The military's $20 billion air conditioning bill: By the numbers

A U.S. army soldier in an Afghanistan housing tent: One expert&#039;s estimate says the U.S. military&#039;s air conditioning bill for Afghanistan and Iraq will exceed NASA&#039;s 2011 budget.

(Image credit: REUTERS/Bob Strong)

last updated 8 January 2015

It's no secret that the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have become quite expensive for U.S. taxpayers. But a former chief of military logistics in Iraq says the cost of air conditioning alone costs the federal government billions every year. "In essence, what we're doing is we're air conditioning the desert over there in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other places," retired brigadier general Steven Anderson, a former chief logistician for Gen. David Petraeus in Iraq, says, as quoted by Britain's Telegraph. Why is it so expensive? To air condition remote bases in Afghanistan, raw fuel is shipped into Pakistan, and then transported over hundreds of miles of "improved goat trails" for up to two weeks. That's not cheap. Here, a look at the cost of keeping the troops cool, by the numbers:

$20.2 billion