Pentagon nuclear energy programs must follow NRC licensing if military reactors are to become commercial products that strengthen US nuclear competitiveness.

In June 2024, the Department of Defense (DOD) announced it was stepping back into the nuclear reactor business when the Army launched its Advanced Nuclear Power for Installations (ANPI) program, a partnership with the Defense Innovation Unit (DIU) focused on the design and build of fixed on-base reactors ranging from 2 to 10 megawatts (MW) for critical missions.  

For DOD, advanced reactors promise to reduce its reliance on a fragile commercial power grid that provides electricity to more than 95 percent of US military installations. That power grid faces surging demand from artificial intelligence (AI) data centers and semiconductor chip manufacturing. Increasingly extreme weather is also causing outages that exceed on-base backup power capability. The nature of a globally-networked force where domestic military installations are tied to overseas missions—from drones to cyber operations—means that a power failure at home puts operators abroad at risk. Advanced reactors offer a form of salvation, particularly for critical loads. 

For the nuclear industry, DOD’s announcement signaled an exciting commitment from a customer with deep pockets, a high tolerance for technical risk, and a history of turning experimental technology into successful commercial products. The internet began as the Advanced Research Projects Agency Network (ARPANET), a Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) experiment in secure military communications. GPS was a Navy and Air Force navigation system before it became the backbone of ride-sharing apps. Even DOD’s investments in semiconductor miniaturization—driven by the need to fit guidance systems on missiles—seeded the consumer electronics now driving the AI revolution.

But the excitement from the industry has quietly turned into skepticism, and for good reason. Rather than presenting a unified plan for commercializing advanced reactors, DOD has splintered into competing visions that risk undermining the momentum industry was counting on, and a commercial breakthrough may be slipping away. 

A New Hope for the Nuclear Industry

The Army’s 2024 kickoff of ANPI was no flash-in-the-pan announcement. It followed a year of careful, steadfast planning, informed by a team of interagency experts on the myriad issues that must be considered and addressed before launching such an ambitious program. 

Among the early decisions was to keep the program flexible and scalable for commercial application. While the Army initially envisioned using microreactors to generate power for small critical on-base loads, the program was always intended to keep the door open to large reactors that can be sited on a military installation and tied to the commercial grid. It’s among the many reasons why the program committed to using the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s (NRC) civilian licensing process—to ensure that reactors built on a military installation could also be sited in the civilian sector.  

By partnering with DIU, the Army aimed to leverage an expedited but still competitive procurement process that accomplishes in months what takes years to do through traditional contracting. Case in point: in April 2025, DIU announced that eight companies were eligible for demonstration contracts under the reactor program. In ten months, DIU effectively winnowed from several dozens of potential companies to a handful of serious offerors to design and build a prototype reactor—a remarkable pace for that initial stage of the procurement process. 

While ANPI began as an Army initiative, it did not stay that way. The Air Force later joined the Army after the first round of industry proposals was completed and brought funding to move the effort forward. It was a good example of inter-service collaboration that was unfortunately short-lived. 

Internal Friction Mounts Inside DOD  

In May 2025, President Donald Trump issued a series of executive orders that aimed, in part, to accelerate the Army’s momentum to harness advanced nuclear power to strengthen US national security. Tucked in one of the President’s directives was a decision to designate the Army as the Executive Agent for DOD’s nuclear energy efforts with a goal of deploying nuclear energy on a military installation by 2028. 

While ANPI was the most fully developed of DOD’s nuclear energy programs, the decision to designate the Army as the military’s nuclear czar turned heads. Fundamentally, each military service maintains its own installation energy program, operating independently from the others. However, the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD) typically quarterbacks nascent cross-cutting initiatives because it has experience coordinating across the military services, encouraging information sharing to avoid duplicating efforts, and combining resources to leverage DOD’s buying power. Indeed, following the Army’s launch of its reactor program, OSD stood up a nuclear energy task force designed to coordinate actions across the department for these very reasons.

This isn’t to say that the Army can’t run a nuclear energy program. It has done so before. The Army famously, and in secret, oversaw the Manhattan Project and the creation of the world’s first atomic weapons. In the wake of its success, the Army led a separate nuclear power program in collaboration with the Atomic Energy Commission in the 1950s to harness nuclear technology to generate electricity. Between 1952 and 1976, the US Army Corps of Engineers built seven nuclear reactors, six of which went into service before being later decommissioned. 

But putting the Army in charge of the Pentagon’s entire nuclear energy enterprise requires more than just a pen stroke; it requires considerably more staff, resources, and expertise than the Army has today—to say nothing of the internal support from the other military services that is necessary to build unity of effort so that DoD is taking a single approach with industry.  

Regulatory Splintering Creates Risks

Despite some internal reticence, the President charged the Army to lead, and the Army’s reaction to its new role has been a bit bewildering. Instead of leveraging the strong interagency foundation that it created with ANPI, the Army abandoned it entirely and left the Air Force to carry it forward—which it has. In lieu, the Army launched a new program: Project Janus.  

On its face, Project Janus looks largely the same as ANPI, but with one fundamental difference: it is leveraging a narrow but real authority under the Atomic Energy Act of 1954 to permit and regulate its own reactors through the Army Reactor Office (ARO), bypassing the NRC entirely. The Army will tell you that the NRC is still part of the team, observing steps along the way. But that is different from leading the process and making the final call on approving reactor designs for construction and deployment based on specific safety criteria.   

The appeal for the Army is obvious: permitting reactors on its own gives it speed, flexibility, and freedom from a licensing process that has historically moved slowly. But the Army’s shortcut carries a hidden cost. A reactor designed and certified to satisfy Army Regulation 50-7 is a bespoke military product. It may serve an immediate military purpose, but it’s not a foundation for a competitive commercial nuclear industry.

It’s worth noting that when the Army formed ANPI, it compared the pros and cons of permitting through the ARO instead of licensing with the NRC. The Army’s team of experts agreed that using the civilian licensing process was the best way to incentivize commercial deployment, since the Atomic Energy Act gives the NRC sole authority for approving any reactor that feeds electricity to the commercial grid. 

To complicate matters, the Army moved ARO from the Army staff to the Army secretariat, where its appointed leadership is overseeing the office. Before, the ARO sat on the uniform side of the Army’s apolitical staff, under the US Army Nuclear and Countering Mass Destruction Agency. Moving it into the secretariat inadvertently injects politics into what should be a tedious, technocratic process. Normally, that might be something one could overlook, but the administration is facing scrutiny elsewhere with its decisions to rewrite safety rules governing advanced reactors. Right or wrong, moving the ARO may give nuclear naysayers strong standing to challenge Army permitting decisions. 

The Air Force, to its credit, appears to be pressing forward on ANPI’s commercially-aligned path with an NRC license. It’s a slower road, but the right one. A reactor that earns NRC approval doesn’t just power a military installation; it becomes a product that can be manufactured at scale, sold to utilities, and exported to allies. It’s how DOD can catalyze an industry.

But as DoD’s Executive Agent, the Army commands the attention, the resources, and the narrative. Inside the Pentagon, Executive Agent status shapes budget priorities, drives policy, and determines which programs get the institutional oxygen they need to survive. The Air Force’s methodical, NRC-focused approach may be the strategically sounder course, but it increasingly risks being drowned out by an Army program that moves faster, makes more noise, and now carries the imprimatur of a Presidential directive. 

The Global Stakes of Getting this Wrong

The result of this internal jockeying is that DOD is unified around advanced nuclear energy but functionally pulling in two disparate directions, with distinct regulatory approaches at the seams. 

There is room to improve the speed of the NRC’s licensing process. Congress recognized that when it passed the Accelerating Deployment of Versatile, Advanced Nuclear for Clean Energy Act (ADVANCE Act) of 2024, bipartisan legislation aimed at cutting the licensing costs and timeline for advanced reactors. Among the executive orders that President Trump issued in May 2025 is also one aimed at reforming the NRC.  

But a wholesale abandonment of the NRC in lieu of a military permitting process would be a big mistake. The NRC’s unmatched global reputation as an independent nuclear safety regulator was built over many decades. For all its faults, it’s a household name and the American public—and global customers—trust that licensed nuclear reactors meet the gold standard when it comes to public safety. 

That distinction matters enormously in the context of the broader geopolitical competition America faces. China is not just building reactors—it is building an export machine, positioning itself to supply nuclear technology to the Global South and lock in decades of energy dependence. Russia’s Rosatom has long used reactor exports as an instrument of foreign policy, extending Moscow’s influence from Eastern Europe to sub-Saharan Africa. The United States cannot counter either with reactors that never escape the military fenceline. 

Winning the global nuclear competition requires a licensed, insurable, exportable commercial product. The Army’s approach, however well-intentioned, risks delivering something far more limited at a moment when we desperately need US industry to compete against Russian- and Chinese-made reactors. 

Can Congress Fix This?

Congress, for its part, has already begun to express its frustration. In the FY2026 defense policy bill, lawmakers signaled their unease, suggesting that the question of who should serve as the DOD Executive Agent for advanced nuclear energy remains unsettled—a pointed, if carefully worded, rebuke of the President’s May 2025 directive. It is a start. But it is not enough.

If the United States is serious about winning the global energy competition, Congress needs to channel the bipartisan support for advanced reactors toward ensuring that DOD’s nuclear efforts are organized around a single, coherent objective: producing reactors that are commercially viable and meet the high standards of safety, security, and nonproliferation that have exemplified America’s nuclear industry. 

That requires insisting on NRC licensing as the baseline for any reactor the DOD champions. It means asking hard questions about whether the Army’s role as DoD’s Executive Agent truly serves the national interest, or whether it serves only the Army’s institutional interest in speed and autonomy. And it means providing the resources, the statutory direction, and the oversight necessary to ensure that America’s advanced nuclear ambitions do not collapse into a collection of bespoke military projects that never reach the commercial market.

America built the internet, GPS, and the jet age on the back of defense investments and the discipline to turn military technology into commercial products, bolstering America’s economic edge and national security. It can do so again. Let’s not let the moment slip away. 

About the Author: Will Rogers

Will Rogers served as a senior advisor to the US Army from 2022 to 2025. He is currently a principal at Converge Strategies, a consulting firm specializing in energy, resilience, and national security, and an adjunct senior fellow at the Center for a New American Security.

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