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By Giulia Carbonaro
Senior Reporter
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Sgt. Dakota Meyer, the Medal of Honor recipient who was picked by Pete Hegseth as a senior advisor to the Pentagon’s barracks improvement task force, has spoken out about the “heartbreaking” conditions he has witnessed, including the lack of hot water and air conditioning.
Talking to Fox News Digital in an interview Thursday, Meyer said he spoke with troops who have gone a year without being able to take a hot shower or have been forced to sleep in their cars because of the heat in the barracks.
“I would tell you that there’s only a couple that I’ve seen that are good,” he said, describing more than eight installations across the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marine Corps he has visited since he was tapped by Hegseth as the task force’s senior advisor.
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The Medal of Honor recipient said that what he thought was going to a professional job that “very quickly turned into personal” as he listened to the experience of struggling U.S. service members stationed in the barracks.
He recalled asking a 19-year-old service member what she would change in the barracks if she had a magic wand and was impressed by her modest response. “If she could just have a hot shower,” Meyer said the service member responded. “It’s absolutely heartbreaking,” he said.
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What Is the Barracks Task Force?
For years, U.S. military barracks across the world have been plagued with a number of issues ranging from mold and bed bugs to safety hazards and aging structures lacking proper maintenance. A 2023 report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) found that the Department of Defense was not reliably assessing the barracks where hundreds of thousands of service members live, often in poor living conditions, and that oversight was insufficient.
The barracks task force was formed by the Defense Secretary in October 2025 to improve living conditions for U.S. service members living in military barracks across the world, saying in a memo shared on social media that “for too long this Department has neglected its responsibilities to set and maintain the appropriate standards for barracks, and that ends now.”
Led by the Assistant Secretary of War for Energy, Installations and Environment, the task force’s job is to accelerate repairs of the barracks, which the federal government has intended to conduct for years, without significant results.
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Hegseth recognized that the barracks lacked modern amenities and were often shabby, in a way that was likely to impact troops’ readiness and morale. “How can we expect them to be ready for anything on the battlefield when their own living space is a constant source of stress and frustration? That all ends now,” he said in a video posted on social media.
According to Hegseth, the task force received a “down payment” to upgrade barracks by the One Big Beautiful Bill Act, signed into law on July 4, 2025. The bill appropriated approximately $1.655 billion for military housing and related facilities.
This included $230 million for the Marine Corps Barracks 2030 initiative, $425 million for the construction and improvement of enlisted boot camp barracks and related facilities for the U.S. Coast Guard, and $1 billion for the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Space Force to fund the sustainment, restoration, and modernization of military unaccompanied housing.
Separately, in May 2025, the Pentagon moved $1 billion from existing Army barracks maintenance and renovation funding to support the military’s mission at the U.S.-Mexico border. Military.com reported at the time that the proposed barracks funding in the reconciliation bill could partly replace the diverted money, but would still leave the Army with a substantial shortfall.
What Is Meyer Going to Do?
Meyer was chosen by Hegseth to represent him on the barracks task force on October 19. On October 28, he started touring facilities, visiting Moody Air Force Base in Georgia to ask Airmen about their living conditions.
His immediate task is to visit barracks across the country, asking service members what could be improved and identifying solutions. “The secretary has made it clear to me he doesn’t expect me to observe this, study it, or to make it better. He expects me to fix it,” Meyer told Fox News. “And that’s exactly what we’re going to do.”
He said he plans to visit 30 installations before the end of the year.
The things that service members living in barracks are asking so far are simple demands, Meyer told Fox News. “They’re asking for a hot shower. They’re asking for a place to wash their clothes. They’re asking for a door that locks. They’re asking to be able to go to sleep in a place that doesn’t have mold,” he said. “I mean, they’re asking for light bulbs.”
He described the problem as a “multidimensional,” “complex” one where you cannot just point the finger at installation commanders. But he is willing to blame previous administrations, saying “it wasn’t a priority to the leadership” to fix the barracks’ problems.
In a post on social media after being picked by Hegseth, he also suggested the responsibility of fixing the barracks will now weigh on his shoulders. “From this point forward, there’s no confusion about who’s accountable. If we don’t get this fixed, there’s only one person to blame. Me,” he wrote last month.
“No more excuses. No more empty promises. Just accountability, action, and results.”
Newsweek contacted the Pentagon for comment by email on Saturday morning.
Contact Newsweek editor on this story: Edward Pearcey.
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