Fort Greely restored its regular dining facility hours on Jan. 20 after a service disruption that lasted almost four months. Military documents say federal workforce reductions made it hard for the installation to feed its soldiers.
The fort, which is just a few miles south of the small Interior Alaska community of Delta Junction, specializes in ground-based missile defense and hosts about 350 soldiers. Fort Greely’s dining facility usually offers three meals a day, Mondays through Fridays. But in October of 2025, it had to reduce operating hours.
Lira Frye, a spokesperson for the U.S. Army Space and Missile Defense Command, said that unexpected civilian workforce retirements and attrition caused the reduction in services. She also said that the fort’s mission readiness was “at no point impacted.”
But it was a close call, according to the partially redacted Army contracting documents.
Officials warned that the disruption could have resulted in mission failure and that the lapse risked "jeopardizing the readiness, and overall well-being of the military and government personnel stationed at the installation.”
They also said that the disruption resulted from the loss of essential civilian positions due to federal workforce reductions under the so-called Department of Government Efficiency.
The situation and lapse in service was first reported by USA Today.
Initially, soldiers received an allowance for food, according to the documents. Space and Missile Defense Command then hired a local vendor to provide meals as a short-term solution. Eventually, they reached a deal with Alaska's Department of Labor and Workforce Development to hire new staff.
During the monthslong gap, U.S. Army Materiel Command and Space and Missile Defense Command looked at several other solutions, including distributing ready-to-eat meals commonly known as MREs. But they eventually ruled out using the water-activated field rations over nutritional concerns and because Fort Greely didn’t have enough of them in stock.
Separately, the Army told Congress at an April 2025 hearing on military food programs that it was cutting about a third of its cook positions over the next three years.
U.S. Sen. Lisa Murkowski and U.S. Rep. Nick Begich III did not respond to multiple requests for comment about the lapse in services. A spokesperson for U.S. Sen. Dan Sullivan said his office wasn’t aware of the situation but is looking into it.
