The House Appropriations Committee wants to increase the Air Force's fuel budget by $284 million as part of a larger effort to address a "habitual underfunding" of fuel costs across the Defense Department.

The recently released plan on future Navy energy technologies has been signed off on by resource sponsors on the chief of naval operations' staff and will be used to inform budgets for years to come, improving the likelihood that the sea service will find room in tight budgets for the science and technology at the backbone of future ships and weapons systems, an official told Inside the Navy last week.

The Marine Corps will continue hosting Experimental Forward Operating Bases to identify technologies that reduce dependency on energy and water in the battlefield even as the service draws down its presence in Afghanistan and budgets remain uncertain, the deputy assistant secretary of the Navy for energy said last week.

The Navy and its industry partners should start working now to develop the energy technologies that will be needed decades into the future to support advanced radars and energy weapons, particularly with the Arleigh Burke-class destroyer and Littoral Combat Ship replacement programs looming at the back end of the service's 30-year shipbuilding plan, according to a new roadmap released last week by Naval Sea Systems Command.

The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, working with the Army Energy Initiatives Task Force, has awarded a first-of-its-kind contract in a move that could direct as much as $7 billion of private financing into supporting renewable energy at Defense Department installations, according to an Army announcement.

The Air Force is trying to locate additional funding to pay for an unexpected $700 million fuel bill that cropped up during fiscal year 2013.