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December 20, 2001
Fuel consumption on the battlefield. This is easy. There are a few rules of thumb for military transport. The most important one is the amount of fuel used by trucks, to travel a hundred kilometers, as a percentage of their load. It's between .5 and one percent of that load. Most military trucks (which are basically four wheel drives of civilian models, or simply are civilian trucks with a drab paint job. Carrying capacity of military trucks is generally between three and ten tons. The smaller vehicles, like the jeep and Hummer, consume between 1.2 percent (Hummer) and four percent (some types of jeep). But these smaller vehicles have a much smaller carrying capacity (.4-.5 tons for jeeps and 1.1 tons for the Hummer.) Armored vehicles are a different matter. To move these beasts a hundred kilometers it takes 5-15 pounds of fuel per ton of vehicle weight. At the lower end you have lighter armored vehicles using low power engines and wheels. At the high end you have very heavy tanks (like the U.S. M-1) using a gas turbine engine.
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