I heard an interesting news item on BBC Radio 4 earlier this week about the money that the US is needing to spend in Iraq and Afghanistan on air conditioning. This amounts to something like $20bn ($20,000,000,000) a year.
BBC News - Today - US military's $20bn air con bill
The most interesting facts included the cost of gasoline being anything up to $45 a gallon because of the need to ship it huge distances on rough roads, often under enemy fire. A lot of troops have been killed delivering fuel for this purpose. When the fuel gets to where it's needed, the ineffiency of running aircon flat out, in uninsulated tents, just to get the temperature down from highs around 125
oF to a tolerable 85
oF also accounts for the enormous amounts used.
I don't want this to become a political discussion about the rights and wrongs of military involvement in the Middle East and if the thread heads in that direction it will be closed. But I thought this was worthy of attention as it gives some insight into the scale of operations and the extreme difficulty of the conditions under which they are carried out.
