Friday, August 31, 2018

Is There Anything Shipping Containers Can't Do?

If the Air Force must fight in eastern Europe, it will not have access to established air bases the way it did during the Cold War in West Germany. So it has a "base in a box" to quickly set up a base at an air field in an allied country:

Defense News traveled to Poland’s 31st Air Base near Krzesiny this July for an exclusive look at the first-ever trial of the U.S. Air Force’s new deployable air base system, or DABS — a series of humble-looking shipping containers filled with everything needed to stand up air operations, including temporary billeting and mess facilities, vehicles, airfield repair resources, and power and electrical equipment.

This is basically a land-based modularized auxiliary cruiser.

Although improving existing air bases in NATO allied countries is helpful, of course.

But it is nice to have the ability to operate from bases not already on the Russian target list.