The Pentagon Wants Bases Ready Without the Grid
The Pentagon is planning for major military installations across the United States to operate off-grid for at least 90 days. The goal is to keep them running without relying on civilian power grids, outside fuel deliveries, or public water supplies. Chief Pentagon spokesman Sean Parnell confirmed Fox News Digital’s reporting on Oct. 25 and shared the article in a post on X. “FORTRESS is strategic deterrence in action, ensuring our defenses are hardened, proactive, and ready,” he wrote. Under the plan, the 90-day standard covers electricity, water, fuel, communications, and other services needed to sustain military operations. That makes infrastructure a direct part of defense planning, rather than a background utility everyone assumes will work when needed.
FORTRESS Treats Power as Part of Combat
FORTRESS stands for Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability. Parnell said he created FORTRESS America because the United States can no longer rely on two oceans for protection. He said that old assumption no longer reflects the threats facing the country. Parnell also said President Donald Trump and Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth had paved the way through Golden Dome and a renewed focus on the Western Hemisphere, including Greenland and Panama. The strategy anticipates major disruptions to global supply chains that provide weapons, equipment, and critical materials. It also calls for preparing civilian manufacturing for wartime mobilization. “We don’t want to rely on standard civilian municipal infrastructure to run our national defense,” Parnell told Fox News, calling that an intolerable risk. He added, “Power is combat now,” because losing electricity would damage communications, water, logistics, assembly lines, and military command structures.
Hegseth Wants Reserves, Hardening, and Independent Power
Hegseth announced FORTRESS on Sept. 30 during his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico. He said the military was building strategic reserves deep enough to fight through disruption and hardening every installation on American soil against cyber intrusion, sabotage, and drones. The military has also taken steps to develop small nuclear reactors that could generate power independently of local energy grids. The strategy is not limited to emergency fuel or backup generators. It combines stockpiles, physical and digital protection, independent energy, and a stronger link between military needs and civilian manufacturing. In theory, that is resilience. In practice, the difficult part is making all those pieces work when the disruptions they are meant to address are already underway.
Britain Prepares for War and Catastrophe
Across the Atlantic, the United Kingdom is also increasing preparations for conflict or catastrophe. British Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said the country must be ready for war in 1,000 days after the government advised citizens to stock essential supplies. Writing in the Telegraph, Streeting warned that Britain’s enemies could be ready to attack by 2030. He said the danger may not come through conventional military action, pointing instead to hybrid warfare such as technology disruptions and disinformation campaigns. British households are being urged to keep nine liters of bottled water and three days of food for a weather, cyber, or other critical emergency. Parents with babies are advised to store essential products. Households are also urged to keep blankets, cash, a first-aid kit, a flashlight with batteries, and a wind-up FM radio. The list is less cinematic than a war movie, which is precisely why it is useful.
Why It Matters
The importance of this plan is that it treats basic infrastructure as part of national defense, not as someone else’s problem. If power, water, fuel, or communications fail, the military cannot simply assume civilian systems will recover on schedule. That raises the stakes for service members, the installations that support them, and the civilian factories expected to help sustain wartime production. It also shows how a threat can arrive through disruption rather than a traditional attack. Bureaucracies often discover resilience only after the outage, so planning before the crisis is the less glamorous but more useful option.
The broader picture is a move away from old assumptions about geography and toward preparation for cyber intrusion, sabotage, drones, supply-chain disruption, and hybrid pressure. The United States and Britain are presented as addressing the same basic problem from different angles: the military must keep functioning, while households are urged to endure an emergency. The open questions are practical ones. How far will the Pentagon’s hardening effort reach, how will strategic reserves and independent power be maintained, and how will civilian manufacturing be organized when supply chains are strained? The source describes the direction, but not the full cost, timetable, or test of success. That gap deserves more attention than another round of polished official slogans.
Source: The Liberty Daily
