WASHINGTON, July 21 (UPI) -- The growing cost of the U.S. military's energy demand is a national security issue and needs to be scaled back, said former CIA Director R. James Woolsey and two congressmen at the launch of a bipartisan task force.
Woolsey, intelligence chief during the Clinton administration, joined Reps. Roscoe Bartlett, R-Md., and Steve Israel, D-N.Y., Thursday to unveil the Defense Energy Working Group, to be made up of members of Congress and advisers, like Woolsey, who view the Pentagon's appetite for energy as a vulnerability to the country.
"The issues for Department of Defense are relevant to society as a whole," said Woolsey, who sits on the National Commission on Energy Policy.
Consuming more oil, specifically, and energy, in general, than any other single entity in the country, the Defense Department spent $10.6 billion on it in 2005.
The price of crude oil cruised toward $80 a barrel amid the violence in the Middle East this week, and the trio painted the U.S. military's role in an energy crisis in drastic terms and immediate concern.
"The military as a microcosm of the United States, which is a microcosm of the world, faces a very uncertain energy future," Bartlett said.
Israel called energy consumption by the military -- and United States as a whole -- a national security threat comparable to communism, World War II and the race to space against the former Soviet Union.
"It's like a 1970s movie remade in 2006," said Israel, who worried what would happen if Iran, the world's third-largest oil producer, stopped exporting oil as it has threatened to do in response to U.N. Security Council sanctions over its nuclear program.
The Defense Energy Working Group will be a bipartisan collection of U.S. representatives who will assess current Defense Department programs and pave a way for a more robust plan to use less energy.
This includes channeling funds for "an advanced energy initiative in the Pentagon," Israel said, and wants to bring in sectors like business and universities to collaborate.
Ninety-seven percent of the federal government's energy bill is from the Defense Department, Israel said, which is why he wants the military to become more energy efficient. He also wants it to use new technologies that stem from the Defense Energy Working Group's initiative.
Woolsey warned that the infamous blackouts of 2003, or the Chicago-area blackout caused by weather Monday, could be a catastrophe if it knocks military bases offline without an adequate backup.
He said solar or wind power could pick up the slack -- if not be a regular power source -- with the right investment.
But it would take a long time to make a complete shift in power sources, Woolsey said, so the focus should be on technology to use in the current oil-based infrastructure.
He said that means using oil more efficiently as well as oil substitutes, such as ethanol, as a way to offset the tremendous amount of money spent on fuel for the Air Force.
"It's not some wholesale abandonment of petroleum," he said, but high cost of oil compels fuel supply diversification, which the Working Group hopes its programs lead to.
Israel said the goal will be to "incentivize the supply side," which means give the private sector, like automakers and ethanol producers, a reason to invest.
"I don't want to pick the winners and loser" in the debate over what's a better alternative fuel, he said, that's for research and development to sort out and the U.S. military to benefit from.
Israel talked of loud military vehicles chugging 8 mpg while more fuel efficient vehicles head onto U.S. streets.
"If you currently produce a hybrid for passengers, why can't they for soldiers in Iraq?"
It's that self-examination Bartlett says is needed and he says he hopes educating the public about the energy crisis, mixed with patriotism, will make the Working Group a success.
He called for "real leadership," equating dealing with the energy crisis to planting victory gardens during the World Wars.
Bartlett said he sees alternative fuels and increased nuclear energy as a key to the future, if U.S. "addiction" to oil, especially foreign oil, doesn't hold the country back.
"Like kids who find the cookie jar, when we found oil under the ground we just pigged out," he said.
The United States imported 59.8 percent of its oil in 2005. The same year the Air Force alone spent $4.76 billion on fuel.
Bartlett fears what a lack of preparation for a decline in the supply of oil will mean to future generations.
"The route we're now pursuing, they're going to have a real tough time."
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