PlainBillCongress, translated.Legislation. Context. Public interest.Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Congressional Research Service
No official summary is available in the imported record yet.
People & committees
Rep. Whitesides, George [D-CA-27] · D–CA
Legislative record
A procedural vote is different from passage. Passage in one chamber does not establish enactment. Explore the glossary.
Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
Introduced in House
Introduced in House
Primary sources
Text links open the official source. We also preserved the text version used in the PlainBill explanation below.
No related bills are listed in this snapshot. This does not establish whether the proposal has appeared in earlier Congresses.
Source last updated: Aug 14, 2026. Consult Congress.gov for the current record.
AI Conversation Starters
Choose a perspective, copy a prompt, and paste it into your preferred AI. Each prompt includes the bill version and available official source links, and asks for counterarguments as well as supporting evidence.
Analyze H.R.10069 as objectively as possible. Explain its main provisions, who would be affected, possible benefits and harms, implementation, exceptions, and uncertainties. Present the strongest arguments for and against it, and identify evidence needed to assess its public impact.
Examine H.R.10069 through a progressive lens, focusing on fairness, access, economic inequality, and effects on vulnerable communities. Explain potential benefits, costs, and unintended consequences. Consider the strongest counterarguments and distinguish stated goals from demonstrated outcomes.
Examine H.R.10069 through a conservative lens, focusing on fiscal responsibility, institutional stability, federalism, and the scope of government. Explain potential benefits, costs, and unintended consequences. Consider the strongest counterarguments and any provisions that challenge this perspective.
Examine H.R.10069 through a civil-liberties and limited-government lens. Consider individual rights, privacy, voluntary choice, accountability, and government power. Explain tradeoffs, possible safeguards, and the strongest counterarguments without assuming the proposal is beneficial or harmful.
PlainBill explanation
Based on the full Introduced in House · 2026-08-06 text. This explanation has not received human editorial review. This overview describes the proposal’s major provisions; it does not establish what its real-world effects would be.
This bill would change how the Defense Department manages natural resources on military installations. It would require installation-specific measures of environmental conditions and evaluation of technologies, including artificial intelligence, to support that work. Where practical and consistent with military mission requirements, installation management plans would use those measures and monitoring data to assess conditions and set measurable objectives for maintaining or improving them. These are proposed requirements, not established results.
The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of the Interior, the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and appropriate State agencies, shall develop and maintain installation-specific goals and metrics for using technologies and artificial intelligence for the assessment of natural resources and ecosystem services as relevant to mission readiness, climate resilience, or community safety on military installations.
The Secretary of Defense, acting through the Secretaries of the military departments, shall, to the maximum extent practicable and consistent with national security, evaluate, test and, where the Secretary determines doing so would improve existing approaches, use technologies and methodologies to improve the management and implementation of natural resources programs on military installations
To the extent practicable and consistent with military mission requirements, the Secretary concerned shall, during the review required under subsection (b)(2), prepare, review, and implement each integrated natural resources management plan under this subsection in accordance with the following:
The Secretary concerned shall establish quantitative or otherwise measurable net condition objectives, as appropriate, for maintaining or improving the condition of such resources and services, including such resources and services specified in paragraph (5).
The proposed law would be called the Military Readiness Through Resilient Lands Act.
This Act may be cited as the Military Readiness Through Resilient Lands Act.
The bill would amend section 101 of the Sikes Act. It would require the Defense Secretary to develop and maintain installation-specific goals and measures for assessing natural resources with technology and artificial intelligence, consulting federal environmental officials and appropriate state agencies. The assessments would relate to mission readiness, climate resilience, or community safety.
Section 101 of the Sikes Act (16 U.S.C. 670a) is amended—
The Secretary of Defense, in consultation with the Secretary of the Interior, the Administrator of the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, and appropriate State agencies, shall develop and maintain installation-specific goals and metrics for using technologies and artificial intelligence for the assessment of natural resources and ecosystem services as relevant to mission readiness, climate resilience, or community safety on military installations.
The measures would have to fit the purposes and elements of installation natural resource management plans. They would cover species and habitats, water quality and quantity, wildfire risk and fuel conditions, soil and vegetation health, and flood and watershed conditions. Watershed assessments would include adjacent lands measurably affected by watersheds originating on or passing through military lands.
Such metrics shall, at a minimum, be consistent with the purposes and elements of the integrated natural resources management plans to allow for comparison of conditions and trends on specific military installations and shall address— (A) biodiversity, including populations and habitat condition for threatened and endangered species and other species of concern; (B) habitat extent, quality, and connectivity; (C) water quality and quantity; (D) wildfire risk and fuels conditions; (E) ecosystem condition, including soil health and vegetation condition; (F) flood risk and watershed condition, including on adjacent lands measurably affected by watersheds originating or passing through military lands
“Ecosystem services” would mean the direct and indirect benefits natural systems provide to people and communities. The measures would also cover other such benefits identified by the Defense Secretary as relevant to mission readiness, climate resilience, or community safety and consistent with specified military installation resilience provisions.
In this section, the term ecosystem services means the direct and indirect benefits that natural systems provide to people and communities.
(G) other ecosystem services identified by the Secretary of Defense— (i) as relevant to mission readiness, climate resilience, or community safety; and (ii) consistent with the military installation resilience elements in sections 2801, 2802, 2815, 2815a, 2866, and 2866a of title 10, United States Code.
The Defense Secretary, acting through the military department secretaries, would have to evaluate and test environmental technologies to the maximum extent practical and consistent with national security. Using them would depend on the Secretary determining that they would improve existing approaches. Listed technologies include remote sensing, automated monitoring, geographic information systems that organize location-based data, artificial intelligence, and other advanced data analysis tools.
The Secretary of Defense, acting through the Secretaries of the military departments, shall, to the maximum extent practicable and consistent with national security, evaluate, test and, where the Secretary determines doing so would improve existing approaches, use technologies and methodologies to improve the management and implementation of natural resources programs on military installations, including— (A) remote sensing; (B) automated environmental monitoring networks; (C) geographic information systems; (D) artificial intelligence; and (E) other advanced data analytics tools, to collect, process, and analyze data on natural resources and ecosystem services on military installations.
The Defense Secretary would have to ensure that collected data are regularly updated where practical, on a schedule suitable for natural resource management plans. The data would have to inform decisions both at individual installations and across the department about natural resources, infrastructure resilience, and sustaining military missions.
The Secretary of Defense shall ensure that— (A) to the extent practicable, data collected pursuant to paragraphs (5) and (6) are updated on a consistent and regular basis appropriate for use in integrated natural resource management plans; and (B) such data is used for the appropriate installation-level and enterprise-level decisionmaking for natural resources management, infrastructure resilience, and mission sustainment.
During the referenced plan review, the responsible secretary would use the measures and monitoring data to assess starting conditions, trends, and projected future conditions. The secretary would also set measurable objectives, as appropriate, for maintaining or improving overall resource conditions. These duties would apply where practical and consistent with military mission requirements.
To the extent practicable and consistent with military mission requirements, the Secretary concerned shall, during the review required under subsection (b)(2), prepare, review, and implement each integrated natural resources management plan under this subsection in accordance with the following: (A) Assess and project conditions The Secretary concerned shall use the metrics established under paragraph (5) and the data generated by the monitoring technologies described in paragraph (6) to assess baseline conditions, trends, and projected future conditions of key natural resources and ecosystem services on the installation. (B) Identify net condition objectives The Secretary concerned shall establish quantitative or otherwise measurable net condition objectives, as appropriate, for maintaining or improving the condition of such resources and services, including such resources and services specified in paragraph (5).
At the same frequency as the existing review of a plan’s operation and effect, the bill would require assessments of resource trends and whether the plan helps maintain or improve overall conditions, where practical. Those assessments would inform plan revisions, including changes intended to improve some areas to compensate for degradation from mission-essential activities elsewhere.
(3) shall, at the same frequency as the review of the operation and effect of the plan under paragraph (2) and to the extent practicable, use the metrics, technology, and methodologies under paragraphs (5) and (6) of subsection (a) to— (A) assess trends in key natural resources and ecosystem services, including biodiversity, habitat condition, wildfire risk, watershed condition, and other relevant ecosystem services, on each military installation covered by the plan; (B) evaluate whether the plan is contributing to the maintenance or improvement of the net condition of such resources and services at the military installation; and (C) inform any revisions to the plan, including adjustments to management actions designed to improve conditions in some areas to offset or compensate for degradation related to mission-essential activities in other areas
The bill would require the Defense Secretary to submit supplemental materials to the congressional defense committees as part of an existing statutory report. The stated timing is no later than two years after enactment, “and five years thereafter.”
Not later than two years after the date of the enactment of this Act, and five years thereafter, the Secretary of Defense shall, as part of the report required under section 2711 of title 10, United States Code, submit to the congressional defense committees supplemental materials with respect to the administration of section 101 of the Sikes Act (as amended by subsection (a))
The supplemental materials would summarize progress in using the measures, technologies, methods, and data, including comparisons across installations. They would also summarize benefits in streamlining environmental permitting and review and recommend ways to improve coordination and timeliness. This reporting requirement does not establish that those benefits will occur.
includes a summary of— (1) progress made toward— (A) the use of the metrics, technology, methodologies, and collected data under paragraphs (5), (6), and (7) of subsection (a) of such section (as added by subsection (a)); and (B) deploying such metrics to compare natural resource trends across military installations; (2) the benefits of such paragraphs (5), (6), and (7) in accelerating, simplifying and otherwise streamlining environmental permitting, environmental review and other similar interagency processes; and (3) recommendations of the Secretary with respect to opportunities to improve the efficiency, coordination, and timeliness of interagency environmental review and permitting processes applicable to individual military installations.
The supplied official-actions snapshot, updated August 14, 2026, records introduction in the House on August 6, 2026, and referral that day to the Natural Resources and Armed Services committees for provisions within their respective jurisdictions.
Source snapshot updated 2026-08-14T13:52:16Z.
2026-08-06: Introduced in House
2026-08-06: Referred to the Committee on Natural Resources, and in addition to the Committee on Armed Services, for a period to be subsequently determined by the Speaker, in each case for consideration of such provisions as fall within the jurisdiction of the committee concerned.
A closer look
Reviewed version: Introduced in House · 2026-08-06. These findings describe provisions and who may benefit; they are not judgments of waste, corruption, or motive.
This review covers the supplied bill text. “None identified” does not rule out provisions in later versions or accompanying reports and disclosures.
Provisions outside the bill’s main subject, or policy changes attached to appropriations.
None identified in the reviewed text
No unrelated provision or policy change attached to appropriations was identified in the complete supplied introduced text. This conclusion is limited to that version and does not establish absence in other versions or accompanying materials.
Spending directed to particular recipients or places outside ordinary competitive or formula-based allocation.
None identified in the reviewed text
No congressionally directed spending for a particular recipient or place was identified in the complete supplied introduced text. This conclusion is limited to that version; the bundle does not include earmark disclosures, member requests, or committee or conference materials.
Narrow exceptions, exemptions, or preferential treatment that warrant a closer look.
None identified in the reviewed text
No materially narrow preferential benefit, carve-out, or special exemption was identified in the complete supplied introduced text. Its coverage and implementation qualifications concern the bill’s general military natural resource management policy. This conclusion is limited to the supplied version.
Full text preserved for this analysis. Legislative record snapshot: Aug 14, 2026. How PlainBill uses AI