Batteries for the infantry

The Toronto Star has an article about the battery requirements of the Canadian infantry in Afghanistan and the efforts to develop a replacement.

The average infantry soldier on a three-day mission in Kandahar carries up to 40 spare AA batteries. That rises to more than 900 batteries for a platoon, 3,200 for a company and 6,500 for a full battle group of about 1,000 soldiers. The cost of equipping all the 2,800 Canadians soldiers in Afghanistan with enough juice to power their equipment for a standard six-month deployment, approximately 750,000 batteries weighing about 14 tonnes, can run up to $1 million.