Secretary of War Pete Hegseth addresses service members at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, September 30, 2026. Department of War photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Eric Brann.
By Watertown Post Staff
WATERTOWN, New York — Federal investigators are examining a series of unusual refrigeration failures that spoiled food at military commissaries across the United States in late August, raising questions for Fort Drum soldiers, families and retirees who rely on the installation’s store.
Fort Drum has not appeared on the publicly reported lists of affected installations reviewed by the Watertown Post. That does not establish whether the Fort Drum commissary experienced a disruption. Officials have not released a complete, confirmed list of every affected store.
At least six installations publicly reported refrigeration problems, including Fort Huachuca in Arizona, Fort Irwin and Travis Air Force Base in California, F.E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island and Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi. At Fort Huachuca, officials said freezers entered defrost mode overnight and frozen food spoiled.
Reuters reported Thursday that four officials familiar with the matter said the Pentagon is treating the incidents as a suspected cyberattack. The Department of War has not publicly confirmed that the U.S. failures were caused by hackers, identified a perpetrator or announced a connection to Fort Drum. Army criminal investigators say their cyber office is involved and working with French law enforcement.
The investigation follows an October cyberattack on refrigeration systems at hundreds of supermarkets in France. Temperatures rose inside affected units, forcing stores to discard food. While the incidents have similarities, investigators have not publicly established that the French attack and the U.S. commissary failures were connected or carried out by the same actors.
The disruptions also come as governments in several countries encourage households to prepare for emergencies that could interrupt electricity, water or access to stores. Sweden and Norway recommend keeping enough essentials to manage for approximately a week. Finland, Denmark and the Netherlands recommend preparing for at least 72 hours. Germany recommends aiming for 10 days, while noting that even a smaller supply is a useful start.
Those recommendations address a range of potential emergencies, including severe weather, infrastructure failures and other disruptions. They are not, by themselves, evidence of an imminent attack or a specific threat to Fort Drum. For Northern New York families familiar with winter storms and power outages, maintaining a reasonable supply of shelf-stable food, drinking water, flashlights and other essentials is a practical precaution.
The United States is also considering longer-term measures to make military installations more resilient. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth recently announced Fortress America, an initiative intended to strengthen installation security and move bases toward independent power and more reliable supplies. The program is a long-term objective, not a completed guarantee that Fort Drum or other installations can already operate independently.
For now, the local question remains unanswered: whether Fort Drum was among the stores affected by the August failures. The Watertown Post has not independently confirmed an outage there, and readers should not assume the installation was either affected or unaffected until officials provide more information.
Photo: Secretary of War Pete Hegseth addresses service members at Marine Corps Base Quantico, Virginia, September 30, 2026. Department of War photo by U.S. Navy Petty Officer 1st Class Eric Brann.
About the Author
