The military services, in addition to pursuing their own individual projects, are increasing cooperation with each other to achieve energy goals, which constitute a large chunk of each branch’s budget.
Office of the Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy (Energy) Deputy Director/Chief of Staff Bryon Paez said yesterday there is more interaction among higher-level officials in the services, especially among assistant secretaries. Paez said another change has been services thinking holistically in an era of declining defense budgets, instead of focusing on how energy advancements can benefit individual services.
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| Photo: Navy. |
“These gentlemen would always get together for lunch, talk it over, call each other,” Paez said yesterday at a military energy forum hosted by George Mason University’s Arlington, Va., campus. “It’s ‘Okay, we all have a limited budget, how can we all work together to move all the goals forward,’ and I think that’s been the biggest change I’ve seen for the past 3 1/2 years in the office.”
Each service has traditionally pursued its own energy goals. The Army, for example, likes to focus on installations, the Air Force on jet fuels and the Navy on ship fuel. Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Army for Energy and Sustainability Richard Kidd said yesterday that’s natural because each military branch has different missions and endowments. But Kidd also said overlapping requirements, like the Army and Marine Corps sharing best practices for uniform facility criteria and how to build better buildings, make it necessary to communicate. Kidd also said the Army and Marine Corps partner on powering soldiers and forward operating bases.
Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Air Force for Energy Kevin Geiss said yesterday the air service interacts with the operational energy folks in the Office of the Secretary of Defense on DoD-wide efforts. Geiss said OSD leads the way in areas like alternative fuels to lead policy and direction. Geiss said OSD also reaches out to services for programs like the Environmental Security Testing Certification Program (ESTCP), which is DoD’s environmental technology demonstration and validation program. ESTCP’s goal is to promote the transfer of innovative technologies that have successfully established proof of concept to field or production use.
“The challenges that we have are similar across the board,” Geiss said. “It only makes sense for us to partner to discuss and to share best practices and to invite each other to meetings when people come in to see us so that everyone (gets) that new information and perspective.”