Department of War plans shore-based Navy microreactor at Crane by 2028

The Department of War announced on September 9, 2026 the planned installation of what it calls Indiana's first advanced nuclear Micro Modular Reactor at Naval Weapons Station Crane, no later than September 2028, in a release that describes the reactor as commercially owned and operated, executed through the Army's Janus Program, and intended to supply power to the installation independent of the commercial grid. The release names no vendor, no reactor design, no electrical output, and no cost. It does name the partners: the Army's Janus Program, the Office of the Assistant Secretary of the Navy for Energy, Installations and Environment, the Office of the Under Secretary of War for Research and Engineering, and the State of Indiana.

The date is the executive order's. Executive Order 14299, signed May 23, 2025, directs the Secretary of Defense, through the Secretary of the Army, to commence operation of a nuclear reactor, "regulated by the United States Army," at a domestic military base or installation no later than September 30, 2028, and to designate the Army Secretary as executive agent for installation and operational nuclear energy; the release says the Crane project "implements" that order and a companion order on the nuclear industrial base. The release restates that executive-agent role in the same paragraph as the Crane coordination list, which is the closest it comes to explaining why a Navy base's reactor sits inside an Army program, run in coordination with the Department of the Navy, the Defense Innovation Unit (styled the "Department of War Innovation Unit" in the release), and the Office of the Assistant Secretary of War for Critical Technologies. That office's assistant secretary, Mike Dodd, is quoted setting the pace: "Our standard is to field and deploy capability within 24 months or less."

Janus is the program that on August 26, 2026 selected five vendors for five Army posts, covered in US Army awards up to $2.2 billion for microreactors at five bases: Antares Nuclear at Fort Bragg, BWXT Advanced Technologies at Fort Campbell, General Atomics Electromagnetic Systems at Fort Hood, Radiant Industries at Fort Benning, and Westinghouse Government Services at Fort Drum. The Army's award release said additional Army and other-service sites would be announced at a later date, and that the first reactor under the order would be regulated by the Army. The Crane release calls its reactor "the Navy's first shore-based advanced microreactor," in the words of Assistant Secretary of the Navy Brendan Rogers, and "the first step in a larger, unified Department-wide effort." It does not say whether the Crane unit will come from the five August vendors. On regulation it points at the Army twice without naming a licensing path: W. Jordan Gillis, Assistant Secretary of the Army for Installations, Energy and Environment, is quoted saying the partnership combines "the Army's nuclear expertise and regulatory authorities" with the installation requirements of the sister services, and the narration describes the Army as executive agent for installation nuclear energy. What the release leaves open is whether the Crane unit is the reactor EO 14299 requires to be operating under Army regulation by September 30, 2028, and whether the Army or the Nuclear Regulatory Commission licenses it; it says the Department will work with federal, state, and local partners "throughout the required safety, environmental, regulatory, and installation processes." Rogers's first sentence is the program's thesis in five words: "Energy security is warfighting capability."

Indiana's part of the partnership has a paper trail. Indiana does not appear on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission's list of operating power reactors by state; the release calls the Crane unit "the first power-producing reactor installed in Indiana," and Governor Mike Braun, quoted by WFIE, said it "will be the first one in any navy facility." The Indiana Office of Energy Development's December 2025 annual report under Braun's Executive Order 25-48 lays out what the 2025 General Assembly passed to change that: House Enrolled Act 1007, signed May 6, 2025, created a 20 percent state tax credit for expenses of manufacturing small modular reactors in Indiana, defined as reactors of not more than 470 MW nameplate; Senate Enrolled Act 423 created a partnership pilot program allowing electric utilities to share SMR development costs with, among others, state universities and military installations; SEA 424 lets a utility recover up to 80 percent of approved SMR development costs through a rate adjustment; and SEA 425 preempts local zoning and building restrictions on generation investment. The same report says, as of December 2025, that AES was launching an SMR feasibility study scheduled for completion in mid-2026 and that Indiana Michigan Power was taking early steps toward an NRC early site permit application for its Rockport site, with the work contingent on grant outcomes.

The release credits Senator Jim Banks as "an indispensable partner" over more than a year of coordination with state leadership, with support from Braun, Senator Todd Young, and Representatives Erin Houchin and Mark Messmer. Young's statement restates the release's September 2028 date and partner list and adds no specifications; Houchin's says the project "will also have a positive impact at West Gate due to increased power supply to the base."

Outlook

The release's own sequencing points to what comes next: a vendor and a design have to be named before a reactor can be built, and the Army's August release said additional Army and other-service sites would be announced later. If the Crane unit is drawn from the five Janus awardees, the summer's test record described in Five US microreactor designs went critical in the summer of 2026 is the field to read; if it is not, the Department has a sixth vendor to announce. Either way, September 30, 2028 is the executive order's deadline for an Army-regulated reactor to be operating somewhere, and the release commits Crane to installation "no later than" that month, so the two-year clock Dodd describes has already started on a project with no named hardware. The Indiana statutes are written for utilities and their ratepayers; a contractor-owned reactor on a federal installation needs none of that cost-recovery machinery, which is one reading of why the state's first reactor is arriving this way.