The U.S. Army is funding research and development of flexible solar panels that will allow soldiers to power essential communications equipment while also reducing weight and their visibility to the enemy.
The author looks at the potential of hydrogen fuel cells to not only "transform the future energy needs of the United States and the US Air Force, but also to change how and why we fight."
"The current trend toward a hydrogen economy presents DOD with some special challenges, because a pure hydrogen fuel likely will not satisfy many DOD requirements. The resolution of this problem will take decades. DOD should engage on this issue in the near term in order to influence and leverage the national hydrogen initiative and to have in place an infrastructure to assure that DOD energy needs are met, in particular those related to fuel requirements for low-altitude, high-performance aircraft missions."
The authors examine the energy needs of the future military and argue that nuclear power nuclear power could "play a major role in another significant change: the shift of military energy use away from carbon-based resources. Nuclear reactor technology could be used to generate the ultimate fuels for both vehicles and people: environmentally neutral hydrogen for equipment fuel and potable water for human consumption."
Future U.S. Army operations in the field could rely on alternative fuels and biological methods to produce electricity, says a blue-ribbon committee of university and industry scientists. A report by the National Research Council's Board on Army Science and Technology found that fuel that can be produced on the spot from waste plant materials.
Getting fuel to soldiers in the field has been a problem since machines replaced horses but a new study from the National Research Council argues that by 2025 soldiers could rely on alternative fuels and biological methods to produce electricity through photosynthesis.