Beyond the expected heat of battle, temperatures have played a costly role in the United States’ 10 years of warfare.

 

With conflicts in Afghanistan and Iraq taking place in desert regions, where the daytime thermometer can eclipse 120 degrees Fahrenheit, the U.S. military has had to spend more than $20 billion a year on air conditioning alone.

 

This cost is more than the entire budget of NASA.

 

Some savings may be in store if the U.S. withdraws 30,000 troops from Afghanistan by the end of next year, as President Barack Obama has pledged. It cost about $30 billion to add these soldiers to the war effort, but the savings of bringing them home won’t be proportional to the expense of deploying them. That’s because the infrastructure that was built to support these units, such as large military bases, will remain behind, including the a/c units needed to keep things cool in the extreme Afghan climate.

 

Steven Anderson, a retired brigadier general who was the senior military logistician in Iraq for 15 months in 2006-2007, told NPR’s All Things Considered that more than 1,000 U.S. troops have died in convoys bringing fuel to U.S. troops. He says that an Army experiment in 2007 spraying polyurethane foam insulation on tents in Iraq cut energy use by more than 80%.

-Noel Brinkerhoff

 

Among the Costs of War: $20B in Air Conditioning (National Public Radio)

Save Energy, Save Our Troops (by Steven M. Anderson, Vet Voice)