Contractors work on a new $27.3 million transient training troops barracks project, known as the Fort McCoy East Barracks Project, on Dec. 11, 2025, at Fort McCoy, Wis. (Scott Sturkol/U.S. Army)
The Army has a long history of doing too little, too late to make barracks life better for its junior soldiers at installations across the globe, Army Secretary Dan Driscoll told a room full of soldiers at Fort Drum, N.Y., on Monday.
“We’ve gone to bases all over the world [during the last year, and found] there are many, many, many things where we are failing you — where there is mold, where there is not high-speed internet, where there are very basic things [missing] for modern living,” Driscoll said during a town-hall event aired Tuesday alongside Gen. Randy George, the Army’s top general; and Sgt. Maj. of the Army Michael Weimer, the service’s top enlisted soldier. “We have got to get it for you much faster.”
Army — and other military — barracks have long been plagued with myriad health and comfort issues for the young troops that live in them, and for decades the Army has been accused of doing too little to solve those problems while senior leaders have pledged to make improvements.
Driscoll promised action over talk. But the top Army leaders provided few specifics.
The problems stem, he said, from a lack of funding to build new barracks or renovate existing barracks, and a lack of urgency at times from leaders to fix the existing problems. The Army’s top civilian, who was a cavalry scout platoon leader with Fort Drum’s 10th Mountain Division in the late 2000s, promised soldiers improvements are coming, especially once a Defense Department-wide study of barracks problems is completed next month.
At Fort Stewart, in humid southeast Georgia, Driscoll said the Army has installed some 900 dehumidifiers in its barracks to try to solve mold problems. Elsewhere, across the entire Army, the service is working toward adding high-speed internet access to “as many barracks as we possibly can,” he said.
Army leaders have said for years they need more money from Congress to improve barracks life for soldiers. Last year, Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth promised a $1.2 billion influx of funding to fix barracks across the U.S. military — some $400 million for immediate needs and another $800 million for critical renovation projects — as part of his barracks task force set to finalize recommendations next month. Those funds come from last year’s massive supplemental federal spending package signed into law in July.
Weimer, who is serving on Hegseth’s barracks task force, said he has encouraged Public Works officials across the Army to tackle barracks maintenance issues more quickly when soldiers report them.
“We’re trying to speed up how quickly we can take care of maintenance calls,” he said. “… You put in a work order, we take care of it, so it stops continuing to get worse. Because, in truth ... because you deserve it: There’s not enough money right now for us to solve all of those type of problems in the next year or two.”
The sergeant major of the Army said he believes barracks privatization might help solve some of the problems. The Army’s first privatized barracks program is set to open in 2028 at Fort Irwin, Calif., to house soldiers assigned to the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. The project — dubbed a resort-style barracks facility — broke ground in September and is being overseen by The Michaels Organization, which also manages on-post family residences on Fort Irwin.
If that project is successful, Weimer said it could be replicated elsewhere across the service.
“We’re going to learn a lot from this project, and then we will hope to scale it where it could work for us in the Army,” he said.
Privatizing barracks has received pushback from some lawmakers, who worry it could face similar issues to on-post privatized family housing for soldiers, which has been plagued with issues such as mold, slow repair times and infestations since they were established about 30 years ago.
Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., wrote to Hegseth last year that she was “alarmed” that the Defense Department would consider privatizing barracks “given the significant challenges that privatization has imposed on military family housing for decades, directly resulting from the substantial failures of private housing providers.”
Driscoll said during the town hall that soldiers can expect to see some kind of improvements in the coming months, but he expected troops would complain for decades to come about conditions in barracks even if they are improved.
“This is one of those problems that has existed — I even talked to my dad, he’s turning 80, and he recalled talking about barracks [problems] 60 years ago,” Driscoll said. “And so, the honest answer here is, for 60 years people have complained about barracks. It will likely be that for the next 60 years people will complain about barracks.
“And much of that is because we deserve those complaints.”
