To save on fuel costs, TRANSCOM mixes it up - Air Force News | News from Afghanistan & Iraq - Air Force Times

To save on fuel costs, TRANSCOM mixes it up

The military is changing the way it moves cargo across the globe in response to growing fuel costs, said the Air Force officer who leads U.S. Transportation Command.

Gen. Duncan McNabb, in a Feb. 7 speech in Washington, D.C., said the unified command will focus more heavily on a mix of land, air and sea transports to deliver goods overseas. Increased use of alternate fuels could provide cost savings, he said, and the rollout of the long-delayed KC-X tanker also could help save up to 25 percent more fuel than its predecessor.

“We have spent a lot of time mixing and matching [between various modes of transportation], and we’re doing it much more in real time,” McNabb told a breakfast meeting at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “We used to say, ‘Hey, we’ll do this six months in advance.’ But as you get closer, this becomes big, big dollars.”

TRANSCOM, which oversees Air Mobility Command, the Navy’s Military Sealift Command and the Army’s Surface Deployment and Distribution Command, is tasked with operating the military’s global logistics system. It oversees about 900 sorties — 150 to 200 of which are commercial flights — and 35 ships at sea every day.

The military spends huge amounts of money on fuel — more than $11.4 billion on petroleum, natural gas and jet fuel in fiscal 2009 alone — so even a slight slip in consumption could mean big savings. Defense Secretary Robert Gates last month included the need to cut fuel costs as part of his drive to find efficiencies. He highlighted a potential $500 million in savings by using less fuel throughout Air Mobility Command.

Aircraft working for TRANSCOM deliver 28 million pounds of cargo, 35 million pounds of fuel and 38,000 passengers each week. But air transport, at an average cost of $3 per pound, is about 10 times more expensive than surface transport.

Using sea and land transportation for nonlethal and nonsensitive information has already led to big savings, McNabb said.

He offered as an example the deployment of the mine-resistant ambush-protected all-terrain vehicle to Afghanistan. Air Force C-17s were flying 500 M-ATVs from the U.S. to Afghanistan, with three vehicles on each flight.

In the midst of last year’s surge of troops, the Pentagon directed TRANSCOM to deploy 1,000 M-ATVs each month to Afghanistan. The command opted to ship the vehicles from the U.S. to the Persian Gulf, load them aboard airlift and then fly them into Afghanistan.

The decision to use sea and air allowed each C-17 to carry five M-ATVs and saved more than $110 million each month, mostly in fuel costs.

“Every sortie going into [Camp] Bastion is now 40 percent more effective,” he said.

Military officials hope the introduction of the new refueling tanker to replace the aging KC-135 will lead to fuel savings of up to 25 percent. Most KC-135s can’t receive fuel in midflight, so they always carry enough in reserve in case it’s needed in an emergency.

“[Current tankers] take fuel to the fight and bring it back,” he said. “When they land, they land with about 35,000 to 40,000 pounds of fuel. What that means is that you’re carrying that all the time. The whole system is carrying it all the time.”