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report by the Defense Science Board, concludes that the military's "unnecessarily high and growing" dependence on oil is jeopardizing the success of battlefield operations, risking lives and driving up costs. Additionally, critical national security and homeland defense missions face "an unacceptably high risk of extended outage from failure of the grid."
What’s worse is that the report found that many technology programs that could reduce DoD’s energy consumption were languishing.
The Defense Science Board is a committee of civilian experts appointed to advise the Department of Defense on science and technical matters. It’s mission is identify new technologies and applications to strengthen national security.
The DSB’s assessments carry a lot of weight with Congress. Technologies that address DoD’s energy problem, identified in the DSB report, could be excellent candidates for Congressional earmarks. A little know fact is that Congressional appropriators like to support programs that address problems that the agencies are not dealing with.