Pentagon Number Crunchers and the High Cost of Gas

Who gets affected most when gas prices keep going higher and higher? One likely answer, NPR reports today, is the U.S. military. Its 340,000-barrel-a-day rate of oil consumption would rank it 38th in the world if it were a country. The C-130 Hercules transport plane, to take just one Defense gas-guzzler, gets three gallons to the mile (that's not miles to the gallon).

So how does the Pentagon cope with rising fuel costs? "It is, in the short term, a management challenge," says Michael O'Hanlon, a former Defense Department budgeteer who's now with the Brookings Institution. "And there are many Pentagon comptroller types who are staying up late into the evening figuring out how to make this work."