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Comment by bobthepanda | Hacker News Reader

Yup.

For the Air Force, their particular need is to avoid billions of dollars in contractor expense for reliably supplying fuel to remote bases in hostile territory.

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I read elsewhere on hacker news that the us military runs through 20 million barrels of fuel per day . I can imagine there is a great desire to be less dependent on suppliers both in terms of quantity and logistics. Imagine a nuclear powered aircraft carrier being able to generate fuel for its planes and support ships.

Yes the US Navy has been researching synthesizing aviation fuel onboard nuclear powered carriers since at least 2013. The goal is to reduce fleet dependence on vulnerable tankers.

https://www.autoevolution.com/news/us-navy-aircraft-carriers... https://www.autoevolution.com/news/us-navy-aircraft-carriers...

Amazing. At what point do these carriers become totally self sufficient.

When they can make food from waste.

- water filtration/desalination

- Maybe in the future they could use fusion reactors for power, synthesizing Deuterium and/or Tritium to enhance their endurance (maybe indefinitely?)

- make the carrier (with minimal crew) and the planes into drones (AFAIK already in research/testing) since even if the material could be at sea forever the people could not endure and also many probably wouldn't sign up for such a job

> - water filtration/desalination

My understanding is the submarines have been doing that for a very, very long time. No challenge there.

Here's a random article from 2008 saying "decades": https://www.eastvalleytribune.com/opinion/nuclear-desalinati...

All subs and surface ships, literally since the very first nuclear powered vessel. Because all they did was switch to a different heat source for the desalination that ships had been doing for decades before that.

Since world production of oil is currently about 75 millions of barrels per day (mbpd)[1], this 20 mbpd figure is certainly wrong. Probably someone wanted to make the figure seem higher than it was and used gallons instead of the standard barrels unit. Even then, 1/2 million barrels of fuel per day would seem high to me when the US is not in an active shooting war.

20 million barrels of oil would be worth about $1.6 billion dollars. So the military would be spending about $580 billion a year on fuel. Or 3/4th its budget.

[1] https://ycharts.com/indicator/world_crude_oil_production

You’re missing the point. The really large number feels right.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Energy_usage_of_the_United_S...

12M gallons a day, which is approx 285,000 barrels a day. Far below the 20 million barrels figure.

shouldnt itself manage fuel logistic or it is contracted away?

regardless of who is doing the logistics it's expensive.

synthesizing fuel also means nuclear powered aircraft carriers would be vastly more self sufficient

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