Parting the fog of war: Assessing military greenhouse gas emissions from below

• The procurement process of militaries, particularly during war time can be complex and secretive, which makes access to data needed to conduct Life Cycle Assessments (LCA) difficult to obtain. • Our framework uses a whole supply chain LCA to measure the carbon emissions from concrete used by the US military during the Iraq war. • Our results show that the combined emissions of T-walls alone used in Iraq came to 54.8 thousand tonnes CO2e, which is equal to 12, 782 gasoline-powered US passenger vehicles driven for one year. • These findings are useful to overcome the secretive nature of military supply chains and calculate carbon emissions and social and environmental impacts during war and occupation. • These calculations point to the urgent need for mandatory military emissions reporting for both war and peacetime through the UN framework convention on climate change (UNFCCC). The world's militaries account for up to 5.5 % of total global greenhouse emissions, yet there is still no requirement for governments to report these emissions in international climate agreements. Researchers are therefore left on their own to assess military emissions. This may seem like an incredibly daunting task. The lack of data is even more stark during periods of conflict, where reporting is relatively non-existent. This article sets out a novel framework for examining greenhouse gas emissions from military supply chains including situations where emissions data are difficult to acquire due to supply chain complexity, or when data are purposefully held back under the guise of national security. We provide an empirical study of supply chain-based carbon from the US military's use of concrete during the Second Iraq War (2003–08) to demonstrate its practicability. Concrete has a massive carbon footprint, and the US military uses a lot of it for protective walls, checkpoints, bases and bunkers. This work provides the tools to measure carbon embodied in military supply chains reinforcing recent calls for standardised frameworks emphasising the accounting of military environmental infrastructure footprints.