‘The Department of Defense runs on fuel’: Energy’s evolving function in US safety

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“An army marches on its stomach.” This well-known phrase, usually attributed to Napoleon Bonaparte, hits on the significance of logistics and primary provides in sustaining navy deployments. Today, the identical will be mentioned of power.

“The Department of Defense runs on fuel,” mentioned Lieutenant General Jered Helwig, deputy commander of US Transportation Command (USTRANSCOM), on Wednesday on the 2025 Global Energy Forum. “Fuel is a huge part of the equation.” 

How large? On any given day, Helwig mentioned, USTRANSCOM has about 200 railcars, 4 hundred plane sorties, and fifteen ships shifting cargo (together with gasoline) world wide. In addition, he mentioned, up to now two years USTRANSCOM has taken on the mission of being the worldwide bulk gasoline supervisor for the Department of Defense. 

The problem Helwig faces isn’t just ensuring that the Department of Defense has the required quantity of gasoline, he defined to moderator Meredith Berger, a nonresident senior fellow on the Atlantic Council’s Global Energy Center. It’s additionally about “getting the right fuel to the right place at the right time, globally,” he defined.

“Anything that moves in the Department of Defense moves in some way through TRANSCOM,” Helwig mentioned. 

As if organizing the provision chain to gasoline the globally deployed US navy weren’t sufficient of a activity, this exact same provide chain makes for a tempting goal. In the occasion of a battle, Helwig mentioned, “Our adversaries will actively be looking to interdict the supply chains.” This challenge of safety for not simply gasoline, but in addition for electrical energy, was expanded on in a panel dialogue that adopted. Here are some highlights of the dialogue.

More threats

• “As we are moving fuel around the globe, it’s an incredibly dangerous and expensive thing to do, and the last thing that we want to do is be reliant on a partner, ally, adversary for access to that fuel,” US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy Resilience and Optimization Rebecca Isacowitz mentioned. As a results of this concern, “domestic energy dominance” has been elevated to a “core component of our strategy,” she added. 
• The menace extends to home electrical energy and energy infrastructure, too, added Alex Fitzsimmons, the director of the Office of Cybersecurity, Energy Security, and Emergency Response on the US Department of Energy. “We know that nation-state actors are prepositioned inside our networks already. They are already inside the wire,” he mentioned. And these adversaries are usually not simply focusing on the large US power corporations, which have the sources to withstand these assaults. “They’re targeting everyone,” together with smaller, regional power suppliers.
• Many US navy bases overseas have been as soon as thought-about sanctuaries from threats, mentioned Major General Jason Woodworth, commander of Marine Corps Installations Command. Not anymore. “We need to consider them as under threat each and every day,” he mentioned. Some US Marine installations, he defined, are just some hundred miles from Chinese navy bases. As a consequence, he mentioned, working with non-public business to extend resilience in navy websites overseas and at house is crucial.

More demand

• “The services don’t generate power. We rely on our partners in the commercial industry to do that for us,” mentioned Rear Admiral George Bresnihan, the commander of the Defense Logistics Agency—Energy. What retains him up at evening, he mentioned, will not be manufacturing as a lot as how to get power and gasoline to the purpose of want, when it’s wanted.
• And that want is barely growing. Fitzsimmons pointed to artificial intelligence (AI) and onshoring manufacturing as components within the present surge in power demand. To win the AI race and be aggressive within the twenty-first century, “that’s not possible without energy,” he defined.
• From a non-public sector perspective, Richard Donaldson, the chief info officer for Duke Energy, agreed that it was an “era of growth” for power. But the problem isn’t just to offer power for brand new AI knowledge facilities, for instance. It’s to offer this energy, he mentioned, whereas additionally assembly power calls for for different present and future customers—and to take action in a approach that’s secure and safe. 

More security and extra safety

• “One of the most important things we look for in resilience is a backup power generation capability,” mentioned Woodworth. Panelists listed small modular nuclear reactors, microgrids, large-scale backup batteries, and renewable sources of energy as vital subsequent steps to attain higher supply-chain resilience.  
• New expertise can also be wanted in energy grids to make them extra environment friendly and resilient. But as Fitzsimmons warns, “cyber-informed engineering principles” have to be included into the design of recent expertise in order that vulnerabilities to cyberattacks are usually not inadvertently launched into the system.
• Nonetheless, cyberattacks will come. “You can solve 90 percent of the cyber problems you face by doing like basic cyber hygiene—multi-factor authentication, network segmentation, things along those lines,” Fitzsimmons says. “But then even if you do all that, you still have to equip them with the training and the planning to operate through compromise.” 

John Cookson is the New Atlanticist editor on the Atlantic Council.

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Further studying

Image: A panel dialogue on the 2025 Atlantic Council Global Energy Center. June 18, 2025.

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