Strategic Art and Energy: An Alternative Ends-Ways-Means View

Abstract : With Hurricane Katrina, Americans tasted of a future defined by constrained energy supplies and a likely worldwide oil production peak sometime in the next 30 years. This paper will consider how energy should be viewed in a strategic context and takes the position that a truly strategic view must focus not only on energy supplies, but also on how and why the military uses that energy, particularly with regard to the systems it acquires. After briefly discussing the importance of energy to the United States and military operations, the paper then proposes an alternate Ends-Ways-Means approach that focuses on a three-pole construct comprised of effectiveness, efficiency, and energy. In this construct, one must take a systems perspective when it comes to analyzing and addressing military energy use. Because operational success is generally based on effectiveness, a balanced approach is needed in the quest to reduce energy consumption. This balance can be addressed in a variety of ways and this paper first develops a theoretical foundation, and then offers way of applying this theory, for example by lowering weight and applying the techniques of thermoeconomics to military problems. The paper breaks up energy use into warfighting and non-warfighting domains and expresses that the Effectiveness-Efficiency-Energy balance will be different in each domain.