Your military bureaucracy, hard at work. Nine months ago, Marine Corps Major General Richard Zilmer, the head of coalition forces in western Iraq, sent an "Priority 1" request to the Pentagon, asking for new gear. Today, according to Inside Defense, the Pentagon's Joint Staff said they'd start thinking about it.



Gen. Zilmer's plea wasn't the usual one, for more guns or ammo or armored vehicles. He asked for

renewable power stations, equipped with "solar panels and wind turbines," instead. Constantly resupplying out-of-the-way bases with fossil fuels was putting troops at risk of "serious and grave casualties" on Iraq's roadways, Zilmer noted in his request.

Not to mention the expense: Factor in transportation and storage, and the price of a gallon of fuel in Iraq can be as high as $400. Green power had become a battlefield necessity.

“Military officials have confirmed that the renewable energy [joint urgent operational need] made it to the Joint Staff from [U.S. Central Command] on March 28,” Joint Staff spokesman Army Lt. Col. Gary Tallman tells* Inside Defense *.

Now, granted, the Pentagon can't magically, instantly start fulfilling every request on a general's wish list. And Zilmer's plea isn't the easiest to satisfy; he asked for some pretty major power supplies. But nine months – just to begin to respond to a battlefield commander's "urgent" request? C'mon. We're at war here. The bureaucrats have got to shuffle paper faster than that.

UPDATE: Meanwhile, the Army's Rapid Equipping Force, seemingly sidestepping the Joint Staff, is sending prototype green-power generators to Iraq and Afghanistan.