Soldiers, weapons, food and fuel are important but the U.S. Army absolutely cannot operate for long without water, a top Pentagon official told Reuters 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, safety and occupational health.

“Somebody recently said water’s the new oil and there’s a lot to be said for that,” Davis said at the Reuters Global Environment Summit.

“You can get out there … and deploy to an area for conducting operations, but if water’s not there for drinking purposes and for cooking, showering, laundry, things like that, then you’re not going to be able to sustain the force.” 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 told Reuters.

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

(Source: Reuters)

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