The Pentagon’s newest push to trim its workforce and spending could mean that on-base grocery stores and shops designed to save service members and their families money could ultimately be sold off to the private sector.

An April 7 memo signed by Deputy Defense Secretary Steve Feinberg^[1] listed a wide range of possible reforms aimed at "delivering maximum value to the warfighter." Among them included "all functions that are not inherently governmental (e.g. retail sales and recreation) should be prioritized for privatization."

A defense official familiar with the intent behind the memo told Military.com on Thursday that there weren't any off-limit areas for cuts or privatization. Commissaries, military-run hotels, and on-base welfare facilities were all fair game, they said.

Read Next: Commander of Greenland Base Who Broke with Vance Fired Shortly After Military.com Report^[2]

However, the official noted that it was up to the individual military services to bring forward suggestions and that just because something like a commissary^[3] is put forward for privatization doesn't automatically mean that it will be sold off.

"Everything is pre-decisional right now," the official said.

Privatizing aspects of the military's support services has a long and largely problematic history that has resulted in markedly poorer outcomes for service members while offering little in the way of savings for the Pentagon.

William "Bill" Moore, who served as the director and CEO of the Defense Commissary Agency, or DeCA, between 2020 and 2024, wrote in an opinion piece^[4] for the Ripon Society think tank last year that "privatizing commissaries is, quite simply, a bad idea."

Moore explained to Military.com in an interview Friday that funding from Congress helps subsidize the commissaries, allowing them to offer products much more affordably than other grocery stores.

"If you privatize without subsidy, I guarantee you, there is no way they will be able to save military families anything," Moore said. "I would be shocked if any for-profit company could take over the commissaries and deliver any benefit to military families beyond convenience. There's no way they could sell items at the prices the commissary could."

Commissaries have taken scrutiny in recent years. A 2022 Government Accountability office report critiqued the methodology for how the agency calculated some of its customer savings rates, describing it as "unreliable."

Moore told Military.com that they "fixed a lot of that" and were still working on improving those savings estimates up to his departure from DeCA.

While commissaries are nonprofit organizations by law, profits from military exchanges -- retail stores on military bases that sell a wide variety of products -- also get cycled into the Morale, Welfare and Recreation programs for service members and their families.

It was unclear how those recreation programs would be fully funded if exchanges were turned over to private companies, which would likely choose to pocket those profits.

Notably, some of the top leaders in the Trump administration have voiced their support for privatization efforts in the past.

Former Rep. Mike Waltz, now Trump's national security adviser, said during a House Armed Services Committee hearing last year that he wanted the military "out of the hotel management business" and said the private sector could do the job "incredibly well" when it came to base housing.

As cautionary tales of privatization go, the military's handover of family housing is a prime example. For decades, the arrangement has caused a raft of problems involving companies that manage the units where troops and their families live.

Balfour Beatty, a massive company that manages more than 40,000 military homes across more than 50 bases^[5], has repeatedly been sued and forced to pay restitution to military families for its consistent failure to ensure military homes in its care are safe and livable.

Two weeks ago, the company was hit with yet another lawsuit^[6] that alleged the company "concealed the horrific conditions from unsuspecting service men and women and their families" and then, "when these conditions were discovered and reported, Balfour systematically failed to properly repair and remediate significant problems."

However, the company's history of shoddy work goes back decades.

In 2019, Balfour Beatty was caught up in a nationwide scandal over squalid family housing and pleaded guilty in 2021 to falsifying maintenance records that went as far back as 2013. The company was ordered to pay $65.4 million in fines and restitution for misconduct related to its military housing practices in federal contracts.

And yet, despite that scandal and fine, in 2022, an eight-month investigation^[7] by a Senate Homeland Security and Government Affairs panel found the company was continuing to ignore residents' concerns over mold, asbestos and other problems in their homes.

Balfour Beatty is not alone, though.

In 2020, families of Marines stationed at Camp Lejeune^[8], North Carolina, took several private companies that run housing on that base to court^[9] over their alleged failure to provide safe residences or respond to complaints of mold, mildew, water intrusion, roaches and maintenance problems.

That same year, nine Army^[10] families also sued their privatized base housing landlords^[11] at Fort Cavazos, Texas, over allegations of life-threatening levels of mold and "deplorable" conditions in their homes that ruined their belongings.

An Army family at the base was awarded $10.3 million^[12] in 2024 after they were forced to live in a mold-infested home run by a private Army housing company, leading to repeated hospitalizations of their newborn infant for respiratory difficulties.

Those issues have not stopped the military from trying to create new privatized housing solutions for troops. In September, Edwards Air Force Base^[13], California, broke ground on the service's first privatized on-base apartment complex.

Related: Military Families in Key West Sue Balfour Beatty over Allegations of Squalid, Toxic Housing Conditions^[14]

This article first appeared on The War Horse,^[1] an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter^[2].

Some of the U.S. military’s most defining technologies have nothing to do with missiles, tanks, guns, and other deadly weaponry.  While important in war, these innovations—from duct tape and blood banks to GPS^[3]— ultimately play a far larger role on the home front, improving everyday lives.

But now scientists are worried the Trump administration’s budget cuts threaten the long and historic funding growth for Department of Defense-supported breakthrough science, risking America’s global dominance in a tech-driven economy and undermining future payoffs.

“Every single day, people engage with DOD-funded research,” said Jeff Decker, a former 2nd Ranger Battalion light infantry squad leader in the U.S. Army, deployed four times to Iraq and Afghanistan. He now serves in Stanford University’s Technology Transfer for Defense Program, which transitions new technologies from the laboratory to the market.

“The core goal is knowledge,” Decker said. “If we lose that, not only does it hollow out the ability for campuses to do research … it also hollows out the specter of what we’ll have 30 years from now.”

In a world roiled by geopolitical tensions, new pandemics, climate change, and weakening democracies, researchers point to the importance of a crucial array of DOD-funded inventions, from night vision to stealth technology, from sensor networks to vaccines for deadly diseases^[4] and treatment for traumatic brain injury.

But the stopgap budget measure^[5] that Congress passed in March reduces funding for research, development,^[6] and evaluation programs at the Defense Department by almost 5% to $141 billion for the remainder of the fiscal year—about $7 billion less than the department received for those activities in fiscal 2024.

Operation Timeline: The Trump Administration’s Impact on Veterans and the Military^[7]

To be sure, U.S. government and businesses remain the world’s top investor ^[8]in basic research and development, with China close behind. And the DOD is the largest beneficiary of taxpayer-supported research^[9], receiving about half of total funds.

But the cuts illustrate a growing shift in the nation’s landscape of research and development. In recent years, a larger share of America’s overall^[10] scientific spending is coming from businesses,^[11] especially in the fields of applied research, according to a 2021 Congressional Research Service report.

To maintain technical superiority, the U.S. military increasingly relies ^[12]on commercially developed technologies, such as pilot simulation training, rapid detection of virus exposure, and Elon Musk’s Starlink satellite internet technology.

American dominance of innovation dates back^[13] less than a century. Prior to World War II, the U.S. provided almost no federal funding for research. Europe was the leader. That changed with Vannevar Bush, a former dean of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology^[14], who predicted that the devastating war would be won or lost based on advanced technology.

Almost overnight, government research funding skyrocketed—resulting in a myriad of civilian spinoffs that remain an essential part of our everyday lives.^[15]

From Weapons Guidance to Directions to Dinner

One of the most famous examples was the creation of the Global Positioning System.^[16] On Labor Day weekend in 1973, U.S. Air Force Col. Bradford Parkinson and his top engineers shuttered themselves in the dark and deserted Pentagon to hammer out the concept of a navigation system, using atomic clocks and signals transmitted by satellites that would change the world.

The goal was to design a system to help guide weapons to their targets and keep track of personnel and materials. But from the start, the GPS was designed to have an open signal that anyone could use, Parkinson said.

“Before we put up the first satellite, I promised to make available the complete specifications that would allow people to build receivers,” said Parkinson, professor emeritus of aeronautics and astronautics at Stanford University. “[It was] a signal that was going to be freely available to the civilians to use.”

By hand, he drew diagrams of eight to 10 potential nonmilitary uses for GPS, such as air traffic control, land grading, and commuter travel, saving time and money.

It took two tragedies to spur the widespread adoption of GPS in commercial aviation: the 1978 shooting of a South Korean airliner by a Soviet fighter plane and the 1996 crash of a plane carrying U.S. Commerce Secretary Ron Brown and 34 others, said John Langer of the Enterprise Design department of The Aerospace Corporation, which advances GPS development. ^[17] Both events were caused by pilot navigational errors.

The widespread public use of GPS began in the early 2000s, with the release of the second iPhone and the “blue dot” on app maps that shows a precise location, said Langer. “Now everyone expects to know where they are at all times.”

GPS—with smaller, cheaper, and less powerful receivers than military-grade equipment—brings military precision to routine tasks, like finding the best route to a new restaurant.

From Blood Banks to Frozen Platelets

The carnage of combat has led to significant advances in understanding hematology^[18], wound care, and infection control.

In World War II, massive blood loss from gaping wounds caused by shrapnel, shells, fragments, and other debris required new techniques and tools to collect and preserve blood. Combat injuries also spurred our understanding of compatible blood typing and transfusion science.

The Department of Defense ushered in the modern age of blood banking by introducing plastic bags—rather than glass bottles—for storage, said hematologist Dr. Claudia Cohn, medical director of the Association for the Advancement of Blood and Biotherapies and director of the University of Minnesota Blood Bank Laboratory. If blood is kept in glass, it is difficult to store and separate into its essential components.

Current research using databases from the Department of Defense Trauma Registry and Armed Services Blood Program is testing the potential use of cold-stored or frozen blood platelets,^[19] which last longer, are less prone to bacterial contamination, and are more practical for rural hospitals with limited supplies, Cohn said.

It is also advancing the field of transfusions administered in ambulances on the way to the hospital, pumping blood into patients as quickly as possible. “Early studies are showing that the faster you get blood into the patient, the better they do,” she said.

“Military research has a long history of creating or developing technology that is then transferred to the civilian setting and has helped humankind,” said Cohn. “These are many of the things that we just take for granted.”

From Penicillin to Cancer Treatments

Our modern understanding of antibiotics, especially penicillin, has surged due to military research funding. Seeking to protect and recover manpower during World War II combat, War Production Board scientists collaborated on penicillin mold sampling, chemical synthesis, clinical trials, and large-scale penicillin production by fermentation. While a precise number is difficult to determine, it’s estimated that penicillin has saved 200 million lives globally, including countless Americans, according to Philadelphia’s Science History Institute.^[20]

Private industry has been slow to create new vaccines because profit margins are so thin for single-use medications. It took the Department of Defense, in partnership with the Department of Health and Human Services, to support the development of mRNA technologies that produced Covid vaccines.

Radiation treatment for cancer traces its roots to World War II’s famed Manhattan Project and the development of the atomic bomb. After the war, the federal government produced radioisotopes in the same nuclear reactors that had been built to produce material for nuclear weapons—and sold them at a discount to laboratories, hospitals, and companies, where they proved their role as medical therapies and diagnostics, according to Princeton University historian Angela Creager.^[21]

From Duct Tape to Superglue

World War II also inspired something more mundane, but now ubiquitous: duct tape. Vesta Stoudt, the mother of two enlisted sons, was working at the Green River Ordnance Plant in Illinois, sealing boxes of ammunition cartridges with paper tape and dipping them wax to make them waterproof.

“But the paper tape was very thin, and the tabs often tore off, leaving soldiers frantically trying to open the box while under fire,” said Margaret Gurowitz, chief historian for Johnson & Johnson^[22], which helped bring the tape to market.

On Feb. 10, 1943, Stoudt wrote a letter to President Franklin D. Roosevelt describing the problem and her solution, complete with diagrams: strong, waterproof tape made from thin “duck cloth,” coated in plastic, that could be ripped by hand reliably, every time. Hundreds of thousands of miles of this tape were used on tanks, planes, and ammunition destined for overseas—and now duct tape is the go-to solution for patching holes and sealing gaps in pipes, ductwork, and other household items that need a quick, temporary fix.

The remarkable adhesive known as superglue was also invented during World War II, when Harry Coover and his military-funded team ^[23]at Eastman-Kodak sought to make a clear plastic lens for precision gunsights, called prisms, for soldiers.

A new substance, called cyanoacrylate, was quickly abandoned because it was too sticky. But Coover realized the adhesive had a unique ability to bond without heat or pressure, permanently gluing together anything. He later put it to work to make jet airplane canopies. Now superglue is used to repair shoes, dishes, broken garden hoses, or torn car upholstery. It even extends the life of frayed phone charger cords.

From Nomex and Kevlar to a New Frontier

More recently, DOD-funded scientists have designed, improved or tested^[24] fabric^[25] and textiles to counter heat, cold, chemicals, flames, lasers and other harsh military environments. ^[26]

The Natick Soldier Research, Development and Engineering Center laboratories developed a new flame-resistant fabric^[27]—a blend of wool, Nomex and Kevlar—that chars, rather than melting or dripping, when exposed to intense heat.

The laboratories also helped to improve the design of^[28] uniforms with Gore-Tex^[29], the water-resistant material used in tents, backpacks, and other camping materials.

Military funding is now used to advance the newest frontier in science: machine learning, a type of AI, which analyzes large amounts of data, learns from the insights and informs decisions, said Stanford’s Decker.

For instance, each Navy warship produces about 150 terabytes^[30] of raw sensor data each day—equivalent to^[31] tens of millions^[32] of high-quality photos or nearly a decade of videos^[33]—and machine learning can help process it.

“It’s decision making,” said Stanford’s Decker. “We live in a world right now where there is no shortage of data. ... How do we as a country respond in situations ... whether it’s a natural disaster or a war zone?”

But the shift in priorities at the Pentagon to focus on lethality is steering funding toward major projects like the next-generation F-47 aircraft and a Golden Dome missile defense system.

The change could be felt by future generations of civilians, far from the battlefield.

Over the decades, “military technologies tend to find a way, sometimes in a surprising manner, into civilian use,” said Parkinson.

“It isn’t the primary reason that the military does that research—but the spin-offs have been substantial,” he said. “They’re spread around, like peanut butter.”

This War Horse story was edited by Mike Frankel, fact-checked by Jess Rohan, and copy-edited by Mitchell Hansen-Dewar. Hrisanthi Pickett wrote the headlines.

Editors Note: This article^[34] first appeared on The War Horse,^[35] an award-winning nonprofit news organization educating the public on military service. Subscribe to their newsletter^[36].

Army^[1] Secretary Dan Driscoll is poised to assume temporary leadership of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, a rare dual appointment that places the 38-year-old at the helm of two high-stakes federal institutions, according to three defense officials familiar with the matter.

The move comes at a pivotal moment for both agencies. The ATF continues to draw partisan scrutiny over firearms regulation, while the Army is undergoing a strategic transformation to counter China's growing military influence in the Pacific.

Driscoll is in Europe this week visiting soldiers and meeting with key Army leaders in the region. Both the head of the ATF and Army secretary are full-time positions with enormous responsibilities and long workdays.

Read Next: Troops Booted over COVID-19 Vaccine Are Being Offered Back Pay But Not Huge Payouts^[2]

As acting director, Driscoll, who has no background in law enforcement, will oversee nearly 5,000 employees, including more than 2,500 federal agents charged with enforcing firearms laws that have made the agency a frequent target of pro-gun activists and Republican lawmakers.

In recent years, the GOP has made no secret of its intent to slash ATF's authority, pushing to gut the agency's enforcement power -- particularly around gun background checks -- and at times calling for its complete dismantling.

In 2024, Republicans in Congress trimmed $47 million from the ATF's already modest $1.6 billion budget, signaling the latest round of partisan belt-tightening for an agency that's long struggled to secure consistent leadership.

Driscoll will be taking on the role from FBI Director Kash Patel, who was removed from leading the ATF as his second job. It's unclear what led to Patel's dismissal, but he was still running the FBI as of Wednesday afternoon.

Since Congress made the ATF director role a Senate-confirmed position in 2006, just two nominees have made it through the politically fraught confirmation process: Todd Jones in 2013 and Steve Dettelbach in 2022. Most other nominees have stalled amid fierce opposition and lobbying from gun rights groups.

Driscoll oversees the Army, its $185.9 billion budget, and nearly 1 million soldiers across active-duty and reserve components. The Army is in the midst of a radical shift, transitioning from the Global War on Terrorism era to revamping its equipment and doctrine to modernize the force in hopes of deterring China.

"The world is changing rapidly, and we must ensure the Army is prepared to operate in new, complex and contested environments," Driscoll said during his confirmation hearing in January.

Driscoll, who has been a close friend of Vice President JD Vance since the pair met at Yale Law School, has spent most of his professional career in venture capital and other business enterprises. He came into the Army secretary role with a light resume compared to his predecessors, most of whom had robust backgrounds in national security policy.

Driscoll served in the Army from 2007 to 2010 as a cavalry officer with the 10th Mountain Division based out of New York. He deployed to Iraq once during his service, left the Army as a first lieutenant and immediately went on to attend Yale.

Related: Senate Confirms Driscoll, a Veteran and Financier with Little Leadership Experience, to Be Army Secretary^[3]