The word base is first recorded in English language from c.1325, and comes from Old French ''bas'', which is derived from Latin ''basis'' "foundation", itself derived from Archaic Greek ''basis'' "step, pedestal," from ''bainein'' "to step". The military sense of the word only dates from the 1860s. The verb meaning "to place on a foundation" is from 1841.
A military base may go by any of a number of names, such as the following:
Some examples of permanent military bases used by the navies and air forces of the world are the Royal Dockyards in Portsmouth, UK, the Naval Air Station Whidbey Island, Washington State, USA, or Ramstein Air Base, Germany (the last two are each designated as a Main Operating Base). Other examples of non- or semi-permanent military bases include a Forward Operating Base (FOB), a Logistics Base (Log base) and a Fire Base (FB).
A military base may also contain large concentrations of military supplies in order to support military logistics. Most military bases are restricted to the general public and usually only authorized personnel may enter them (be it military personnel or their relatives and authorized civilian personnel).
Military bases usually provide housing for military personnel, a post office and dining facilities (DFACs). They may also provide support facilities such as fast food restaurants like Burger King, or AAFES snack bar, a gas station, chapels, schools, a hospital or clinic (dental and/or health clinics), shopping and convenience retail stores such as a Base/Post exchange (BX/PX) or shoppette, beauty salon, and laundromats. Family, Morale, Welfare and Recreation (FMWR) provides facilities such as fitness centers, libraries, athletic fields, basketball hoops, child development centers, automotive work shops, hobby/arts and crafts centers, bowling centers, and community activity centers.
The overseas military base has, throughout its history of usage (and particularly in peacetime and the host country's period of civil unrest), been a contentious issue of debate, and is often a source of opposition for antimilitarists and nationalists in the host country. Such bases may be established by treaties between the governing power in the host country and another country which needs to establish the military base in the host country for various reasons, usually strategic and logistic.
Furthermore, overseas military bases often serve as the source of the military brat subculture due to the children of the bases' occupant military being born or raised in the host country but raised with a remote parental knowledge of the occupant military's home country.
During the period from the 1840s through the 1860s barracks were constructed under supervision of the Royal Engineers in:
The Cardwell Reforms (1872) ushered in another period of intensive Barrack building at Aldershot, Portsmouth, Plymouth, London, Woking, Woolwich, Dublin, Belfast, Malta, Gibraltar and the Cape of Good Hope.
In 1959 the Corps' Work Services was transferred to the civilian War Department Works Organization (later renamed Property Services Agency (PSA)) and by 1965 the (Specialist Teams Royal Engineers (STRE)) were formed to plan and execute Works projects worldwide.
British naval bases are traditionally named, commissioned, and administered as though they were naval ships. For this reason they are sometimes called stone frigates.
This text is licensed under the Creative Commons CC-BY-SA License. This text was originally published on Wikipedia and was developed by the Wikipedia community.
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