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I am not sure how good are the tombs even for hiding. For one thing, how much food can you store in one and how safely? How many people do you put in one? The more you put in one, the more risked get caught at once; the more barrows you use, the more the risk of not properly deleting your prints around them. How do you move inside a barrow with so many metal objects around you, that can give you away in a second? And how safely can you use light to counter that? How well can you conceal the presence of humans, with all the food and other scents giving them away? Let us remember that orcs have very good trackers among them, who can literally sniff their opponents around, as we see in The land of shadow, RotK. Are the barrow doors sealed shut? And if they are, how much air is in them? How do you safely communicate that danger has passed or that it is still around? The ones inside are basically sitting ducks, waiting to be found, while they have little if any idea of what is going on in their surroundings. All in all, the using, in and of itself, of a tomb to hid in from enemies has a _lot_ of downsides; not to mention that it implies a profanation of what is, arguably the most sacred place in Middle-Earth for them (perhaps only the gondorians would consider the hallow of Mindoluin to be of similar importance). Hiding in the forest, if that is the only purpose, provides better means of cloaking, it also allows for mobility, communication, gathering of food, attack and retreat, etc.
Concerning the possible fortifications in the barrows, there are also many possibilities: they already existed, they were reinforced in the original manner or with palisades, trenches or whatever other more or less primitive means or these means were just made there. [IIRC, the saying that more wars have been won with the shovel than with the sword has been attributed to Caesar.]
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