Expeditionary Fuel Production: Making Fuel On Site

Expeditionary fuel production is the ability to produce fuel on-site, at the point of use, rather than transporting it from centralized refineries. It's a direct answer to one of the oldest vulnerabilities in any operation: the long, exposed supply chain between where fuel is made and where it's needed. The AIRCO MAD Fuel System™ is our expeditionary fuel solution. Designed for environments where centralized fuel infrastructure is unreliable or unavailable, MAD produces fuel on-site, reducing resupply risk, simplifying operations, and strengthening energy resilience across both defense and civilian use cases.

Why Traditional Fuel Logistics Create Operational Risk

Traditional fuel logistics create operational risk by having long supply chains between where the crude is sourced, where the fuel is refined and the entities that depend on it. Crude oil is commonly extracted in one region, refined in another, and moved thousands of miles before it reaches the point of use. Every transfer, border, storage facility, and route along the way introduces another place where the supply can be disrupted.

According to the U.S. Energy Information Administration (opens in a new tab), approximately 79.8 million barrels per day of petroleum and other liquids moved through seaborne trade during the first half of 2025. The Strait of Malacca alone carried 23.2 million barrels per day, while the Strait of Hormuz carried 20.9 million. Concentrating that much volume through a handful of narrow passages means a disruption at any one of the can (and does) ripple across the entire global supply.

The current war with Iran has resulted in roughly an 87 percent drop (opens in a new tab) in the seven-day moving average of daily tanker volume, when comparing March data from 2025 to 2026. Tanker traffic through the Bab el-Mandeb and Bosphorus has seen similar disruptions, and transit through the Kerch Strait has ceased. While tankers can be rerouted, doing so is expensive. The cost of Brent Crude Oil (opens in a new tab) is over $100 a barrel, about 33 percent more than before the war.

The extent to which a country is exposed to risk depends on how much it relies on the broader supply chain. While the United States became a net petroleum exporter (opens in a new tab) in 2020, Europe and East Asia lack the domestic crude oil reserves needed to meet much of their fuel demand and therefore rely on imports from distant producers. Conflict, shifting trade relationships, port restrictions, and logistical bottlenecks can therefore affect transportation, manufacturing, defense readiness, and other essential systems far beyond the location of the original disruption. And even where fuel is produced and refined domestically, the risk doesn’t disappear. It simply moves wherever the fuel has to travel the farthest from the supply.

The challenges are most evident in remote or contested environments, where fuel must be transported farther, protected in transit, stored securely, and delivered under conditions where routes or infrastructure may already be compromised. Once all expenses are included, the fully delivered cost of diesel or jet fuel can reach $100 to $400 per gallon in some regions. Operational plans built around continuous resupply are dependent on convoys, tankers, and fixed infrastructure that may be unavailable when fuel is needed most.

Producing fuel closer to the point of use reduces dependence on vulnerable transportation routes, limits single points of failure, and gives operators greater control over when and where fuel is available.

How Expeditionary Fuel Production Works

Expeditionary fuel production is made possible through the AIRCO MAD Fuel System. Rather than refining crude or processing biological feedstocks, MAD converts carbon dioxide (CO₂) and hydrogen (H₂) into finished fuels such as Jet-A1, Diesel, JP-8, and F-76.

Most synthetic aviation fuel (SAF) produced today still relies on feedstocks that have their own supply chains. For instance, HEFA fuels are made from used cooking oils and other lipids, which the International Energy Agency (opens in a new tab) (IEA) has warned face looming supply shortages, and alcohol-to-jet pathways rely on energy crops like corn and sugarcane that aren't available in every region. A fuel that can't be made without shipping in its ingredients doesn't solve the logistics problem.

The AIRCO fuel pathways were built to avoid the trap of simply relocating the supply risk to a similarly long and complex supply chain. CO₂ can be drawn from point sources or pulled directly from the air using direct air capture (DAC), and H₂ can be produced on-site from water, allowing for the AIRCO feedstocks to be at the same location the fuel is made Our single-step conversion process is also more efficient than the legacy Fischer-Tropsch method that most power-to-liquid fuels rely on, which is what allows the technology to be compressed into a containerized unit and deployed anywhere in the world.

MAD creates a true drop-in solution that meets the specifications of conventional jet fuel and diesel and runs in existing engines and aircraft with no modification needed. It's the same fuel we validated with the U.S. Air Force, proven under the performance demands of a defense customer before it ever reached a commercial runway. Because the system is feedstock- and energy-agnostic, it can operate with grid power, renewables, generators, or whatever energy source a given deployment makes available.

Benefits of Expeditionary Fuel Production

Expeditionary fuel production changes fuel from something that has to be delivered into something that can be made on demand, wherever operations require it. There are concrete benefits for defense, industrial, and humanitarian operators alike:

Produced at the point of use. MAD produces fuel directly where it's consumed, closing the gap between where fuel is made and where it's needed and eliminating the long transit that traditional supply chains rely on.
Mobile and rapidly deployable. The containerized system can be set up quickly in the field, moved when the mission moves, and redeployed as conditions change, rather than being tied to fixed refining or storage infrastructure.
Scalable to demand. Operators can run a single unit or a coordinated network of them, adding capacity as needs grow without rebuilding the underlying system.
Decentralized by design. Producing fuel locally eliminates the single points of failure, such as chokepoints, convoys, and fixed depots, that make centralized supply chains vulnerable to disruption.
Adaptable inputs. The system is feedstock- and energy-agnostic, running on multiple carbon and power sources depending on what a given deployment makes available.
Configurable output. Both the volume produced and the type of fuel can be tuned to the mission at hand, so the system matches operational requirements rather than forcing operations to adjust to a fixed supply.

Expeditionary Fuel Production vs. Traditional Fuel Supply

Traditional fuel supply and expeditionary fuel production solve the same problem in opposite ways: one delivers fuel across long, vulnerable supply chains, while the other produces it where it's needed. The contrast shows up across every operationally significant dimension.

Expeditionary Fuel Production

Factor	Expeditionary fuel production	Traditional fuel supply
Where fuel is made	Produced on-site, at the point of use	Refined at centralized facilities, often far from where it’s used
Distance to point of use	Effectively zero as the fuel is made where it is consumed	Thousands of miles before delivery
Points of failure	Decentralized production substantially reduces points of failure	Chokepoints, convoys, and fixed depots each add a place where supply can break
Contested environments	Designed to operate where a centralized supply cannot reliably reach	Exposed, where routes and infrastructure may already be compromised
Fuel availability	Produced continuously and matched to real-time demand	Dependent on convoy and resupply schedules
Delivered cost	Cuts the transport, security, and storage burden that drives cost	Exceedingly high once transport, security, and storage are included
Inputs	CO₂ and H₂, sourced or produced almost anywhere	Crude oil, extracted and refined in specific regions

Applications Beyond the Battlefield

The logistics problem MAD solves isn't unique to the military’s tactical fuel needs. Anywhere centralized fuel infrastructure is impractical, unreliable, or simply out of reach, the same capability is equally valuable. Defense operations (opens in a new tab) are often where a technology like this is proven first, because their requirements are the most demanding, but the applications translate well past the front line.

Two domains show where the relevance extends:

Remote and industrial operations. Maritime routes, aviation hubs, and other austere or off-grid locations face the same core challenge as forward operations: fuel is expensive and difficult to deliver, and any interruption stalls everything that depends on it. On-site production gives these operators a local, controllable supply rather than one tied to distant refineries and long delivery routes.
Disaster response and humanitarian missions. When storms, conflict, or infrastructure failure sever normal supply lines, fuel is often needed most exactly where it's hardest to deliver. A deployable system that produces fuel on the ground can keep generators, vehicles, and relief operations running without waiting on a supply chain that may itself be compromised.

How AIRCO Supports Expeditionary Fuel Production

Every mile between where fuel is made and where it's used is a mile where the supply chain can break down. We built the AIRCO MAD Fuel System to erase the distance, producing synthetic fuel directly at the point of use so operators no longer depend on supply chains that can be stretched, cut, or attacked.

Turn fuel from a vulnerability into a capability you control. Connect with our team to discuss expeditionary fuel production opportunities.

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