Fuel for thought

Conversation on the way to work with my dad

Dad:Guess how many miles a battle tank can travel on a gallon?
Me: Err.. 4 miles?
Dad: Reverse it..
Me: Huh?
Dad: 4 gallons per mile...
Me: Are you sure the consumption is so inefficient?
Dad:Yeah...

Then to my disbelief i searched online.. and... its 8 Gallons PER MILE DAMMIT!! for an M1A1 Abrams Tank.

Then i came across lotsa figures on the fuel consumption of the US Army.

Here are the facts which kept me off guard

"M-1 Abrams tank can eat up 252 gallons an hour in battle"

"500,000 gallons a day to supply an armored division of 348 tanks "

"A B-52 bomber gulps down 86 barrels per hour"

"F-4 Phantom fighter/bombers devour 40 barrels per hour"

"At peak thrust, F-15 fighters burn 25 gallons per minute".

"An F-16 jet on a training mission ignites more fuel in a single hour than the average car owner consumes in two years. "

"To reach supersonic speeds, a pilot turns on the plane’s afterburners which can triple a jet’s speed and increase fuel consumption twenty times. With its afterburner kicked in, Cutler states, the "relatively fuel-efficient" F-15 fighter torches fuel at the astounding rate of four gallons per second — 14,400 gallons per hour."

"Now try to magnify these figures by factoring in the 300 US jets stationed on four aircraft carrier groups in the Gulf, another 700 planes stationed in Saudi Arabia and 22 Stealth bombers."

Now the conclusion

"Between wars, one would think the military’s main purpose would be to "guard the peace." Not so. During times of peace, Tom Cutler writes: "The military’s primary objective [emphasis added] is to ensure adequate oil supplies for the national defense...." Cutler should know: he once headed NATO’s Petroleum Planning Committee and the is the author of The Military Demand for Oil (Petroleum Economist, London, England)."

Read the whole article here
http://www.envirosagainstwar.org/know/read.php?itemid=593

No wonder US attacked Iraq...oh... like duh...