The DOD spends $20 billion a year just to air condition tents and temporary buildings in Iraq and Afghanistan. That’s more than NASA’s entire $19B annual budget.
Steve Anderson, a retired Brigadier General says spraying the tents with polyurethane foam is an easy fix but is not official DOD policy.
You can listen to the whole interview – HERE
Comments
18 responses to “U.S. Military Spends More On A/C Than NASA’s Entire Budget”
Having slept in those air conditioned tents in Iraq and Kuwait, I can tell you that I’m glad the Army ponied up the cash for it. Also, when I was stationed at Ft Drum, NY, which happens to be the most deployed division in the Army, the Commanding General of Ft Drum decided he wanted to move the famous Military Mountaineers statue, referred to locally as the Climb to Glory statue, at a cost of 2 million dollars. To pay for this, they ceased putting air conditioning in the new barracks that were being built for the soldiers who were deployed at the time.
Wow, what a dick move!
I too say its easy to judge no ac needed over there for those that havent been there.. ive been to middle east on 6 deployments.. and ill vouch that AC is a good thing! How many of you civilians have been over there wearing gear and sweating to death? I have.. HOAHHHHH
it kind’s of make sense, the DOD have a whole bunch of branches to take care of.
Currently being in the middle east, it’s really hot as hell.. especially during the summer times (like these few months) where the heat reaches 50Cº+ most of the days.
Why won’t they just fix the shit so it takes half as much cooling. Save some damn money. I like how they won’t foam them because its not DOD policy… They better have a really damn good reason not to.
No ammount of cooling insulation is going to keep a tent that’s-a-swayin in the wind cool in 110 degree heat.
They’re not from there, they’re not used to the heat (I imagine some of them are now though), give them some muddafuckin AC. I’m surprised you can Use air conditioning in a tent actually. Such a waste lol.
Did you not see the BG say that they could foam them but it’s not official DoD policy? I don’t think it would make them perfect but I’d assume it sure would help keep the costs down.
Btw who are ‘they’? And where are they not from?
They as in everybody. Dont be a specific nazi. I’d assume most of those soldiers come from the States. Where, for the most part, that heat aint natural to them.
Plus i’d imagine that foam would make the tents ten times more flammable, with little effect to the costs. A/C in fuckin Iraquistanistan is going to be expensive ANYWAY.
The spray foam isn’t DoD policy because those stupid tents are flamible enough. In 2003 when I deployed for the war, we had to set up our own tents and in the heat within a month or 2 they were dryed out to the point I’m supprised that they didn’t flash combust. I don’t even want to get into how flamible the plywood B-Huts at Baghram are. Bottom line if your deployed to the desert your tent should be required to have AC!
I’m pretty sure that insulating foam is flame retardant or you couldn’t use it in a home. I could be wrong though… it doesn’t sound like something good to have for home-use if it was highly flammable…
What I also find funny is those tents are open… to think of all the times my parents yelled at me bc I left the AC on with the door open…
I dunno how stable the ground is there, but it might help if they dug the tents into the ground, since dirt is a great insulator. Might have to design an escape system though if they ever get shelled.
I’ll over another reason against the foam. The tents are supposed to be portable, even if they’ve mostly stayed in the same spot the last little while. That foam turns rigid and inflexible seconds after application.
If you spray those tents they can never be moved again. Rather defeats the original purpose.
Yeah uhh you retards who are saying its flammable go read a book. I just did a quick google search and most all of them are AT LEAST class 1 flame retardant.
See how quick unfounded statements can get out of control in a thread? One dummy says its flammable and all of you tools jump on the bandwagon. -_- Lets be smarter than that guys!
I agree that foaming the tents would make them less mobile but the reason we are using tents isnt because they need to be mobile, it’s cost. They are pretty much permanent installations for the time being but at a really cheap cost compared to having Halliburton or whoever come and build hard structures.
You know, the twin towers were sprayed with fire retardant insulation during their construction. :3
And seeing as how Obama wants to bring back at least ten thousand soldiers over the next year, even if they wanted to spray tents they’d have to wait for a readjustment in numbers. No use is rigidifying a tent that’s going to be packed up and stored away within the next year.
I never said the foam would magically stop added fire, I said the foam is not going to INCREASE the flammability of the tent. Why the hell is your logic so backwards dude?
No one said spraying the tent with the foam would magically make it fire proof. What someone DID say was that it would make them MORE flammable. That simply isn’t true. Spraying the tents with foam would increase the flammability as much as spraying them with dirt.
Get your head out of your ass.
My head will stay firmly where its at :/
And insulating foam gets pretty flammable. It’s why houses go up in flames quicker than they did years ago. That spray on insulation is a killer. Go buy yourself some, empty it into a big pile, and set it on fire. You’ll see lol. (Or youtube it, you’d probably find a firehouse demonstration of it)
Plus there’s other dangers of it a burnin. Particularly the fumes it’d produce and the molten napalm is gobs off as. The only thing spraying those tents would do is make em more of a deathtrap than there were when untreated. Perfectly harmless tents you gotta make a soldier fear being in :/
And it’s not like the costs matter anyway. Time matters more. And if you have to take time to spray things… well that’s a no-no. Money? We can print that up any day of the week. Yeah economy, but they’ve basically told us they dun give a fuck lol.
I guess you missed the part where that foam isn’t flammable. I guess you also missed the part where it’s approved for use in homes. Ah well you can’t argue with a rock.
I’m guessing there’s some creative bookkeeping in here too. Sure, cooling costs can be staggering, but I’m sure ventilating Bin Laden is in there somewhere :p