry of Defense (MOD) is pushing British ground vehicles' energy systems in a similar manner. Both the DOD and the MOD are trying to support an ever increasing bank of electronic gear using higher voltage systems, regenerative breaking and other hybrid approaches to achieve better fuel economy.

Here's the deal:

Armoured Fighting Vehicles (AFVs) and Protected Patrol Vehicles (PPVs) are already power-hungry machines with advanced computer systems and communication equipment, but future battlefield vehicles will be equipped with even more electronics, such as situational-awareness technology, sensors and vehicle cooling systems. All of this will place an increasing burden on existing 28V generating systems.

If you'll allow a comparison, it seems like this development is following the form of highway expansion projects. That is, when you build more lanes to reduce traffic congestion, you often get more cars to fill in the extra lanes and end up back at square one. We may soon have vehicles that can squeeze more work out of a gallon of fuel, and it may be that the savings will not be captured as reduced fuel demand, but rather as support for more powerful and more numerous computers, communications devices and sensors. 

Food for thought: the energy efficiency KPP could be used in more ways than one in systems acquisition.

Big 3 Redux

Thanks to feedback I got from a smart DOD Energy Blog reader over the weekend, I'd like to revise the Army vs. Big 3 comparison made in the previous post. My claim was that the Army was out ahead of GM in renewables and fuel efficiency R&D, and that this demonstrated commendable thinking on the Army's part. And that this was a sure sign of GM's (and Ford & Chrysler's) continuing neglect of an important new market segment.

Well, it's worth noting that the Army is compelled to action, at least in part, by DOD's recent embrace (in NDAA 2009 and earlier) of the the fully burdened cost of fuel (FBCF) concept as a key performance parameter (KPP). After years of system design and budgeting in a vacuum free of the constraints of fuel costs, conducting concurrent large-scale operations in Iraq and Afghanistan during a time of high and volatile oil prices has awoken the Pentagon to this problem ... in a big way.

US automakers have had no similar moment of truth this decade, as they've attempted to meet customer demand for higher quality, but not necessarily higher mileage, vehicles. I happily paid $1.87 per gallon to fill up my Ford yesterday and expect, barring a significant act of war or espionage, to pay low prices for some time. But what do I know? And aside from the Peak Oil theory to which many folks including me subscribe, what does anyone know about the price of oil in the next few years?

The Big 3 have prospered (generally) from selling cars that people in the US and Europe have wanted to buy. The current economic crisis is hammering them as it is all auto manufacturers. But my guess is that what's got the US companies in their particularly precarious present position has less to do with the fact they've yet to produce a Prius, and more to do with structural challenges and not really tackling their quality issues until relatively recently.

Photo of Ford's "Glass House" HQ courtesy of Wikimedia Commons

Thinking about US Car Makers Tonight ...

... and how their fate might impact DOD in the energy/transportation sector. Word from Capitol Hill at the end of the day is that the CEOs were sent packing without the bailout deals they sought. I like that congress pushed back and basically said, "hey, you don't even have a plan for what you'd do with the money." So GM et al get to go back to Detroit and think up something smart mighty fast ... and not the usual SUV stuff or no one's going to buy it. For an outstanding analysis of the situation, with some keen comparisons to other times and industries, see this article from the Cleantech Blog's John Addison.

I know that the Army does a lot of great work in Warren, MI, just north of Detroit, in an org called the Tank Automotive Research and Development Engineering Center (TARDEC). One of their latest projects is called a Fuel Efficient Ground Vehicle Demonstrator (FED) using an approach inspired in part by the "Monster Garage"show. But the Army isn't innovating to win a reality show or even new customers. And it's not trying to maximize profits. Rather, its motives are mission based, as you can't be an effective rapid-tempo fighting force if a lack of fuel is always slowing you down ... or worse.

My guess is there's a lot of cross pollination and partnering in the vehicles ecosystem in Michigan. Seems like a reversal of stereotypes is occurring: the commercial companies in question have a lot to learn about business from the government ... in this case, an innovating, imaginative US Army.

Innovator's Hell: Frontline's "Heat" Burns Fossil Energy Co's

Harvard Business School prof Clayton Christensen's seminal 1997 book: The Innovator's Dilemma demonstrated how large successful companies, ever mindful of being responsive to their best customers' needs, can sometimes be taken down by disruptive technologies that re-order the dynamics of the certain market segments. And shows that this happens right in front of the large co's eyes because they simply cannot make themselves retire business models that have worked so well for so many years.  

Enter PBS's Frontline special aired last night: "Heat," and its visually stunning treatment of environmental carnage wreaked by the world's largest coal, oil and automotive companies, including AEP, ExxonMobile and GM, with obedient US politicians in their pockets. One thing is clear: there's no innovation happening in these companies that doesn't involve improving yields from their core lines of business. When asked about renewable energy tech or other innovations to help reduce CO2 emissions or improve energy efficiency, robotic VPs of PR utter canned greenwashed statements that communicate only disdain for having to respond to these questions at all.

It's safe to say that the game-changing tech breakthroughs that are going to markedly improve the energy posture of the DOD are not going to come from these lumbering dinosaurs, but rather from innovators and nimble new co's working towards entirely different goals with entirely different assumptions. Because of its size and culture of innovation, DOD has a big say in whether this happens sooner or later ... or too late.

Photo courtesy of the Library of Congress

Fuel Price Yo-Yo & DOD Implications

I'm not the first to put it like this. There's an oil price yo-yo going on right now: price goes up, use goes down. Use goes down, price goes down. Price goes down, use goes up, etc. It could be like this for quite a while. However, some people are aiming to give this yo-yo a jerk.

Former SAP VP Shai Agassi has a plan to get the world's cars off oil. I wrote about him here in January when gas was hitting $3 a gallon, and Wired just did a cover story on him here with gas in the US pulling back below $4.

Well, there are a heck of a lot of folks working on this problem and he's just one guy, relatively young, and with very little energy or transportation experience. So he's probably not going to do much, right? But what if he's even partially successful?

Fewer combustion engine cars will mean lower oil demand. Look what's happened to US demand and gas prices in the last few weeks. If entire countries get off oil, demand will plummet and prices will drop. Perhaps this means the Air Force and the air industry will get a a longer runway to develop alternative fuels and approaches as jet fuel remains more affordable, longer?

As a friend if mine said, though, the yo-yo effect doesn't go on forever. At some point further along the Peak Oil curve, use goes down and prices still go up. Well before then it will be good if the Air Force has transitioned fully to the synthetic fuels its aggressively pursing today. F-15s just hit mach 2 on synth fuels !!!

DOD Energy Tech Update: Boeing's Blended Wing Body (BWB) Design

One of the 3 new technologies touted by the 2008 Defense Science Board (DSB) report as key to reducing the Air Force's (and therefore DOD's) dependence on oil is a new approach to aircraft design. Like their commercial jet siblings, military transport planes and bombers have employed the tried and true "tubes with wings" design for more than half a century. But although much R&D remains for Boeing and NASA among others, the advent of the B-2 flying wing bomber signals change is coming.

What's fueling the desire for change? Well, the high cost of jet fuel of course. The Air Force spent tens of billions of dollars on fuel last year, and every time a barrel of oil goes up $10, AF fuel costs rise over $600 million. In addition to pushing for more UAVs and new synthetic fuels, lately, more than ever, they've considered how to do the job without flying as many hours.

Most studies show 20 - 30% fuel savings are possible, and that equates to a huge amount of money DOD could put towards other critical requirements. The DSB report says BWB:

... offers the possibility of 2x gains in range and payload, and of 5-10x in system level fuel efficiency. If the technology can be successfully applied to both tankers and bombers, the potential exists for far fewer sorties needed to accomplish a given mission. The enhanced range of both bombers and tankers would offer the possibility of far fewer aircraft devoted to a single mission, freeing aircraft to conduct other missions or to focus more firepower on a given target.

So clearly, it's about fuel and money savings, but the range improvements have substantial mission implications as well. For a sampling of material on this topic, here are a few additional links:

• Boeing Press Release X-48 BWB First Flight

• NASA BWB Factsheet 1997

And although you may receive notice via the web that we are very close to seeing these craft come to fruition, this link from a fact-checking site confirms that there is a large amount of work left to be done before these planes are ready for prime time. Consensus seems to be 2015 or 2020, so although I wish it were otherwise, that likely means 2025.

X-48 Photo courtesy of Boeing, Inc.