Forward Operating Site

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A Forward Operating Site ( FOS ) is, in US parlance, the middle tier of a military base outside the mainland . These are bases that primarily serve as the base of operations for regularly changing units. The infrastructure of the facilities themselves should function with minimal effort, but provide the necessary military services for troops with increased combat readiness who carry out missions in the region from there. FOSs should also keep additional equipment available to a limited extent in order to be able to station considerably larger units there and keep them operational within a short period of time. They also offer the opportunity to train local soldiers and police units .

The FOSs go back to a concept that US President George W. Bush presented in August 2004 for the stationing of the armed forces of the United States . It provides for US troops to be withdrawn by 2014, particularly from Western Europe, and to be relocated to the USA and, to a lesser extent, to other countries. Central elements of this new stationing concept are the FOSs superordinate Main Operating Bases (MOB) and their subordinate Cooperative Security Locations (CSL).

The FOSs are arranged in the so-called "arc of instability" from West Africa through South Asia and the Pacific Ocean to the Andes. Each is firmly subordinate to a MOB. The Lemonnier camp set up in October 2002 near Djibouti served as a template for the following FOSs. Examples of FOSs are “Eagle Base” near Tuzla in Bosnia, Camp Bondsteel in Kosovo, RAF Fairford in Great Britain, Incirlik Air Base in Turkey, and the Thumrait and Masirah air bases in Oman.

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