But, instead of a gadget, Amadee proposed a green solution. And so, before long, he and a crew led by an Oklahoma roofing contractor were at a desert base east of Baghdad spraying foam onto tents.

Their plan is to turn all of the Army’s hulking, heat-absorbing tent barracks into rigid shells of 2-inch insulation. The way that would improve soldiers’ lives might be self-evident. What is less obvious is how it also could save their lives.

The key is fuel: The more of it a base uses, the more soldiers are exposed to deadly roadside bombs on fuel convoys. During the US mobilisation in Iraq there wasn’t much time to consider that. Dan Nolan, chief of the power task force at the Virginia-based Rapid Equipping Force, said it came to him indirectly when a commander in al-Anbar province asked about hybrid electricity generation. “What he’s telling you is that the most dangerous thing in Anbar at that time was driving fuel to the Syrian border,” Nolan said.

The assignment went to Bruce D. Jette, former science adviser to the Army chief of staff, and founder of Rapid Equipping Force. Jette, who has a doctoral degree from MIT, became a legend in Afghanistan when he suggested that the Army use robots instead of soldiers to search caves for Taliban fighters. When the fuel challenge came along, wind, solar, geothermal and trash generation were obvious solutions. But Amadee, another REF veteran, was drawn to insulation. “Everybody in the military thought the answer was going to be power generation,” Amadee said. “I thought, ‘We’ve got to stop trying to cool the Horn of Africa.’” Amadee teamed with Glencoe Insulation & Roofing of Okhlahoma. Its machines draw chemicals from 50-gallon drums into a mixture that sprays on like paint and expands into a thick layer of foam. A layer of ultraviolet protection goes over that.

The foam doesn’t come cheap. Under an initial contract of about $2.6 million, the group is insulating 81 tents and several gyms. With security improving, the program is evolving into a hybrid of security, economics and comfort.

Soldiers are delighted with the comfort. Master Sgt. Pleasant L. Lindsey III, a public affairs officer at Multi-National Corps headquarters, said he used to avoid the gym at Forward Operating Base Victory in Baghdad until 3 a.m., when it had cooled down. “It was a steam bath even with the fans blowing and the air conditioning,” Lindsey said. “Now, I use the gym during the day.”

Nolan says the price, which works out to about $30,000 a tent, is worth it. Preliminary data show that insulating tents can cut a base’s fuel use by 40 percent, he said. At $20 a gallon — the cost to deliver fuel to a base in Iraq — “that’s a lot of diesel that doesn’t need to be used,” Nolan said.

Meanwhile, Jette is looking for even more novel pathways to his ultimate dream: the zero-energy base.

There’s cooking oil, for example. A large base might throw out 475 gallons a week. That could produce 300 gallons of fuel and a lot of soap, he said.
-Doug Smith and Saif Rasheed (Los Angeles Times)