COTW: US Miltary Fuel Consumption

The Obamatron sent B-52s over the disputed, uninhabitated specks of land off China's coast in a demonstration of the US military global reach. It costs a lot of money to operate those flying behemoths because they consume about 3300 gallons per hour of flight. To put that obscene figure into perspective, the Humvee gets as low as 4 mpg or six times less than a T Model Ford. What Obamatron will not tell you, but US Person will, is that our military consumes an enormous amount of energy every day. In FY2006 DoD consumed 844 trillion Btu which on a per capita basis is ten times more than China and 30 times more than Africa. Oil accounts for more than three-fourths of military consumption. Most of the fuel costs are incurred by the United States Air Force as jet fuel, JP-8. To be fair modern tanks also burn jet fuel kerosene in their  turbines. An Abrams main battle tank achieves an unimpressive 0.5mpg):

USAF is the largest consumer of fuel in the federal government. It spent $9.7 billion in FY2011 for energy and $8.3 billion of that was for fuel, and is experiencing massive budget shortfalls due to escalating fuel costs. The US military is man's most energy intensive operation in history, period. So ask yourself do we really need these expensive joy-rides?