Arizona Rep. Eli Crane recorded a video from the cab of his truck to answer a wave of constituent messages about the Pentagon’s FORTRESS initiative, telling viewers the program reflects sound military planning and not a warning that a crisis is near.
Crane, a former Navy SEAL who sits on the House Homeland Security Committee, said the messages prompted him to weigh in. He described the base-resilience effort as preparation defense officials have discussed for years and rejected the idea that the plan points to secret knowledge of an imminent threat.
Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled the program during his State of the Force address at Marine Corps Base Quantico. FORTRESS stands for Federal Operations for Resilience, Troop Resources, Energy, Supply, and Survivability, and Hegseth pitched it as a “national insurance policy” for the homeland.
The core requirement is blunt. Internal Pentagon documents reviewed by Fox News Digital call for every major installation in the continental United States to sustain essential operations, including electricity, water, fuel and communications, for at least 90 days without outside support. Options under review include microgrids, battery storage, portable nuclear reactors, geothermal and solar power, and natural gas. The program also absorbs the Civil Reserve Manufacturing Network, which the Pentagon plans to use to identify commercial factories that could convert to defense production during a crisis.
The Fox News Digital report drew wide pickup from other outlets, along with online claims that the plan signaled a coming war. Mimikama, a German fact-checking site, rated claims linking FORTRESS to a DEFCON 1 declaration or an imminent conflict as misleading.
Crane took on those fears from a different angle: his own access. He pointed to the war games officials in Washington run on a continuing basis and said his direct conversations with officials framed FORTRESS as contingency work, the kind of planning that keeps bases operational if the civilian grid fails, hackers strike, or supply lines break during wartime.
He called the initiative a “best practices move.”
His one complaint concerned timing. Crane said the Pentagon should have taken the step sooner, given how heavily military installations depend on outside power and supply networks to function.
That dependence remains the program’s starting point, not a solved problem. The 90-day standard is a planned requirement, and the documents reviewed by Fox News Digital do not show that major bases already meet it. The Pentagon has set no programwide completion date, and officials have not said whether overseas installations will eventually face the same 90-day standard.
