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Comment by _d8fd | Hacker News Reader

> A FOB somewhere near Lashkargah

My Google-fu thinks FOB is short for Forward Operating Base.

Yup. For small units on the move (or operating all stealthy-like), you can airdrop a few C-containers (FOB-in-a-box) right at (or behind!) the front line and be up and ready to go in not-that-many hours.

I'm going to guess you weren't there, because the concept of "air dropping" a 20 or 40 ft container is pretty silly... Such a thing almost never happens.

FOBs are established by cargo that arrives by truck. The only FOBs I ever heard of being established by air cargo (Chinook, and in very mountainous regions of Kunar and Nooristan mostly) were not exactly what you would call a FOB in the context of Afghanistan, but were much smaller sites on hilltops that would be designated COPs (combat outpost) or firebases.

Our FOB was initially air-dropped into place (we had lots of spent one-use parachutes to show for it). I wasn't there then so I don't know how big the kit was, but yeah they weren't ISO containers obviously.

I was not there. I helped design power generation and radio-telecom systems & packaging for them. Now, it's not two C-containers on skids, to be sure! :-)

They were support for very (very) small sites. They were called FOBs by the airborne guys, but I don't know much about military terminology, and can't vouch for the correctness of the use of that term in this case.

EDIT: This doesn't look like what we worked on, but I just found this:

  - http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2011/12/02/military-base-in-box-all-rage.html

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