The Department of the Army Criminal Investigation Division is probing a series of unexplained freezer and refrigerator failures that spoiled food at military bases across the United States, amid concerns that a cyberattack may have triggered the outages.
The Army CID’s Cyber Field Office is collaborating with the Defense Commissary Agency and the Defense Criminal Investigative Service to identify the cause of the refrigeration breakdowns reported at military commissaries in August, an Army CID spokesperson confirmed to Fox News.
Investigators are also coordinating with French law enforcement as they examine a separate series of refrigeration outages in Europe and determine whether the incidents may be linked.
Unexplained refrigeration failures spoiled food at military bases across the U.S. in late August. (Fort Irwin)
Reuters was the first to report the investigation.
At least six commissaries—on-base stores where military personnel purchase groceries—reported sudden refrigeration problems in late August.
Fort Huachuca in Arizona said in a Facebook post dated Aug. 26 that its refrigeration units had unexpectedly “went into defrost mode” overnight.
“ALL freezers went into defrost mode – ALL frozen food has spoiled,” the base said.
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After the malfunction, Fort Irwin’s commissary restricted sales to dry goods. (Fort Irwin)
The other affected facilities were F. E. Warren Air Force Base in Wyoming, Naval Station Newport in Rhode Island, Columbus Air Force Base in Mississippi, Travis Air Force Base Commissary in California and Fort Irwin in California.
Reuters reported that in at least one instance, the refrigeration units were adjusted to higher temperatures overnight instead of being switched off entirely.
U.S. Army Fort Huachuca said in August that an outage had affected the base’s commisaries. (U.S. Army Fort Huachuca )
Several weeks earlier, hackers targeted hundreds of French supermarkets, manipulating refrigerators so temperatures climbed to 122 degrees Fahrenheit. The resulting heat spoiled significant quantities of food and was blamed for fires reported across Europe.
A woman walks past empty fresh-food refrigerators at an Intermarché supermarket in Névez, western France, Oct. 12, 2026, after a cyberattack affecting the French supermarket chains Intermarché and Cooperative U that caused their refrigerators to defrost. (Fred Tanneau/AFP via Getty Images)
The Paris prosecutor’s office confirmed the cyberattack, calling it a “large-scale” assault that affected several major food retailers throughout the country.