The Department of Defense today released its Resilient and Healthy Defense Communities Implementation Plan (RHDC-IP). The plan outlines specific actions the Department is taking to ensure that the built and natural infrastructure on both our installations and in our defense communities enhances the readiness and resilience of our Service members, workforce, and their families.
"Defense installations are at the core of our Service members' military experience; therefore, it is a national security imperative and our moral obligation to the people who defend our nation to ensure our installations are safe, appealing, and supportive of their well-being," said Deputy Secretary of Defense Kathleen Hicks. "Today we announced we are putting careful planning into action. I look forward to seeing this work take shape in the coming years. There can be no higher priority than ensuring the welfare and safety of the brave Americans who choose to serve this nation and their families."
The RHDC-IP builds on the Resilient and Healthy Defense Communities (RHDC) Strategy that that Deputy Secretary Hicks signed in February 2024, which provides overall guidance and direction for the Department to address infrastructure in a way that contributes to the quality of life for our people. The implementation plan outlines specific actions the Department is taking to put that strategy into action.
As outlined in the RHDC Strategy, the RHDC-IP addresses three lines of effort: adopt human-centered requirements, optimize our footprint, and transform portfolio management. The plan includes 35 objectives and 85 discreet tasks intended to set the conditions that make the Department center its infrastructure, construction, and sustainment around the wellbeing of people and the missions they execute, which is an evolution of how DoD currently thinks about infrastructure. It also allows the Department to broaden how we define quality of life, which is more than just the services we provide, but also the places people spend time including at work and at home.
"The quality of life of Service members and their families is directly linked to the places they live and work. When we underinvest in these spaces, we compromise the readiness of our military," Assistant Secretary of Defense for Energy, Installations, and Environment Brendan Owens added. "The RHDC is an enduring race to the top — we should never be satisfied, and we should continuously identify and implement solutions that set conditions to do even more to support of Service members and their families in the future."
The RHDC-IP informs how the Department prioritizes actions and investments that improve the built and natural infrastructure in alignment with quality-of-life outcomes. In this way, installation managers and senior DoD leadership will have a framework to guide timely decisions and resource allocations to integrate mission requirements with environmental, social, health, and economic considerations that support the total community.
280,000 buildings across 538 installations and approximately 26 million acres of land support the Department's more than two million military and civilian personnel and their families. While the RHDC acknowledges that improving the Department's vast infrastructure footprint is a major undertaking, the RHDC-IP operationalizes the opportunity to significantly reduce the gap that persists between installation conditions today and the quality standards Service members and their families deserve.
