This article summarizes a Government Accountability Office (GAO) assessment of how extreme weather and natural disasters have affected the Pentagon’s budgets, recovery efforts, and resilience planning over the last decade, including concrete case studies and the DoD’s response to GAO’s recommendations.
It highlights gaps in cost tracking, the scope of threats considered for disaster planning, and the steps underway to harden critical installations against future events.
GAO Findings: Cost of Extreme Weather to the DoD
Extreme weather and natural disasters have cost the Pentagon at least $15 billion over the past ten years, according to a GAO review.
The figure is likely understated because the Defense Department has not consistently tracked all disaster-related costs across all installations.
The GAO looked at twelve installations that sustained heavy damage since 2015 and conducted in-person visits to three bases to gauge how recovery and resilience efforts were progressing.
Defense Department tracking of extreme-weather costs began only in 2024.
Even with that start, the GAO found information on installation disaster-recovery expenses incomplete and not fully accurate.
The agency therefore issued a set of recommendations to close these data gaps and strengthen planning for future events.
Why this matters for readiness and budgeting
Without complete cost data, planners cannot fully quantify the tradeoffs between hardening infrastructure now and paying higher costs later after a disaster.
Expanding how natural disasters are defined and including additional threats will improve budgeting, risk assessment, and long-range master planning for bases and dependents across the force.
Key Case Studies: Lessons from Tyndall, China Lake, and Fort Hood
One of the clearest examples is Hurricane Michael’s 2018 strike on Tyndall Air Force Base, which caused roughly $4.5 billion in damage and produced about 700,000 cubic yards of debris.
The storm also necessitated moving the F-22 mission to Joint Base Langley-Eustis, illustrating how a single event can reconfigure force readiness and basing choices.
In 2019, an earthquake at China Lake inflicted nearly $4 billion in damage to critical laboratories and weapons magazines, with recovery work continuing into the current year.
The incident highlighted vulnerabilities in lab and munitions storage facilities and the importance of resilient infrastructure for research and development functions.
Fort Hood experienced the costs of severe winter weather as Winter Storm Uri produced about $48.3 million in recovery expenses, including a notable $35.9 million heating bill.
This underscored the energy resilience needs of remote and climate-stressed installations.
What these events reveal about resilience investments
Bases did pursue resilience improvements where feasible—such as stabilizing hillside slopes at West Point, adding seismic joints at China Lake, installing breakaway flood walls at Tyndall, and redesigning layouts at an Air Force base.
However, funding shortfalls prevented several identified projects from moving forward, leaving critical vulnerabilities unaddressed in some locations.
GAO Recommendations and the DoD Response
The GAO made five recommendations, aimed at closing data gaps and strengthening resilience planning across the services.
The Defense Department agreed with all of them, signaling a commitment to reform in how disaster costs are tracked, defined, and incorporated into strategic planning.
- Establish a process to collect full disaster-recovery cost data across all installations, ensuring a complete accounting of recovery expenses.
- Expand the definition of natural disasters to ensure all threats are included, broadening the scope beyond traditional weather events.
- Add earthquakes to the Pentagon’s disaster planning and accounting, since current definitions do not fully cover seismic risks.
- Require resiliency and recovery plans to be integrated into installation master plans (alongside Army, Navy, and Air Force leadership).
- Enhance data-guided decision making by aligning cost-tracking with budgeting and planning processes (details in the GAO report).
Resilience in Practice: What Worked, and What Still Lags
Across the force, some installations pursued meaningful improvements.
Yet not all projects could advance due to funding constraints.
Conclusion: Policy Implications for Defense Infrastructure
By agreeing with GAO’s recommendations, the DoD positions itself to strengthen cost transparency and broaden risk definitions. Embedding resilience into routine master planning will help address evolving challenges.
As extreme weather and geological risks intensify, robust, data-driven budgeting will be essential. Proactive hardening of critical bases will help maintain national security and operational readiness.
Here is the source article for this story: Watchdog finds room to improve extreme weather planning at military bases