The US Air Force is trying to figure out how to mix regular jet fuel with alternative fuels to try and reduce the military dependence on outside oil. Even more dynamic, they’re using a contest between companies and fuel refinery companies to create the new jet fuel, which would be a 50% regular fuel 50% alternative fuel mixture, and the Air Force wants this in place by 2010.
Try and call the US military a bunch of freaky left wing activists, I dare you!
The Air Force uses over half of the US government’s fossil fuels, so anything they do will have an interesting impact on the US government’s direct consumption of fuel.
I am not sure where I read it, but in some fairly credible article on the projected future of warfare I read that projections about the economic sustainability of the US warfare machinery (which in itself is bigger than all the other countries in the world and which uses more oil in itself than several european countries and *way* more oil than the entirity of China). It sounded like all their nifty futuristic rapid deployment plans fell apart somewhere after 2020, when oil would be unaffordable to sustain the current plans – and hence would make the already unaffordable US military behemoth even more unaffordable as it currently is.
The implications of this are a little scary. The dark aspect is that continued warfare would lead to higher consumption of oil, and hence faster depletion – not because countries want the last remaining oil, but because countries want the last remaining oil *before* their competitors get their yellow hands on it.
The positive side of this is that it will force the Pentagon, the home of the reborn Antichrist on this world, to direct it’s primal powers to finding alternative and additional strategic sources of energy. We can only pray that this may be fusion energy, and Real Soon.