Governor Patrick Morrisey made the right call moving West Virginia fast into the competition for the Pentagon’s proposed Next Great American Base. He put the West Virginia National Guard on the point, working alongside our Economic Development team and DEP.
We’re talking about an installation that could bring 15,000 to 25,000 service members to our state, focused on homeland defense, cyber capabilities, and independent power generation.
That’s huge. But this isn’t just about another federal paycheck coming to West Virginia—it’s about national security.
In business, when a major customer changes how they operate, you adapt immediately. The military just changed the rules. The Army released its new warfighting guidance—How the Army Fights—and it starts with a blunt warning: “The Homeland is no longer a sanctuary.”
The Pentagon expects adversaries to target our domestic supply lines, rail, power grids, and ports before our troops ever touch foreign soil.
That means the next major military base can’t just be a collection of office buildings, barracks, and parking lots. It has to be a hardened platform built for endurance. A base that can keep operating when normal infrastructure gets knocked out.
That is where West Virginia comes in.
Look at our terrain. Our forested ridges, narrow valleys, and mountain chokepoints create the exact tactical problems soldiers face in places like the Pacific. Our geography forces commanders to practice moving ammunition, fuel, and gear through tough conditions while managing broken communications.
We also have the logistics backbone already built—freight rail, rivers, interstate networks, and military airlift wings in Charleston and Martinsburg.
Then there’s energy. The Pentagon wants a base capable of operating completely independent from the commercial power grid. West Virginia isn’t just an energy producer—we’re an energy powerhouse. Beyond our top-tier coal and natural gas production, we offer massive water superiority, untapped hydro power along our river systems, deep geothermal potential, and emerging white hydrogen reserves. That combination gives us a clear path to building self-sustaining microgrids, on-site generation, and absolute installation-level energy security.
We’ve even done this before. During the Cold War, the federal government built the secret bunker beneath The Greenbrier to keep Congress running. They chose West Virginia because our location was protected from nuclear fallout from a direct strike on Washington, while remaining close enough via rail and highways to evacuate leadership on short notice. The threat has evolved, but that core strategic logic remains.
Now, no amount of political talk about our mountains or military history will win this bid. In business, nobody cares about your sales pitch if you can’t deliver the product.
West Virginia still has to answer the hard operational questions. We have to lock down contiguous land, prove our utilities can handle a massive footprint, clear environmental hurdles, and present a realistic construction schedule.
The Army is telling us what the future fight demands. We have the terrain, the energy dominance, the transport, and the geographic protection.
Our job now is simple: See the requirement. Put together a sharp, business-grade proposal. Get to work, and go win.
