Gas Pains

Atlantic, The, May, 2005 by Robert Bryce

The Department of Defense now has about 27,000 vehicles in Iraq—and every one of them gets lousy gas mileage. To power that fleet the Defense Logistics Agency must move huge quantities of fuel into the country in truck convoys from Kuwait, Turkey, and Jordan. All that fuel gives American soldiers a tremendous battlefield advantage (in communications, mobility, and firepower, among other things). But overseeing and carrying out this process requires the work of some 20,000 American soldiers and private contractors. Every day some 2,000 trucks leave Kuwait alone for various locales in Iraq.

In addition to the challenges posed by the volume of fuel needed, the Army's logisticians must deal with the sheer variety of fuels. Although the Pentagon has tried to reduce the number of...

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