(Science Project.)

I thank God that I am retired, and have the liberty to pursue my own delusions and not those of others. I got a request to comment on the Navy’s commitment to bio-fuels, demonstrated recently by a demonstration on a decommissioned Spruance-class destroyer, the ex-Paul F. Foster (EDD-964).

The ship is remarkable- it has been reconfigured to provide the Navy with an at-sea, remotely controlled, engineering test and evaluation platform without the risk to personnel or operational assets.

Foster received approximately 20,000 gallons of a 50-50 blend of an algae-derived, hydro-processed algal oil and petroleum F-76 from the Defense Fuel Supply Point at Naval Base Point Loma and steamed to Port Hueneme up the coast. 100% of propulsion power and 50 percent of service power came from the algal oil/F-76 fuel blend.

The demonstration was intended to showcase the viability of biofuels, and is one of the signature projects of Mr. Obama, who had a remarkable and surreal soliloquy on the concept as gas prices began to spike.

According to program sponsors: “The fuel burned just like the traditional fuel we have been burning for years. We could not tell the difference. The biggest success is that a Navy ship with engines identical to those in commissioned warships operated successfully on an overnight transit with the alternative fuel without a glitch in anything. Operationally, it was absolutely a success.”

There is the matter of cost, of course, and the stock of algal-derived fuel costs twice as much as the regular stuff, and takes 350 gallons of fresh water to produce a single gallon of fuel, and the bio-engineered strain of algae could escape and wipe out normal strains and destroy the eco-system, but those small matters aside, the project shows great promise.

I mentioned to my pal that I was not in the never-land side of the acquisition process when I was on active duty, but noted that those in uniform normally salute and move out when directed to do so by their civilian masters.

The orders- from both the Bush and Obama administrations- were to examine the uses of alternative fuels in Naval ships, Army combat vehicles and Air Force Jets.

President Bush famously opined that our energy needs could be met with weed grasses; President Obama is in the grip of a powerful hallucination that holds that algae can meet our energy sufficiency needs. He seems to have backed off corn-based biofuels, since the food diverted from what is necessary to feed a world population, and is grown with fossil-fuel intensive agricultural practices.

This latest demonstration indicates it is possible to operate naval ships on the blended product.

Previously, high performance jets have done the same. Why anyone in their right mind would want to do so when natural gas and domestic crude reserves are soaring due to new extraction technologies is frankly beyond me.

Corn-based Biofuels only make sense in the context of the Iowa Caucuses, and their criticality in the Presidential election cycle. Otherwise, it is a fun science project that leaves me with a sense of “so what.” Not cost efficient, heedless of better uses for crops, and important only to those who want green regardless of the lower performance of the product.

It is sort of curious, the mandate to accept things that do not make a great deal of objective sense. It comes from higher truths and value systems that seem incompatible with reality, as I understand it. The dichotomy is starting to make me a little dizzy.

There is a lot of that going around- maybe it is the increase of the trace gas Carbon Dioxide in the atmosphere.

I got a dose of that in the from Afghanistan today. The controversy over the Koran appears to have much longer legs than the murders. As one Mullah was quoted in the NY Times this morning: “How can you compare the dishonoring of the Holy Koran with the martyrdom of innocent civilians? The whole goal of our life is religion.”

I don’t think our leaders understood what we were getting into at the beginning of this decade long adventure, nor the consequences of it on a much-deployed force. The empiric evidence contradicts the headlines: things are much better in terms of good order and discipline with a more mature cohort in the armed forces, and that atrocities that occur are much rarer than they could have been.

Maybe that makes them more horrifying and embarrassing when they occur at all.

I had not thought about that criminal loser Lt. William Calley in quite a while, though I did today as I marveled that the murders are causing less local controversy than the destruction of the Korans what were being used to pass handwritten notes between prisoners.

Still, it is all about perception, and the talking heads don’t have a clue as to the nature of the military culture. When my son got his commission, I realized what a hot-house the current edition of This Man’s Navy is- everyone at OCS appeared to be boosting up from the enlisted ranks, and it is very much a closed-loop system.

That is not what one would like in a force that is intended to protect the larger nation and its purported values, but that is the force that we have, if I can mangle the quote from Uncle Don Rumsfeld.

The Draft was a nasty bit of business, but one way or another, we were all in it. There was a sense of a shared obligation to the cohort that was subject to it, even if we chose to ignore it or flee altogether.

It might be a concept whose time has come round again- it could even be useful in reigning in the inclination for the casual deployment of an extremely lethal and pliant force.

I get the feeling, based on the very public squabbling of a plurality of the Red Right and the tone-deaf self-satisfied arrogance of the Blue Left that our social fabric is fraying.

Maybe it has always been like this and I was just fat dumb and happy.

Now, I am just fat and dumb.

Copyright 2012 Vic Socotra

www.vicsocotra.com