Pentagon official says future military bases will be designed for mission
by Mike Glenn · The Washington TimesThe Pentagon’s plan to build “the next great American base” is significantly different from how military installations were once constructed, a senior defense official said Tuesday.
Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth announced the project last month and said the nation’s governors would be able to pitch their state as a home for 15,000 to 25,000 military personnel.
Rather than erecting random buildings on a plot of land and expecting military units to adapt to their surroundings, the mission will drive the construction effort, the defense official said during a discussion with the Washington-based Defense Writers Group.
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“This is not military construction. This is not the way we have ever built anything before,” the Pentagon official told The Washington Times. “The design of a new base from the ground up allows us to purpose-build it as a capability — as a weapon system.”
The senior defense official wasn’t authorized to publicy address the policy changes and spoke on background.
The base will be expected to provide its own power apart from the local grid and be able to defend itself against threats such as drone attacks.
“It’s all baked into the very nature of the design,” the defense official said. “It’s going to be really interesting to see what concepts they want to bring to us and where we go from there.”
The Pentagon also is evaluating options for expanding the U.S. military footprint in Greenland following the Trump administration’s announcement in September that remote military outposts in Mestersvig and Narsarsuaq would become U.S. bases while the Pituffik Space Base would be expanded.
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“We have to first work around the weather, and access is always going to be part of the challenge,” the senior defense official said. “If I need to create a capability and I need to put people into a location for a period of time, what do I need to think about? I need to think about food. I need to think about lodging. I need to think about energy.”
The U.S. team is working closely with officials in Greenland and Denmark to determine what military capability is suited at each of the bases under review. He said Mestersvig has a 6,000-foot gravel runway and probably would be primarily used by special operations troops.
Greenland is an autonomous Danish country.
The Pentagon also is looking at potential upgrades to the runway at Narsaruaq, in the southern part of Greenland.
“If it’s capable of putting in C-130s, great. If I needed to put fighter aircraft in there for some reason, is that an option? What would that take? How would I expand it?” the defense official said.
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President Trump first expressed a desire to purchase Greenland for the United States during his first presidential term in August 2019. Danish and Greenlandic officials rejected the offer as absurd.
Following his return to the White House, Mr. Trump began suggesting that the U.S. might seize the island by military force. He threatened to impose tariffs on Denmark and other European countries over Greenland but canceled them before the duties took effect.
Rather than a military takeover or outright purchase of Greenland, the Trump administration in September updated a 1951 treaty between the U.S. and Denmark that allows the U.S. to set up military bases on the island.
Unlike the bilateral pact between Washington and Copenhagen, the new deal includes Greenland as a co-signatory. It grants the autonomous territory a direct vote in its own defense and security decisions.
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