OPINION:
In the military, failure is when you don’t meet your objective and the enemy retains control.
As a former military member, this is painful to say, but if you want to measure whether the Pentagon values its troops, look at the objective it keeps surrendering: the basic living conditions of service members.
The Defense Department faces a staggering $285 billion maintenance backlog, leaving barracks and military housing across the nation in dangerous disrepair. This isn’t a sudden crisis; it’s a decades-long pattern of institutional negligence and abject failure.
From the 1980s to the 1990s, Cold War spending prioritized weapon systems over living quarters. Post-Cold War budget cuts and Base Realignment and Closure (BRAC) diverted routine maintenance funds to operational readiness, leaving infrastructure to rot.
In 1996, there was a privatization push. The Pentagon outsourced military family housing to private corporations. Instead of solving the crisis, privatization shielded leadership while corporate landlords profited, ignoring widespread toxic mold that degraded the health of military families.
From the 2000s to the present, we have seen war-on-terror budgets swallowed funding, leaving facilities on the back burner. The 2007 Walter Reed Hospital scandal — in which recovering soldiers were housed amid toxic mold, rodent infestations and broken heating —exposed the rot, but real accountability never followed.
Emergency evacuations at Fort Bragg and Fort Stewart continue due to uninhabitable mold proved the issue remains widespread. A 2023 Government Accountability Office (GAO) report documented broken HVAC units, pest infestations, undrinkable water and raw sewage backups across multiple installations.
The Pentagon continues to ask for record budgets while failing to provide basic, safe shelter for the people expected to defend the nation.
If leaders cannot secure clean water, working heat and mold-free barracks for their own troops, they are failing their primary duty of care.
Secretary Hegseth, if you want to make a difference, do something about this.
TOM HENION
Stafford, Virginia
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