For barracks overhaul, Hegseth steers towards private contractors

The Pentagon’s new Barracks Task Force will steer toward private sector “investment opportunities” and contracting to overhaul the military’s junior enlisted barracks under directives in a memo released by Secretary of Defense Pete Hegseth Thursday.

Hegseth announced earlier this week that the Pentagon was creating a task force to come up with a “barracks investment plan.” The memo released Thursday laid out what that group’s work will be.

The memo directs the task force to identify options for “investment opportunities” and “acquisition and contracting strategies not bound by traditional planning.”

In a video posted to X, Hegseth said that will mean more involvement of private contractors.

“We’ll leverage the expertise of private industry to deliver innovative technologies and contracting strategies that accelerate construction and renovation where we can. We’re going to consolidate contracts for maintenance services and equipment,” Hegseth said.

Hegseth’s emphasis on opening military housing to private-sector investment comes amid a greater trend for privatizing quality of life programs like dining facilities and commissaries.

The task force will also look at ways to bolster barracks self-help programs, in which troops are given tools to fix their own rooms.

“We’re also going to empower unit commanders and senior enlisted leaders to fix issues at their level without having to wait on Pentagon bureaucracy,” Hegseth said.

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Hegseth said he wants the task force to come up with a Pentagon-wide plan in 30 days. The task force has already met three times, he noted.

The task force will be made up of Department of Defense officials focused on personnel and readiness and finances, officials designated by the military service secretaries, and contracting experts.

The quality of barracks has become a major source of contention among junior enlisted troops who have routinely cited mold, pest and maintenance delay issues in official surveys and even turned to social media when their concerns have gone unanswered by the chain of command. In 2023, a damning Government Accountability Office report shed a light on the health and safety issues plaguing the barracks where young troops live on base and finally captured the attention of Congress.

On Thursday, Rob Evans, the founder of Hots&Cots, a Yelp-like app for junior enlisted troops to rate and review base dining halls and barracks, announced he would join in on a task force call. Evans told Task & Purpose that after two years of doing this work, he’s “really happy seeing something like this come forward.”

“Hots&Cots has been invited to join an upcoming call with the broader Task Force,” Evans wrote on X. “One thing they shared stuck with me: ‘We wish we could talk to 3,000 privates — but we can’t.’ We can. And we do. Every review helps us surface real experiences from the field and advocate for change where it matters most.”