Operational Energy Courses for Warfighters Underway
Currently, the DoD consumes circa 90 million barrels of liquid petroleum annually. However, when we consider the overall fiscal and operational costs of fuel demand (contracts, delivery, security, force protection, related personnel, etc.) the entire DoD liquid fuel requirement is orders of magnitude larger than we appreciate. As the Navy trains within the Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) concept, our reliance on these fuels as the crucial component of our energy networks and generation, and the increased energy requirements for both directed energy and unmanned systems is increasingly evident. Consequently, the Department of the Navy Operational Energy Goals memo, dated June 27, 2019, requires Naval and Marine leaders to, “foster and guide an energy culture in our Sailors and Marines through policy, training and education.”
In support of these initiatives, the Energy Academic Group (EAG) is focused on educating Naval Leaders throughout the United States, as well as our Allies and Partners, to achieve Operational Energy (OE) dominance. In conjunction with a wide-array of stakeholders and subject matter experts across the naval enterprise, the EAG is developing two, 1-week courses to ameliorate the dearth of broad-based experience and knowledge of the challenges and opportunities related to OE.
Sponsored by DASN (RDT&E), the first of these two courses, the Operational Energy I Course, is currently under development and will be piloting at locations across the Navy in 2023 and 2024. This course will ensure that warfighters from O-1 to O-3 and E-4 to E-6 understand the roles and impacts of OE on their operations. The course is being developed for the entirety of Naval and Marine Corps’ specialties, ensuring the dissemination of this critical knowledge across the operational force. Operational Energy I will focus on the broad themes of mobility/lethality, operational resilience, supply chain management, command and control, and distributed/expeditionary operations, all centered on four main competencies: fuels, power generation and distribution, energy storage solutions, and energy management.
The OE1 Course is being developed in close coordination with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory (LL). Collectively, EAG and LL are constructing realistic practical exercises that demonstrate OE implementation in the battlespace for the totality of our Naval and Marine Corps’ forces.
If your unit or installation is interested in hosting a pilot of any one day or the entire week of OE 1 in 2023 or 2024, please contact Michael.A.Davis@nps.edu to coordinate hosting an NPS team at your installation.
- Learner Population: E4-O3
- Delivery Mode: In Residence, Mobile Training Teams
- POC: Michael Davis, michael.a.davis@nps.edu
