Water - You Can't Wage War Without It

Napoleon said that an army marches on its stomach. Turns out today's army marches on its canteen - when it can find enough water to fill it.

The Pentagon says that difficulties in finding potable water are shaping its activities and not just in places like Iraq. From Reuters:

Soldiers, weapons, food and fuel are important but the U.S. Army absolutely cannot operate for long without water, a top Pentagon official said on Tuesday.

This simple fact is just as true for domestic bases as it is in "austere" forward installations in Iraq, said Tad Davis, the Army's deputy assistant secretary for environment.

In Iraq, 80 percent of cargo in Army convoys headed into forward areas over the last several years consisted of fuel and water. To make the convoys shorter -- and therefore less of a target -- the Army worked on making bases more fuel-efficient and looked for ways to reuse or purify existing water supplies, Davis said.

Ultimately, they set up six water bottling facilities in Iraq to serve U.S. Army needs.

Davis said that water supply issues are also a concern at military bases in the United States where the Pentagon has begun pilot studies at two major bases to examine water consumption and the true state of regional water resources.