The 2026 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) authorizes Department of Defense (DOD) expenditures for the new fiscal year, which started Oct. 1, 2025 and ends Sept. 30, 2026.
Congress passed the 2026 NDAA on Dec. 10, 2025. The U.S. Senate is expected to swiftly approve the measure and send it to President Trump for his signature.
U.S. Rep. Ed Case reports that he and the rest of Hawai‘i’s congressional delegation — U.S. Sen. Mazie Hirono, U.S. Sen. Brian Schatz and U.S. Rep. Jill Tokuda — worked diligently to prioritize 2026 NDAA projects that are crucial to Hawai‘i and to ensure that 2026 defense spending strongly supports Hawai‘i construction.
“The Fiscal Year 2026 NDAA provides about $1.3 billion in authorized Hawaiʻi military construction projects,” Case says. “This includes $492 million for the continued construction of a new dry dock at Pearl Harbor and $142 million for the Red Hill Water Treatment Plant.”
The new NDAA also greenlights about $147.5 million for 460 units of family housing at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam and $83 million for infrastructure upgrades that support advanced Navy vessels planned for Hawai‘i deployment in 2028.
Actual funding for these projects, Case says, is provided by the House Appropriations Committee. Case is currently serving his seventh year on the Committee and his third year on its Subcommittee on Defense.
Case reports that the House Appropriations Committee drafted a bill earlier this year that would also “appropriate billions for the military Facilities Sustainment, Restoration and Modernization Account, which provides funding to maintain, repair and upgrade existing military infrastructure (e.g., buildings, roads, utilities).” If enacted, “this will allow military installations across Hawai‘i to request millions of dollars of additional funding from within their respective services.
“Hawai‘i has seen a consistent high level of military construction spending in recent years, and I and the rest of the delegation are working in both the annual NDAAs and Appropriations measures to ensure that continues,” he says.
Construction of Hawaiʻi’s major military projects is usually headed by the state’s leading general contractors, which include Hawaiian Dredging Construction Co. Inc., Nan Inc., Hensel Phelps, Kiewit, DHOJV, Nordic PCL Construction Inc. and Healy Tibbitts Builders.
Many of these contractors are already busy with large military projects.
These include Dry Dock 5 at Pearl Harbor (Hawaiian Dredging as a member of DHOJV); bachelor enlisted quarters at Marine Corps Base Hawaii, a new Fort Shafter parking structure, ammunition storage and other work at Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam (Nan Inc.); and a high-tech secure integration laboratory on Maui (Hensel Phelps).
2026 NDAA HAWAI‘I PROJECTS
The 2026 NDAA authorizes the following DOD Hawai‘i projects and approximate expenditures:
|
DDG–1000 SHIP SUPPORT INFRASTRUCTURE UPGRADES |
$83 M |
|
Navy & Marine Corps, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam DRY DOCK 3 REPLACEMENT (INC) |
$492.7 M |
|
Navy & Marine Corps, Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam WATER TREATMENT PLANT (INC) |
$141.6 M |
|
Navy & Marine Corps, Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay ELECTRICAL DISTRIBUTION MODERNIZATION |
$15.6 M |
|
Navy & Marine Corps, Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay MAIN GATE ENTRY REPLACEMENT |
$49.2 M |
|
Navy & Marine Corps, Marine Corps Base Kaneohe Bay WATER RECLAMATION FACILITY COMPLIANCE UPGRADE (INC) |
$37.3 M |
|
Pacific Missile Range Facility Barking Sands PDI: AIRFIELD PAVEMENT UPGRADES |
$65.7 M |
|
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam COMBINED OPERATIONS CENTER (DESIGN) |
$5 M |
|
Joint Base Pearl Harbor-Hickam MHPI RESTRUCTURE (460 UNITS) |
$147.5 |
|
Total |
$1.03B |
More Boots on the Ground
Military projects generally demand highly skilled workers. And if a project is big enough — such as the Navy’s massive and multi-year Dry Dock 5 –– it can siphon off hundreds of construction workers from Hawaiʻi’s labor pool.
In 2025, with the state’s construction workforce already strained, the industry was further challenged by the federal government’s recent five-week shutdown and the Trump Administration’s ongoing reductions of federal employees.
“[This has] directly impacted our Hawai‘i’s roughly 25,000-plus federal civilian workers, and indirectly federal contractors and broad parts of our community that are interlinked with our federal government’s efforts,” Case says.
The 2026 NDAA might help turn this around.
“The [2026] NDAA allows the Department of Defense to base promotions on demonstrated skill and performance rather than solely based on time-in-grade requirements and allows the Department to use skills-based assessments to determine if candidates are qualified for open positions,” Case says.
This means all DOD branches — including those in Hawai‘i — can hire more workers more quickly if this provision becomes law.
Other good news includes recent efforts by Case and the Hawai‘i congressional delegation to “press the military to address the pay freeze for federal blue-collar workers at Pearl Harbor,” Case says. “In response to our demands for immediate action, the Department of Defense recently announced that tens of thousands of blue-collar government workers in Hawai‘i and nationwide would retroactively receive their long-delayed 2024 pay raises.”
