A month ago, self-styled “Secretary of War” Pete Hegseth unveiled his “Fortress America” plan to harden stateside military bases against all kinds of threats. The idea was to make individual homeland bases more secure by making sure they can operate for 90 days if they get cut off from the outside world. “Fortress America does not mean we are retreating behind our borders. It means we are securing our launching pad,” Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment Dale Marks said at the Installation Innovation conference in Tampa, FL, this week, reported Breaking Defense. “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.”

But among other things, it looks like a scheme to cut the US Congress out of its constitutional role in regulating the military. Pentagon officials are looking to public-private partnerships to offset the costs of this ambitious plan. “I think the reality of this one is, this is where the public-private partnerships really start to pay,” Marks told BD. “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.”