A new study looking at the U.S. military’s dependence on fossil fuels lays out some jarring numbers concerning the amount of fuel being burned and the human cost of transporting it to combat zones.

Tracking the U.S. military’s energy use in conflicts from World War II to the current fights in Iraq and Afghanistan, global consultancy Deloitte LLP found that there has been a whopping 175 percent increase in gallons of fuel consumed per soldier per day just since the Vietnam War.

According to Deloitte’s Nov. 10 report, the rate of fuel consumption in Iraq and Afghanistan, when pegged to the number of soldiers in theater, adds up to 22 gallons used per soldier, per day — and the burn rate is only going to go up in the future, with an expected annual growth rate of 1.5 percent through 2017.

The Pentagon has of course made moves to make some of its trucks, ships and aircraft more fuel-efficient, even announcing plans to use $300 million of the $7.4 billion it received from the economic stimulus package to speed up a host of existing programs aimed at developing alternative fuels and saving energy.

Still, the report notes that “these significant improvements in efficiency are vastly overshadowed by the higher number of vehicles and increasing rate of use,” adding that the use of convoys to carry the fuel to forward operating bases is itself problematic, since improvised explosive devices (IEDs) and various logistical problems add to the cost, both in lives and money.

In 2008, DOD reported that it lost 44 fuel trucks and 220,000 gallons of fuel to accidents, IEDs, pilferage, and weather.

The waste is amplified when one considers that while the military normally pays about $2 to $3 for a gallon of fuel, “protecting fuel convoys from the ground and air costs the DOD upward of 15 times the actual purchase cost of fuel, depending on the level of protection required,” which in some cases raises to total cost to almost $45 per gallon once it is finally delivered, the report says.

The report states that the use of alternative energy “may rank on par with the business cases for the development of ever more effective offensive weapons, sophisticated fuel transport tankers, mine resistant armored vehicles, and net centric sensing technologies,” as a national security concern.

Photo: DoD