USMC's Experiment in Afghanistan Pays Off
Posted by Paul McLeary at 3/24/2011 12:02 PM CDT
Last fall, the 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment deployed to Sangin, an especially violent area of Helmand province where the unit would lose 19 comrades in the first three months of their deployment, fighting what one Marine Times scribe recently called “one of the hardest battalion deployments in the history of the nine-year war in Afghanistan.”
While securing the area around Sangin was the objective of the 3/5, the unit's India Company had another objective: prove out the Marines ambitious new renewable energy program called exFOB, which uses wind and solar energy to power everything from battery packs to cooling and heating systems used in living quarters and operations centers.
According to Marine Corps documents, the system proved itself such a success in operations that two patrol bases are currently operating entirely on renewable energy, with a 90 percent reduction in fuel required at a third base—and the unit was even able to conduct a three-week foot patrol “without battery resupply, reducing load on Marines by 700 lbs.”
