Pentagon eyes ‘public-private partnerships’ to help fund FORTRESS America homeland base plan

The Pentagon is seen from a flight taking off from Ronald Reagan Washington National Airport on October 10, 2026 in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo by Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images)

TAMPA, Fla. — The Pentagon is planning to pursue “public-private partnerships” to offset the cost of its ambitious FORTRESS America homeland base-hardening initiative, with the services already looking to identify opportunities, a senior Pentagon official told Breaking Defense.

“I think the reality of this one is this is where the public-private partnerships really start to pay,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment Dale Marks said on the sidelines of the Installation Innovation conference here this week. “The model that we’re trying to drive on is not me having to go back up on Capitol Hill with my hand out.”

Marks said the military services “are working on a prioritization scheme” for portions of the effort that could benefit from “commercial offtake.”

“It’s those partnerships that are going to probably allow us to move this at a little bit more speed and scale,” he said.

Exactly a month ago, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth unveiled FORTRESS to “serve as the nation’s insurance policy.” The idea was to pursue five pillars that would each make individual homeland bases more secure: energy independence, boosting supply chains, better distributing key stockpiles, hardening installations and making sure weapons work if satellite communications go dark.

“Fortress America does not mean we are retreating behind our borders. It means we are securing our launching pad,” Marks said on stage this week. “It means that when the United States decides to project power across the globe, that power will be unyielding, sustained, and unstoppable because the home front cannot be severed.”

Marks said that his work with other senior leaders is focused not mandating a completion date for every existing US installation to be FORTRESS-compliant, but on identifying priorities and ways to drive down costs.

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In the interview with Breaking Defense, Marks didn’t specify which areas or projects may be ripe for public-private deals — or if DoD could involve itself in additional high-dollar loans for critical industries as part of the effort as it has previously.

But in the interview and during a public address here he did expand on the thinking behind FORTRESS’s five pillars and why the DoD is trying to take a flexible approach.

‘Sovereign Operational Continuity’

Marks emphasized at the show and when speaking to Breaking Defense that the Pentagon isn’t starting from scratch with FORTRESS, as several initiatives have been underway to help solve some longstanding problems.

Take the first pillar: energy independence. There has been an ongoing push to make US bases energy self-sustaining, and that is moving forward under FORTRESS with the goal of finding ways to power bases for “30, 60, or even 90 days without a single watt of outside power,” Marks told an audience.

“Every premier military installation must achieve sovereign operational continuity,” Marks added. “Our priority is straightforward: We are ending the era of base operations, depending on the commercial civilian grid.”

But just what this looks like will vary from location to location, he later told Breaking Defense.

Part of the goal is to build off of the Army’s Janus program that is spending $2.2 billion for five companies to build out and test their nuclear microreactors prototypes on military installations. But, Marks explained, the plan is not to field those microreactors on every installation.

“There’s going to be other sources of energy that we’re going to use, whether that’s natural gas, geothermal,” he said.

The second pillar, domestic supply chain resilience, is another area the department has been previously working on.

“We built exquisite fifth-gen aircraft and stealth destroyers, and then quietly allowed the critical components – the rare earth magnets, the titanium sponge, the defense-grade semiconductors, and the solid rocket propellants – to be mined, refined, and manufactured across foreign supply chains,” Marks told the audience. “That dangerous vulnerability ends now.”

Work to shore up the US supply chain is already underway and has included President Donald Trump’s executive order in July that essentially gave companies until the start of 2027 to stop using critical materials and minerals from Russia, Iran, North Korea and China. The Pentagon also recently provided conditional loans to private firms within the rare earth elements sector.

RELATED: As critical minerals deadline looms, Army expects to feel ‘some impact’

FORTRESS’s third pillar revolves around installation hardening and cyber-physical survivability. On stage, Marks explained that this will mean “moving beyond cosmetic physical security” and will require outfitting installations with “ biomimetic and ultra high-performance concrete protective structures, subterranean command and control vaults, layered short-range air defenses, concealed direct energy counter drone systems, and zero trust completely air-gapped operational technology networks.” While Marks did not publicly tie work on this pillar to the Golden Dome homeland defense plan , he told Breaking Defense his team is currently embedded with the Direct Reporting Portfolio Manager to prioritize coverage areas.

The fourth FORTRESS pillar centers around shoring up strategic reserves like ammunition and spare parts, and better dispersing them around the country — an area ripe of various public-private opportunities like factories and depots.

“We’re mandating a 90-day sovereign stockpile of critical parts, fuels, propellants, ammunitions on site, coupled with digital additive manufacturing depots capable of fabricating critical combat spares directly inside the wire under embargo conditions,” Marks explained on stage. The fifth and final FORTRESS pillar the Pentagon is pursuing revolves around space inspector resilience and making sure the US can still use its weapons if adversaries are using anti-satellite, terrestrial jamming, or electronic warfare weapons.

“Fortress America mandates that our primary operational platforms operate within a contested, by design, electromagnetic environment for deploying ground-based GPS, subterranean inertial reference networks, and direct optical laser trunk lines,” Marks said. “If every commercial communication cell line in low Earth orbit is blinded tomorrow, our commanders will still see the battle space.”

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2026年10月10日，从弗吉尼亚州阿灵顿的罗纳德·里根华盛顿国家机场起飞的飞机上拍摄到五角大楼。（图片来源：Anna Moneymaker/Getty Images）

佛罗里达州坦帕市——一位五角大楼高级官员告诉《防务新闻》，五角大楼计划寻求“公私合作”来抵消其雄心勃勃的“美国堡垒”国土基地加固计划的成本，各军种已经在寻找机会。

“我认为，公私合作模式真正发挥作用的地方就在这里，”国防部负责能源、设施和环境的助理部长戴尔·马克斯本周在此举行的设施创新会议间隙表示。“我们正在努力推行的这种模式，让我不必再去国会山伸手要钱了。”

马克思表示，军方“正在制定优先方案”，以确定哪些部分的工作可以从“商业承购”中受益。

“正是这些合作关系，或许能够让我们以更快的速度和更大的规模推进这项工作，”他说。

整整一个月前，国防部长皮特·赫格塞斯公布了“堡垒计划”（FORTRESS），旨在“作为国家的保险政策”。该计划的构想是围绕五大支柱展开，逐一提升国土安全基地的安全：能源独立、加强供应链、更好地分配关键物资储备、加固设施以及确保在卫星通信中断的情况下武器仍能正常运作。

“‘美国堡垒’并不意味着我们退守国界，而是意味着我们巩固了我们的发射阵地，”马克思本周在台上说道。“这意味着，当美国决定向全球投射力量时，这种力量将是坚定不移、持续不断且势不可挡的，因为国内防线不容被切断。”

马克思表示，他与其他高级领导人的工作重点不是强制要求每个现有的美国设施在特定日期前达到 FORTRESS 标准，而是确定优先事项和降低成本的方法。

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在接受 Breaking Defense 采访时，马克思没有具体说明哪些领域或项目可能适合公私合作交易，也没有说明国防部是否会像以前那样，参与到为关键行业提供额外高额贷款的工作中。

但在采访中以及在一次公开演讲中，他详细阐述了 FORTRESS 五大支柱背后的理念，以及国防部为何要采取灵活的方式。

“主权运营连续性”

马克思在展会上以及接受《防务新闻》采访时都强调，五角大楼的 FORTRESS 项目并非从零开始，因为此前已经开展了多项举措来帮助解决一些长期存在的问题。

以能源独立为例。马克思向听众表示，美军一直在努力使军事基地实现能源自给自足，而“堡垒计划”（FORTRESS）正在推进这项工作，目标是找到在“完全不依赖外部电力”的情况下，为基地提供30天、60天甚至90天电力供应的方法。

“每个一流军事设施都必须实现自主运行的连续性，”马克思补充道。“我们的首要任务很明确：我们要结束基地运行依赖民用电网的时代。”

但他后来告诉 Breaking Defense，具体情况会因地而异。

部分目标是借鉴陆军的“雅努斯计划”，该计划斥资22亿美元，委托五家公司在军事设施上建造和测试其核微型反应堆原型。但马克思解释说，该计划并非要在每个军事设施上都部署这些微型反应堆。

“我们还会利用其他能源，比如天然气、地热能等等，”他说。

第二个支柱是国内供应链韧性，这也是该部门之前一直在努力的方向。

“我们建造了精良的第五代战机和隐形驱逐舰，然后却悄悄地允许关键部件——稀土磁体、海绵钛、军用级半导体和固体火箭推进剂——通过海外供应链进行开采、提炼和制造，”马克思对听众说。“这种危险的漏洞现在结束了。”

加强美国供应链的工作已经展开，其中包括特朗普总统7月签署的行政命令，该命令实际上要求企业在2027年初之前停止使用来自俄罗斯、伊朗、朝鲜和中国的关键材料和矿产。五角大楼最近也向稀土元素行业的私营企业提供了有条件贷款。

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FORTRESS计划的第三大支柱围绕设施加固和网络物理生存能力展开。马克思在台上解释说，这意味着“超越表面的物理安全”，需要为设施配备“仿生超高性能混凝土防护结构、地下指挥控制中心、多层短程防空系统、隐蔽式定向能反无人机系统以及完全物理隔离的零信任作战技术网络”。虽然马克思没有公开将这一支柱的工作与“金穹顶”国土防御计划联系起来，但他告诉《防务新闻》，他的团队目前正与直接汇报项目经理密切合作，确定优先覆盖领域。

第四大支柱是加强战略储备，如弹药和备件，并更好地将其分散到全国各地——这是一个充满各种公私合作机会的领域，如工厂和仓库。

“我们正在强制要求在现场建立90天的关键零部件、燃料、推进剂和弹药主权储备，并配备数字化增材制造仓库，能够在禁运条件下直接在轨道上制造关键作战备件，”马克思在台上解释道。五角大楼正在推行的“堡垒”计划的第五个也是最后一个支柱，围绕着太空检查人员的韧性展开，确保即使对手使用反卫星武器、地面干扰武器或电子战武器，美国仍然能够使用其武器。

“‘美国堡垒’战略要求我们的主要作战平台必须在精心设计的、充满干扰的电磁环境下运行，以便部署地面全球定位系统、地下惯性参考网络和直接光激光干线，”马克思说。“即使明天低地球轨道上的所有商用通信线路都被干扰，我们的指挥官仍然能够掌握战场态势。”

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