"Hundreds of millions" of dollars will be funneled into the project known as the Janus Program over the next five years, according to Dr. Jeff Waksman, the Army official leading the effort, to install next-generation commercial microreactors at military sites.
"Great power conflict is defined by who can move their resources around," Waksman said. Energy demands are only set to increase as modern warfare trends toward drones, directed-energy weapons and artificial intelligence. And as war planners prepare for a potential battlefront in the Indo-Pacific with China, "our ability to move energy around the oceans has never been more challenged," he said.
"It is an immense challenge in terms of providing 24/7 power. Military bases right now are powered entirely by fossil fuels. It is not possible with current technology to provide 24/7 power with solar, wind, and batteries," Waksman said. "So the only solution to the tyranny of fuel that exists now is nuclear power."
The new plan follows an executive order President Donald Trump
...Oh, noze! Not him!...signed earlier this year directing the Department of War to begin operating an Army-regulated nuclear reactor at a U.S. military installation by September 2028.
The initiative will be led by the Department of the Army, designated as the executive agent for the mission. Waksman described Janus as a "real hardware program" aimed at delivering tangible energy capacity rather than a policy concept. "There have been a lot of nuclear projects in the past that peaked at the blurb," he said. "That is not what this is."
Under Janus, the Army will partner with the Defense Innovation Unit and the Department of Energy's national laboratories to oversee the design and testing of commercial microreactors. The reactors will be commercially built and operated, rather than owned by the military. To encourage private investment, the Army will use a milestone-based contracting model inspired by NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program — the same framework that helped launch the commercial space industry by funding companies like SpaceX and Boeing to reach key technical milestones instead of paying for traditional government procurement.
The Army hopes this flexible model will accelerate development, lower costs, and spur a self-sustaining market for small reactors that could eventually power both military and civilian infrastructure.