The US Army awarded a nearly $50 million contract for machines that act as giant dehumidifiers, turning air into drinking water for service members who may be operating in remote locations where conventional water resupply could be difficult or dangerous.
An announcement posted to the Pentagon’s website this month said Florida-based Genesis Systems had been chosen for research, development, testing, and procurement of WaterCube Atmospheric Water Generation systems “to provide scalable, on-site potable water production in austere and contested environments.”
According to the company’s website, its largest water generator, which appears to be housed in a 20-ft shipping container, produces around 1,000 gallons of water per day in humid weather.
The cubes can be remotely monitored and are already used for emergency relief — the generators were prepositioned for use in 2024 as Hurricane Milton knocked out local utilities for local hospitals, tech news outlet Wired reported.
Smaller versions, which start at $6,500, according to the company’s website, come with a smaller footprint. They can be powered by solar, don’t require an online connection, and are marketed toward people looking to make their own water at home or off the grid.
Water is one of the most essential needs for any military sustaining troops in combat. During the Global War on Terror, pallets of bottled water were trucked or flown to US troops on bases throughout the Middle East, a heavy logistical burden requiring manpower, vehicles, and fuel to move.
Sometimes the military stores water in large “bladders” or tanker trucks, but those taxing approaches still depend on established, reliable logistics networks. In a complex, large-scale conflict, for which the US military has been dramatically transforming itself, a war where resupply may be vulnerable to attack or even unlikely, delivering fresh water is much harder.
Atmospheric water generation does not completely eliminate the logistics challenge though. The large generators require ample electricity and maintenance.
Amid a massive effort to reinvent the service for a high-tech, violent future fight, the Army has been increasingly looking for ways to produce more of what troops need closer to the battlefield.
Army researchers said in December that producing drinking water from the air could provide an alternative to hauling it in by convoy to austere locations, part of the broader push to sustain troops in contested environments where they may be cut off from the support that soldiers had ready available during the GWOT.
Last year, the Army turned to Genesis and another company, AirJoule, to explore “waste-heat utilization, according to an Army press release.
Water generators could also serve as partial solutions for water scarcity concerns, a growing problem in dry regions of the world, including in western US states like California, Colorado, New Mexico, and Utah, though the machines work best in humid climates. Some have already been marketed toward data centers, which consume massive amounts of water to keep servers cool.
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