The important thing here is the US military is big enough to create a market. They've got lots of money and they don't care if the solution is more expensive than fossil fuels.
Arpanet, lasers, operations research, low weight ceramics and materials, robotics, aviation..... I guess its probably a never ending list, if one digs deep enough.
(Edit: I am really excited in seeing what technologies will get commercialized in the future, because of this. We so badly need to move forward on the energy sector, if we need to save ourselves)
Hydrocarbons are the ideal type of chemical to store and transport energy - nothing else even comes close.
So we have to make hydrocarbons, or mine them.
The goal of the military to reduce the supply line is impossible - they can move away from fossil fuels, but they can't move away from hydrocarbons.
Unless they wish to setup local nuclear reactors.
Solar power simply can not provide enough power while simultaneously being portable. It's also a huge target since solar power uses such a large area.
Generating biofuel locally is a joke. I can just see soldiers driving combines to harvest a crop. Just like solar, biofuels also require a large area. And once you'ved used all the local plants then what?
Next thing you know all local war zones will look like the moon as the army strips every plant for hundreds of miles.
And I would like to add a qualifier to what you have written: What you say, is the present.
The present is not the future.
No amount of technological progress is going to change the fact that sunlight, plants and other local sources do not posses enough energy unless you split apart their atoms.
You have to transport energy in large quantities to undertake warfare. The only possible way around this is with stored electricity, except that stored electricity doesn't power most of the machines of war.
So is the fact, that the laws of physics have been there since big-bang. The question would be, have we realized all the potential of all the laws of physics out there, yet? Have we even discovered all the laws of physics, yet?
No amount of technological progress hmmm, I wouldn't be so confident of using those words. All one has to do is look at the history of the last few centuries, or the rate of scientific progress over the last few millenium. It has been exponential.
I think the convergence of easy availability of knowledge to the masses, availability of massive and cheap computational power and the massive inflow from developing countries into the engineering and scientific workforce , will probably make the word 'exponential' obsolete. But then as they say, proof of the pudding is in eating. We should repeat this conversation 20 years from now and see how it went, just for the fun.
Yes, splitting the atoms locally is a good alternative (at least in theory, for now). Watching the progress of battery technology, from the old mercury types, to NICD, then lithium and then A123, that's a promising area.
Caterpillar is now selling a hybrid bulldozer, who knows, them making a plug-in hybrid bulldozer coupled with A123 or more dense battery tech. will inspire the military to build electric machines.
So, it sounds like that the military wishes to use hydrocarbons as a portable fuel -- for which there currently is no substitute with comparable energy densities -- but rely less on hydrocarbons to run generators. I have no idea what percentage of energy they were using to run their computers, radios, and air conditioners, but I bet it was substantial. Also, the military has deep experience with smallish, relatively portable nuclear power plants -- see our submarines.
Yep, and satellites, the types that keep going away and away. They are quite often nuclear powered, to run on-board electronics, but not the reactor type though.
Hmm, I wonder what if somebody can make a hydrocarbon with a hyper calorific density, couple it with a high specific output IC engine, electric motors, put on regenerative braking and then batteries with the highest energy density?