The U.S. Air Force flew an unfueled microreactor from California to Utah aboard a C-17 Globemaster III in mid-February 2026, in what the Wall Street Journal described as a first-of-its-kind military flight for a nuclear reactor. The operation, referred to publicly as Windlord, took place as the Trump administration pushes faster testing and potential deployment pathways for portable nuclear power tied to defense needs. The flight tested whether a containerized reactor could be moved by air on short notice for energy resilience at remote bases and expeditionary operations.
Operation Windlord and the First Reactor Airlift
Between February 13 and 15, 2026, a containerized reactor was loaded into a reinforced transport frame at March Air Reserve Base in California and flown to a test site in Utah, according to Defense Department imagery released after the mission. The photos show ground crews securing the unit inside the cargo bay of a C-17, the same heavy-lift aircraft the military uses to move armored vehicles and humanitarian supplies worldwide. Because the reactor carried no nuclear fuel during transit, the flight sidestepped many of the radiological transport protocols that would apply to a fueled system, though it still required specialized packaging and load-planning procedures.
The airlift drew immediate attention because it demonstrated a logistical chain that, if repeated with a fueled unit, could deliver electricity to locations that currently depend on vulnerable diesel supply lines. Associated Press coverage on the event noted that outside experts raised questions about safety protocols, security during transport, and the long-term handling of spent fuel and radioactive waste. Those concerns reflect a broader tension: the military wants speed, but nuclear operations historically demand deliberate, multi-year licensing and oversight cycles that are difficult to compress without introducing new risks.
Executive Orders Bypass Traditional Licensing
The airlift did not happen in a policy vacuum. In May 2025, the White House published an executive order on reactor testing reforms that directed the Department of Energy to establish faster pathways for certain reactor testing and demonstrations, rather than relying solely on the Nuclear Regulatory Commission’s standard civilian licensing process. A companion directive on advanced nuclear deployment laid out the strategic rationale: installation energy resilience, expeditionary power generation, and strengthening the defense industrial base. Together, the two directives outlined a policy framework intended to speed certain test and demonstration activities, compared with the years-long NRC review typical for commercial plants.
That framework matters because it shifts authority. Under normal circumstances, the NRC serves as the independent safety regulator for civilian nuclear technology. The executive orders route certain test and demonstration reactors through the DOE instead, which answers directly to the president. Supporters argue this removes bureaucratic drag from a technology the military needs urgently. Critics, including nuclear safety advocates cited in AP reporting, worry that speed could come at the expense of independent review, particularly when the same reactors might eventually be sited near populated areas or allied nations. The administration has framed these nuclear initiatives as part of a wider national security and technology agenda, arguing that advanced reactors can support resilience and operational readiness.
DOE Reactor Pilot Program and the July 4 Goal
The Department of Energy followed the executive orders with a concrete program. Its reactor pilot announcement, released in June 2025, set an explicit target: at least three reactors should achieve criticality by July 4, 2026. That timeline is aggressive by any measure. Traditional reactor projects in the United States have taken a decade or longer to move from design approval to first criticality. The DOE program uses a request-for-applications process with defined selection criteria, and its stated purpose is research and development testing rather than commercial power production, positioning these units as experimental platforms that can inform future licensing and deployment models.
By August 2025, the DOE had published initial selections for the program. Among the companies chosen was Valar Atomics, which is working with the San Rafael Energy Lab in Utah to host a test reactor focused on component validation, operator training, and informing future regulatory frameworks. Construction was expected to begin in 2025, with the reactor coming online in 2026. The airlift of an unfueled unit to Utah fits into that broader timeline, and it could also serve as a general logistics proof-of-concept for moving reactor-sized packages to test locations under the broader DOE pilot effort. If that interpretation is correct, Operation Windlord was not an isolated spectacle but an early step in operationalizing the administration’s fast-track nuclear roadmap.
Safety Questions the Speed Push Has Not Answered
The central critique of the administration’s approach is not that portable reactors are a bad idea but that the timeline compresses steps that exist for good reason. Nuclear waste disposal, for instance, remains an unresolved national problem even for the existing fleet of large commercial plants. Microreactors produce far less spent fuel, but they still generate radioactive byproducts that require secure, long-term storage. No public DOE or Pentagon document released so far has detailed how waste from forward-deployed military reactors would be managed, transported back to the United States, or stored permanently. Without a clear end-of-life plan, skeptics argue, the government risks repeating a pattern in which strategic urgency drives deployment before the back end of the fuel cycle is fully thought through.
Security during transport raises a separate set of issues. The February airlift involved an unfueled reactor, which contains no fissile material and poses minimal radiological risk. A fueled reactor in transit, however, would raise additional security and emergency-planning questions, including how it would be protected and what contingency plans would apply in an accident or diversion. Public reporting and available government materials have not spelled out the specific safety and security protocols that would apply to operational airlift of fueled units. For now, the most concrete demonstration remains Operation Windlord itself: a proof of concept that the Air Force can move a reactor-sized package quickly, but not yet a full answer to how the United States will manage the risks once that package carries nuclear fuel.
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*This article was researched with the help of AI, with human editors creating the final content.
