Booz Allen Hamilton, a Virginia-based consultancy company, will assess the energy vulnerabilities of the United States Department of Defense (DoD).
The organisation will define the DoD’s requirements for energy resilience projects and identify third-party funding sources for energy resilience and security projects.
The contract is valued at $28.8m and work will occur in Arlington, Virginia with an estimated completion date of 12 December 2026.
Powering the defence industrial base
Biden’s administration has embarked on a campaign to strengthen the US defense industrial base. America’s national strategy has tilted its concern to capability, and to deliver on this the government emphasised the need to give the private sector the means to achieve a competitive military advantage on the world stage.
While pumping cash into emerging technologies – such as artificial intelligence and hypersonics – provides for some industry needs, the government must also power these new innovative weapon systems.
Bringing about an independent base for these technologies rests on America’s energy resillience. Work has already been made on this with discussions exploring the country’s lithium for batteries and semiconductor components among other things.
Energy resilience requirements
The DoD outline some of their requirements for energy resilience. Planning for energy resilience shall:
- Promote the use of multiple and diverse sources of energy;
- Promote the installation of cyber-resilient microgrids to ensure the energy security and energy resilience of critical missions;
- Favour the use of full-time, installed energy sources rather than emergency generation;
- By the end of fiscal year 2030, provide that 100% of the energy load required to maintain the critical missions of each DoD installation have a minimum level of availability of 99.9% per fiscal year, or higher availability as this memorandum provides; among other things.
