Operational Energy Courses for Warfighters Underway

By Michael A. Davis, Faculty Associate–Research (Curriculum Development),
Energy Academic Group

Annually, the DoD consumes circa 90 million barrels of liquid petroleum. However, when we consider the overall fiscal and operational costs of fuel demand (contracts, delivery, security, force protection, etc.) the entire DoD requirement is even larger. As our Navy exercises Distributed Maritime Operations (DMO) and assesses the increased energy requirements for both directed energy and unmanned systems, our reliance on these fuels is increasingly evident. Consequently, the Department of the Navy Operational Energy Goals memo requires Naval and Marine leaders to, “foster and guide an energy culture in our Sailors and Marines through policy, training, and education.”

The EAG is answering the call—educating U.S. naval leaders, 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 joint force, the EAG is developing two, unique 1-week courses to enhance workforce knowledge of the challenges and opportunities related to OE. The Operational Energy I course focuses on warfighters from O-1 to O-3 and E-4 to E-6, while Operational Energy II is tailored for O-4 to O-6 and E-7 to E-9.

Sponsored by Deputy Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Research Development Test and Evaluation, the first of these two courses, OE I, is piloting at locations across the Navy and Marine Corps in 2023 and 2024. Developed for a broad audience that includes all Naval and Marine Corps’ specialties, OE I will ensure dissemination of critical OE knowledge across the operational force. OE I will focus on key themes such as mobility, lethality, operational resilience, 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 OE I Course is being developed in coordination with the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s Lincoln Laboratory (LL). Collectively, EAG and LL are constructing realistic practical exercises that demonstrate operational choices for OE in the battlespace. If your unit or organization is interested in hosting a pilot of OE I in 2023 or 2024, please contact the author to coordinate hosting an EAG mobile training team at your location.