🇺🇲 The Pentagon wants every major US base able to run for 90 days cut off from the grid and outside supplies, with portable reactors, microgrids and stockpiles, and a two-supplier rule for its most critical parts The Pentagon is writing a new survival standard for American bases. Under a program called FORTRESS, every major military installation in the continental United States would be expected to keep essential operations running on its own for at least 90 days, including electricity, water, fuel and communications, Fox News Digital reported Sunday, citing documents it reviewed. "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," Pentagon chief spokesperson Sean Parnell told the outlet. "Power is combat now." The plan reaches well beyond backup generators. Fox reports that FORTRESS envisions portable nuclear reactors, large-scale battery storage and microgrids that can cut a base off from the civilian grid. It calls for strategic reserves of munitions, fuel, critical minerals, electronics, spare parts and medical supplies, sized to how fast each is used up in a major war. For the military's most critical dependencies, it requires at least two qualified supply or production pathways, so the loss of one factory cannot stop operations. It also folds in the Civil Reserve Manufacturing Network, which would identify commercial factories that could switch to defense work in a crisis, with specifications, cybersecurity rules and contracts set in advance, plus recurring "industrial stress tests." Efforts to keep navigation and satellites working under GPS jamming are part of it too. FORTRESS itself is not new. Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth announced it on Sept. 30 (video below), promising that "every major military installation in America is going to generate its own power, independent of the civilian grid." On Oct. 6, acquisition chief Michael Duffey set up a FORTRESS America Program Office with Matt O'Malley, a nominee still awaiting Senate confirmation, as interim director. What Sunday's report adds is the 90-day bar, which goes beyond electricity to water, fuel and communications, and the two-supplier rule. Neither Fox nor DefenseScoop gives a cost, a budget line or a deadline, and Fox describes these as requirements in planning documents. The plan is a bet that a future war could reach the homeland through cyberattacks, sabotage or a broken supply chain, and a signal to industry. If funded, it points money toward small reactors, batteries, microgrids, stockpiles and second sources for parts now made in one place. "You don't want to be making these decisions in the middle of a global multi-front conflict," Parnell said.