The Single Largest Consumer of Energy in the World

It’s the U.S. military: Here’s a sample:

Since the military’s war machines burns fuel at such intense rates, it becomes impractical to talk about consumption in miles per gallon. That is why fuel use in military applications is shown in “gallons-per-mile,” “gallons-per-hour,” and “barrels-per-hour.”
Here are some examples: Flying gas-guzzling bomber B-52 burns about 3300 gallon per hour, flying gas stations KC-135 and KC-10 (aerial refueling tankers) burn on average 2650 and 2070 gallons per hour respectively. Famous F-15 and F-16 fighter aircrafts burn about 1580 and 800 gallons per hour respectively.
Armored vehicles have very low fuel efficiency. For instance the Abrams tank can travel less than 0.6 mile per gallon of fuel, and Bradley fighting vehicle less than 2 miles on a gallon of fuel.
High Mobility Multi-purpose Wheeled Vehicle (often called Humvee in military circles), which replaced World war II ear Jeep two decades ago, gets as few as 4 miles per gallon in city driving and 8 miles per gallon on the highway. In comparison, Ford’s Model T got 25 miles per gallon, and today a Ford Explorer gets 18 miles per gallon.

I think it’s a bit hard on the military to complain of fuel inefficiency, but the numbers are interesting to consider.

Posted by on June 10th, 2008 at 12:58 pm


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