Homegrown Power Could Keep The Army Running If War Cuts Off Foreign Fuel
American companies are building batteries, hydrogen drones and homegrown fuel that could keep U.S. troops powered if a war cuts off foreign supply.
Simon August·Oct 18, 2026·10 min read
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American companies are building batteries, hydrogen drones and homegrown fuel that could keep U.S. troops powered if a war cuts off foreign supply.
Companies showed off their equipment at the Association of the U.S. Army’s annual meeting, which ended Oct. 14. Attacks on merchant ships around the Strait of Hormuz had hit their highest point since the Iran war began, Reuters reported Oct. 14, citing independent data.
“The days of secure and predictable logistics environments are over,” Army Lt. Gen. Mark Simerly, director of the Defense Logistics Agency (DLA), said at the 2026 Defense Logistics & Energy Summit in September, according to an agency news release. He added that energy and fuel “will be high-value targets and decisive factors in operational success.”
Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment Jordan Gillis told a House Armed Services subcommittee in March that in the Indo-Pacific “fuel logistics and vulnerable island locations present unique energy challenges,” according to his written testimony.
“From March-September 2026, DLA Energy purchased approximately 2.17 billion gallons of fuel, primarily to support the Department of War, and sold approximately 122.7 million gallons to support the U.S. Army,” the DLA’s energy arm said in a statement to the Daily Caller News Foundation.
“DLA Energy’s global posture allows the agency to adapt to market shifts and geopolitical events, ensuring security in the supply of fuels,” the agency added. “Fuels are sourced close to the location of the requirement to meet Warfighter demands.”
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GM Defense, a General Motors subsidiary, showed a prototype of its EPIQ Hybrid at the meeting. The system pairs a battery with a generator to cut heat and noise in remote areas, according to a company release.
Diesel generators “consume a lot of diesel, and diesel is a risk in a logistical environment,” a GM Defense representative told the DCNF at the company’s booth.
In the company’s setup, the generator charges the battery and then shuts off so the battery can carry the load, he added.
In the system’s hybrid mode, GM Defense has seen fuel savings of about 50 percent and about 80 percent less generator run time, a company representative said.
GM Defense built the EPIQ Hybrid for a 2023 Defense Innovation Unit program aimed at “reducing logistical requirements and the reliance on fossil fuels as the primary energy source across the DoD,” according to a company announcement. The Army and the Marines are now testing units, a company representative said.
The system is built from the same kind of battery modules GM uses in its electric vehicles, the representative said.
“GM is manufacturing vehicles at the gigawatt scale, and with that massive supply chain, there is a severe reduction in risk on that supply chain,” he told the DCNF.
Starting in 2028, federal law bars the Pentagon from buying advanced batteries for new programs whose key parts come from a “foreign entity of concern,” according to the U.S. Code. GM Defense’s batteries already meet those limits, a company representative told the DCNF.
Heven AeroTech, based in Sterling, Virginia, holds an Army agreement that lets units order its hydrogen-powered Z1 drone and the equipment that makes hydrogen to fuel it, according to a company release.
“Hydrogen-powered systems offer extended endurance, logistical flexibility, and reduced dependency on traditional fuel and battery supply chains,” Michael Buscher, the company’s president of U.S. operations, said in the release.
Commando Fuels, a New York company, says on its website that it was founded by veterans and makes fuel from “domestically-grown biomass.”
“Defense, maritime, and industrial operators need reliable domestic alternatives that can be certified and deployed quickly,” the company says on its “Why Now” page, adding that modular refining strengthens supply chains “by producing fuel closer to where it is needed.”
Michael Coleman, the company’s founder and CEO, told the DCNF in a phone interview that its goal is to let military bases keep running “when the main grid goes down” without relying on outside fuel trucks or civilian power grids.
Fuel made close to a base means “you’re not reliant on global supply chains to support your energy needs at a military installation,” Coleman said.
The company is working with the Pentagon’s research and engineering office to get its fuel to the point where it can power “a tank, a Humvee, and any other type of military vehicle without having to retrofit it,” he said.
Its next step is “multiple pilots that are being discussed through the Department of War,” Coleman added.
Coleman said the company could “move quickly and scale the energy needs of the military when needed” and that its fuel “will eventually be cheaper and more secure” than diesel.
“Commando is focusing strategically on fuel that grows in your backyard and powers your car in your front yard,” he said.
The company is also working with Native American and Amish communities that Coleman said “would never have a seat at the energy race.”
The Army also awarded GM Defense, Ford and BC Customs agreements in June to build prototypes of a heavier Infantry Squad Vehicle that can export enough power to run drone-defense and electronic warfare gear, Military Times reported.
“One of the things that we do have a critical capability gap on right now is power generation at that mobile brigade combat team level,” Jess Tolleson, the Army’s principal deputy assistant secretary for acquisition, logistics and technology, told senators in June, according to the outlet.
Oshkosh Defense’s eJLTV, a hybrid-electric tactical vehicle the company developed, shuts its engine off when it is not needed while an onboard battery keeps communications and other critical systems running, the company said in a statement to the DCNF.
“From a fuel efficiency standpoint, we’re seeing 20 to 30 percent fuel savings over mission profiles,” the company added. “When you’re standing outside the eJLTV in silent drive mode, all you hear is gravel.”
Oshkosh Defense is also helping Michigan Technological University develop a power kit that lets an Army medium tactical truck, the FMTV A2, supply electricity in the field. The kit “reduces the fuel deliveries required to sustain electrical power in remote locations,” and the company said the government is set to begin assessing the first two prototypes in the first three months of 2027.
“Protecting fuel and water are two of the most critical logistic challenges for the warfighter,” Kate Putland-Moss, group communications director for Parker Hannifin’s aerospace group, said in a statement to the DCNF.
The company’s Fuel Jerry Can is a portable pump that “removes sediment and water from contaminated fuel” and “fits on any vehicle,” which “is especially critical when units must lean on a local economy for fuel supply,” she said.
Parker’s electric motors and inverters drive vehicles, generate power and run hydraulics on “many defense platforms,” and the company’s cooling technology “allows for maximum fuel savings on the vehicle,” Putland-Moss added.
Engine and generator maker Cummins is seeing “increasing demand for both higher-capacity power generation and hybrid power solutions” as military bases and field sites add counter-drone systems, sensors and communications gear, a company spokesperson said in a statement to the DCNF.
Hybrid systems that pair generators with batteries can help by “reducing generator runtime, lowering fuel consumption and enabling quieter operation when mission requirements demand it,” the spokesperson said.
Cummins said it does not know of any Army tests that ran the service’s Advanced Medium Mobile Power Sources generators on renewable or synthetic diesel, but the company’s G-Drive power generation engines are approved to run on renewable diesel, the spokesperson added. Cummins testing shows those engines can run on 100 percent renewable diesel, regular diesel or a blend “while delivering performance comparable to conventional diesel operation,” according to the statement.
New Use Energy Solutions, an Arizona company building what it calls personal energy nodes, portable battery units, for the Army under an agreement with the Defense Innovation Unit, says the war in Ukraine shows how exposed generators and fuel runs have become near the front.
“The very first thing that happened in the war was every generator on the entire battlefield got annihilated,” John Webber, the company’s vice president of sales, told the DCNF.
Drones can find a running generator by its heat and noise, and the area they can reach has grown from eight to 10 miles at the start of the war to about 25 miles, Webber said.
“If you’ve got a heavy vehicle that can only drive at 30 miles an hour, you’re exposed for 50 minutes carrying fuel,” he said.
The nodes are built to work alongside generators, so a unit can plug a generator into a node’s built-in charger, fill its battery in about 90 minutes and then shut the generator off, Webber said.
“So we can charge very quickly, get that generator turned off, and now we can coast for the next 10 hours, which we’ve proven out on NTC,” he added, referring to the Army’s National Training Center.
Generators burn fuel most efficiently at about 80 percent of their rated output, Webber said, and charging a node lets a generator run near that level instead of idling on small loads such as “a Starlink and two laptops.”
The company is building three node sizes and expects the largest to cost $15,000 to $18,000 and the smallest, a 1-kilowatt unit, “well under $10,000,” he said.
“Because we’re attritable, we’re low cost,” he added. “If something gets lost, destroyed, or otherwise, nobody’s weeping. They’re just sending out another unit.”
The company is designing the nodes in the U.S., and it has no plans to make any key components outside the country, Webber said. The hardest part to find at home is the battery management system, the electronics that control a battery, he said, “because China has that locked up, people just keep buying the little BMSs from China.”
New Use Energy’s current commercial units are made in China, Paul Shmotolokha, the company’s CEO, told the DCNF in a phone interview. For the next-generation version it is building for the Army, “we’re designing more for the supply chain, so it’ll be no Chinese parts,” he said.
“This program could create real jobs over time and support American component manufacturers in areas where we’ve ceded almost the entire market,” Shmotolokha said in September, according to NextGen Defense.
“We use Ukrainian sniper suit technology to wrap our cases if they’re operating in exposed environments, so that we shield from those IR drones,” Shmotolokha told the DCNF, referring to cheap drones that can spot heat.
“Diesel pound for pound is great, but you can’t use it indoors, which means can’t hide it,” he said, adding that “drones hear generators.”
“However much power you need or energy you need, double it. You always need more,” Shmotolokha said.
DLA Energy sold 76.5 million barrels of fuel, or about 3.2 billion gallons, to all of its customers in fiscal 2025, according to the agency’s 2025 fact book.
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