Military wants a more fuel-efficient Humvee

WASHINGTON -- The Defense Department wants a new Humvee. One of its complaints: The Humvee eats too much fuel.

The vehicle, an icon of the military for about two decades since it replaced the World War II-era Jeep, gets as few as 4 miles per gallon in city driving and 8 miles per gallon on the highway.

The Pentagon wants a Humvee replacement that weighs 30 to 40 percent less and uses proportionately less fuel. Some armored Humvees weigh 5 tons.

``It's what we must do," John Young, director of the department's defense research and engineering, said last week outside a congressional hearing.

``We're looking at a design with lighter materials -- titanium and carbon deposits -- while still having armor protection," he said.

A retooled Humvee -- the early design gives it a more aerodynamic look -- is part of the Defense Department's push to save energy costs through alternative fuels, conservation, and more efficient vehicles, aircraft, ships, and submarines.

The Defense Department is the world's largest energy consumer.

The department spends $10.6 billion annually on fuel, or 97 percent of the federal government's use, and almost 2 percent of the entire country's use.

Some in Congress say the department's reliance on foreign oil poses a major security risk.

Representative Steve Israel, a New York Democrat and a member of the Armed Services Committee, said he had asked the department recently to document its strategy for using less oil. He received a flow chart that showed $500 million in annual expenditures overseen by more than a dozen agencies.

``If we tried to do that to land a man on the moon, we'd be lucky to get a bus to Des Moines," Israel said of the Defense Department's lack of a concentrated effort to reduce fuel use.

But Representative Roscoe G. Bartlett, a Maryland Republican, said that while the military could be more aggressive, ``they are doing more than anyone else -- in the government or around the country. . . . I don't think the country as a whole has any perception of the danger" of US reliance on foreign oil.

Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld, in a three-paragraph memo dated Dec. 14, 2005, to his deputy, Gordon England, said the department ``should be doing all it can" to save energy. He questioned whether the department was doing enough, asking: ``Who in the department is in charge?"

In response, England took charge. Rumsfeld also appointed Young and a former defense and energy secretary, James R. Schlesinger, to examine each military service's programs for ways to conserve energy.

The search identified several initiatives that had been underway for years, including some programs that are currently credited with launching conservation efforts.

Last year, the Air Force won a ``Green Power" award from the Environmental Protection Agency as the largest US purchaser of renewable energy. It accounted for 41 percent of the government's renewable energy purchases, by buying gas made from landfill refuse, and by wind and solar power. But two years ago, the EPA also gave the Defense Department a ``national security exemption" that allowed it to use trucks that did not meet emissions standards for commercial trucks.

The department's most promising initiatives are mostly several years away from starting, Defense officials say. A Humvee replacement will not be ready for at least three years.

Last week , a B-52 bomber made two test runs using a synthetic fuel made with natural gas. In the future, the same type of fuel will be made with coal. While officials reported no problems with the new fuel, the cost brought looks of astonishment from members of Congress at a hearing last week: $23 a gallon, almost 10 times the cost at the pump.

Greg G. Jenkins, executive vice president of Syntroleum, a Tulsa, Okla., company that helped produce the fuel for the demonstration project, said that once the process was commercialized on a large scale, the cost of turning coal into a gas mixture would be less than $3 a gallon.

Told of the price estimate, Michael Aimone, who helps oversee the Air Force's energy savings plans, said: ``He said that? Put that in print. We don't know what the cost will eventually be."

Aimone said the industry has promised that it could deliver 650 million gallons of synthetic fuel from coal by 2016. That figure would be roughly 25 percent of the Air Force's consumption.

Environmentalists, though, have criticized coal-based fuel, saying that it will produce as much carbon dioxide pollution as gas. Aimone argued that there would be a ``marginal improvement in greenhouse gases," because coal-based fuel would not generate sulfur dioxide, but acknowledged that coal is far from clean.

The pressure for renewable energy sources is driven from the front lines. On July 25 , Major General Richard Zilmer of the Marine Corps, who is in charge of the force in Anbar, Iraq, wrote a priority request, saying that his supply convoys on Iraq's roads were increasingly at risk. As much as 70 percent of the convoys are carrying fuel, according to studies.

Zilmer wanted alternative-energy sources brought to his base, such as solar and renewable battery systems, as substitutes for fuel used to power generators.

The Pentagon also is taking note of the cost of delivering the fuel to far-flung areas of Iraq. James Woolsey, former director of the Central Intelligence Agency and currently an energy adviser to the Defense Department, has estimated that getting gas to a tank in Iraq could cost as much as $100 a gallon, considering the cost of supply lines, tanker vehicles, and protection of the tankers.

In Iraq, much of the discussion about the Humvee -- or the High Mobility Multipurpose Wheeled Vehicle -- has been focused on ways to make it less vulnerable to roadside bombs. The vehicle was not designed with armor, and soldiers have attached sheets of metal and wood around the exterior to provide some extra protection. The Pentagon has ordered armor for all new Humvees.

Now, the Army is looking for new designs of light, medium, and heavy tactical vehicles that would put an emphasis on fuel economy without sacrificing protection. For the Humvee, the upgrades could include more energy-efficient power trains, including a hybrid-electric engine, and limiting the armor to the passenger compartment, according to Defense Department officials.

Bartlett said that if the military finds greater fuel efficiency, ``it can be introduced into the private sector, and that would be helpful to cargo shippers or anyone that moves around heavy things."

John Donnelly can be reached at donnelly@globe.com.