Military facilities are $285 billion behind in maintenance and repairs, watchdog says

A Pentagon practice of not requesting enough money from Congress to fully maintain its facilities has left an estimated $285 billion repair backlog, posing a risk to military missions and the living conditions of personnel, a government watchdog said. 

The Government Accountability Office also found that the Defense Department does not have enough workers to address the backlog and does not consistently track work orders, which could help prioritize repair needs.

“DOD has not fully determined the risks to its mission and to the quality of life of its personnel as a result of not meeting its funding goal. Fully determining and communicating these risks would provide better information to DOD and Congress to weigh budget priorities,” according to the report released Friday.

The GAO noted that barracks have been a particular issue where installations do not always identify the full need to Congress.

“Officials at five of 10 installations we visited during that review told us they had more barracks projects in need of funding than they included in their submissions for funding requirements due to competing priorities,” the GAO reported. “We recommended that each military service develop and implement a method to ensure that the service has visibility into all military construction funding needs identified at the installation level, regardless of whether they are chosen to be submitted for funding.”

The report offered 13 recommendations to alleviate the problem that included conducting risk assessments, identifying and solving worker shortages and evaluating and updating policies around maintenance data and priorities.

Mark Sinder, deputy assistant secretary of defense for infrastructure, modernization and resilience, responded to the GAO report and mostly agreed with its concerns.

“[The Defense Department] recognizes that over the past decade, funding levels required to maintain the built environment have competed less favorably against higher military budget priorities. Installation [directorate of public works] and [civil engineer squadron] staff work to ensure as much as possible with the available sustainment resources that facility conditions do not impact mission readiness,” he wrote.

Sinder disagreed with a recommendation to strengthen his office’s oversight on the military departments because it lacks the staff to do so.

The Defense Department’s real estate portfolio includes more than 736,000 facilities across the globe valued at $2.6 trillion as of fiscal year 2025, according to the GAO. About one-third of the buildings are more than 50 years old.

While the Pentagon has a goal of funding 90% of its maintenance needs, the GAO found it has only funded facilities at about 80%.

That percentage varies widely from base to base. The Army’s Fort Benning, Ga., received 83% of the recommended facilities funding, and Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota got 40%, according to the GAO. At Minot, officials told the GAO that its B-52 aircraft parking area was more than 30 years beyond its expected lifespan.

The services have taken steps to implement this recommendation, but only for barracks and not to all other types of buildings and other infrastructure, according to the report.

The GAO has considered the Pentagon’s management of facilities high-risk for more than 20 years, and it noted that better management could save billions of dollars. Instead, the maintenance backlog more than doubled in the last five years — up from $137 billion in fiscal year 2020.

In recent years, news reports have shown how the maintenance backlog and staffing shortages have affected troops.

Last month, the Medical Education and Training Campus housing at Joint Base San Antonio-Fort Sam Houston in Texas was deemed unsafe and the services are still evacuating about 5,200 service members to new alternate locations.

Four years earlier, 1,200 soldiers were removed from barracks at Fort Bragg, N.C., because of relentless mold and an outdated central heating and air conditioning system.

Fort Hood, Texas, was so low on maintenance staff last year it called in a dozen airmen to tackle air conditioning repairs after service requests topped 1,000. The base had trouble keeping workers amid a federal worker buyout program that was followed by a hiring freeze.

The GAO cited the federal employment programs as part of the problem keeping workers, adding that hiring in remote locations and private sector competition also made it hard to hire.