Pentagon’s FORTRESS plan targets 90 days of base operations without civilian infrastructure

The Pentagon is developing FORTRESS to allow major U.S. military bases to keep operating on their own for at least 90 days during a major conflict.¹ A related description says every major installation in the continental United States would need to maintain essential functions for at least three months without depending on civilian infrastructure.² The 90-day period and the three-month formulation describe the same general duration, while the latter specifies that the requirement applies across major installations in the continental United States.¹² The plan is framed around continuity during conflict, rather than only restoring a base after civilian services fail.¹²

The basic readiness goal is access to electricity, water, fuel, and communications when civilian systems cannot be relied upon.² Power has particular importance in the Pentagon’s explanation because communications, weapons production, logistics, and command functions all need dependable electricity.² The department is considering portable nuclear reactors, substantial battery storage, and independent microgrids as possible ways for bases to secure energy.² The available description identifies those options as under examination; it does not say that any one has been selected or installed at every base.²

FORTRESS also concerns supplies that could be needed to sustain military activity, including ammunition, fuel, critical minerals, electronics, replacement parts, and medical items.² The planned reserves are intended to help U.S. forces continue functioning if shipping routes are interrupted or domestic manufacturers cannot keep wartime output going.² A separate proposed safeguard would require at least two qualified supply or production routes for critical defense materials.² These provisions describe different parts of the supply picture: stored materials provide reserves, while the pathway rule concerns qualified ways to obtain or produce critical items.²

The Civil Reserve Manufacturing Network would identify factories able to shift quickly into defense production during a national emergency.² The Pentagon also plans repeated industrial stress tests and mobilization exercises to assess whether manufacturers can continue working through extended disruptions.² Those exercises are intended to assess manufacturing capacity, while the network is described as a way to find factories that could change their production role.² The stated aim is to have reserves and industrial arrangements ready before a crisis starts, rather than waiting for one to expose gaps.²

The program’s scope extends beyond energy and supplies to include installation security and protection of communications and navigation.² The Pentagon is preparing to protect military communications, satellites, and navigation systems against electronic warfare, GPS jamming, and interference with space-based infrastructure.² These concerns sit alongside plans for strategic reserves and energy independence in the program’s stated set of work areas.² The measures therefore cover both the resources bases need to function and systems used to communicate and navigate, without specifying in these facts how individual installations will meet each requirement.²

Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced FORTRESS America during his State of the Force address on September 30.² Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell said dependence on municipal civilian infrastructure for national defense posed an unacceptable risk.² Parnell also described electricity as essential to modern warfare because it supports communications, weapons manufacturing, logistics, and command systems.² He said the preparations reflect a reassessment of the belief that the Atlantic and Pacific oceans provide sufficient protection from conflicts overseas.²

The background includes a federal warning in February 2024 that Chinese state-backed hackers associated with Volt Typhoon had accessed networks forming part of critical U.S. infrastructure.¹ A separate domestic power disruption followed an attack by gunmen on two electrical substations in North Carolina in December 2022.¹ The incident left roughly 45,000 customers without electricity, and some remained without power for five days.¹ These examples concern infrastructure access and an actual interruption to electricity, while FORTRESS sets out a military readiness requirement rather than a claim that such events have already occurred at the bases it covers.¹²

Other Pentagon technology work provides a separate context for the department’s preparations, though the supplied facts do not describe it as part of FORTRESS.³ According to POLITICO, the Technology Support Office was established in April by combining two classified programs that had conducted similar work on a smaller scale since 2023.³ POLITICO reported that the office works with senior military and intelligence officials on methods to obstruct foreign access to important defense technologies.³ Deputy Pentagon Press Secretary Jacob Bliss rejected POLITICO’s account, saying its claims relied on information that was not true.³

Hegseth also announced Project Meridian, which is intended to identify weapons and capabilities the U.S. military should maintain to preserve its technological advantage.³ Its review is set to include artificial intelligence, autonomous systems, directed-energy weapons, robotics, and biotechnology.³ Project Meridian is to be led by Elon Musk of SpaceX, Palmer Luckey, who founded Anduril Industries, and former House Speaker Newt Gingrich; Pentagon technology chief Emil Michael is helping facilitate the work.³ The project is expected to deliver its recommendations and findings to Hegseth no later than 120 days after it is announced, and the specified deadline is January 28, 2027.³ That reporting schedule applies to Meridian; the cited FORTRESS material does not give a comparable date for completing the base-readiness requirements.¹³