The Pentagon is preparing every major U.S. military installation in the continental United States to operate for at least 90 days without outside support, a requirement meant to keep American forces fighting even if a major war cripples power grids, disrupts supply chains and threatens critical infrastructure at home.
The requirement is part of a broader initiative called FORTRESS, according to documents reviewed by Fox News Digital, which first reported the details. Under the plan, each base would have to sustain essential operations independently, including access to electricity, water, fuel and communications.
Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell, who led the initiative, defended the standard in a statement to the outlet. “We don’t want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense. We just simply can’t. It’s an intolerable risk,” Parnell said.
“Power Is Combat Now”
Parnell tied the push to the military’s dependence on civilian electricity. “Power is combat now. Without electricity, you lose communications, water, logistics, assembly lines and just basic military command structures,” he said.
FORTRESS envisions portable nuclear reactors, large-scale battery storage and microgrids that could disconnect installations from the civilian grid during prolonged outages. “Mission-critical power must be independent, hardened, and redundant,” Parnell said.
The 90-day standard goes further than an earlier Pentagon announcement of plans to reduce installations’ dependence on civilian power grids. It extends the requirement beyond electricity to the other services needed to sustain military operations.
“That World Is Gone”
Parnell described the plan as a response to a changed threat picture for the homeland. “I realized that a lot of the way we think about homeland defense was built around the antiquated assumption that two oceans would protect us,” he said.
“President Trump understands that world is gone, and he’s already paved the way for new thinking: Golden Dome, a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere, Greenland, Panama,” Parnell added.
Reserves, Factories and Supply Chains
The strategy also assumes that the global supply chains feeding the military would be disrupted in a major war. “The next conflict will likely be fought on multiple fronts. Look at the geopolitics behind any major war. When that happens, global supply chains will break,” Parnell said.
FORTRESS calls for strategic reserves of munitions, fuel, critical minerals, electronics, spare parts and medical supplies. For the military’s most critical dependencies, it sets a requirement of at least two qualified supply or production pathways, so the loss of one factory or supplier cannot halt operations.
The plan also folds in the Civil Reserve Manufacturing Network, an existing initiative under which the Pentagon would identify commercial factories able to shift to defense production in a crisis. The Pentagon would set technical specifications, cybersecurity protections, contracting arrangements and conversion procedures in advance, and would run recurring industrial stress tests and mobilization exercises.
Other measures aim to harden military communications, navigation and satellite capabilities against interference, including keeping operations running if GPS signals are jammed or space-based assets are disrupted. “You don’t want to be making these decisions in the middle of a global multi-front conflict. We have to have a plan,” Parnell said, calling FORTRESS an insurance policy for the homeland.
How the Program Began
FORTRESS America was formally launched by Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth on Sept. 30, 2026, and an Oct. 6 memorandum set up a program office to coordinate five areas: energy independence, industrial resilience, strategic reserves, installation protection and space communications. At the launch, Hegseth said: “Every major military installation in America is going to generate its own power, independent of the civilian grid.”
He added that if an adversary takes down the grid “by cyber attack, by sabotage, or by any means, our bases stay lit, our aircraft keep flying, our command centers never go dark.” The Pentagon has not set a public implementation deadline for the 90-day requirement.
Microreactors Already Under Contract
The reactor component builds on programs already underway. On Aug. 26, the Army announced agreements with five companies under its Janus program, worth up to $2.2 billion in milestone-based funding, to build nuclear microreactors at installations across the country. The Army expects more than 20 microreactors, with installations beginning in 2028.
The Army has said the installations would remain connected to the commercial grid and that the reactors would not fully power them. The reported 90-day standard is therefore a requirement the Pentagon is working toward, not a capability the bases are known to have today.
Army Rehearses Mass Battlefield Burials
The preparations come as the Army has publicly disclosed a separate and far grimmer exercise. In a statement, the Army said soldiers in North Carolina completed a “test-of-concept” exercise for large-scale battlefield temporary interment, which it has not needed to do on a large scale since the Korean War.
Soldiers from the 3rd Corps Sustainment Command and the 20th Engineer Brigade, along with chaplains and religious support personnel, used earthmoving equipment in the second phase of Operation Dragon Covenant. The goal was to test whether remains could be kept intact for later forensic identification and return to the United States. The Army said that over the past quarter-century, U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan evacuated their dead to the United States rather than burying them in large temporary graves.
Sgt. 1st Class Delbert Ruede, the senior fatality management noncommissioned officer for the 3rd Corps Sustainment Command, described the purpose in the Army’s release. “This exercise allowed us to take a critical look at how we respect, honor, and systematically manage our fallen in a high-intensity conflict,” Ruede said.