What a Military Supply Depot Contains

[Willy]

Since it´s modern day, I think a lot of different batteries from frugal to very special cases are shelfed too. Someone said that modern battlefields can be determinated by future historians from the number of empty batteries.

That includes the equipment to reload rechargables, generators, solar panels to produce electricity on site.

[Black Leviathan]

In my pretty limited Military Experience, every supply section of a base or supply-oriented location has three things if nothing else.

It has a dusty storage area about the size of a small warehouse full of decommissioned equipment that can't be unloaded on anyone. WW 2 Radar Systems, MREs 30 years out of date, Cases of used Fatigues that aren't regulation anymore. There's so much of this stuff in any base that it's climbing the walls in back rooms. There will additionally be a room that's exclusively base equipment that has nowhere to go, desks-stacked-on-desks going back to WW1, portraits of former presidents, defunct state or core flags.

It has files, so many files, 5+ years of records of everything that has ever happened in that base, correspondence, service records, every transfer of every chicken wing. Rooms full of paper files.

It has multi-purpose rooms that serve no purpose. Just all of these empty rooms that aren't quite big enough for an event hall but maybe uncomfortably large for a meeting, that aren't being used for storage or office space. Sometimes the rooms have been temporarily purposed for something to entertain troops but often it's a giant carpeted room with a stack of UPS boxes just inside the door that were supposed to be returned to sender years ago.

[cptbutton]

Originally Posted by Black Leviathan

It has a dusty storage area about the size of a small warehouse full of decommissioned equipment that can't be unloaded on anyone. WW 2 Radar Systems, MREs 30 years out of date, Cases of used Fatigues that aren't regulation anymore. There's so much of this stuff in any base that it's climbing the walls in back rooms. There will additionally be a room that's exclusively base equipment that has nowhere to go, desks-stacked-on-desks going back to WW1, portraits of former presidents, defunct state or core flags.

It has files, so many files, 5+ years of records of everything that has ever happened in that base, correspondence, service records, every transfer of every chicken wing. Rooms full of paper files.

Some of that may be there because no one wants to do the work of turning stuff in for disposal, or worries that if they do someone will turn up demanding to know where it is. Which also a reason for retaining all those old paper records, just in case.

There are or at least were specific Air Force procedures and paperwork for turning in material FOB (Found On Base) which was there but the paperwork for exactly which sub-organization owned it could not be located.

[Christopher R. Rice]

Thanks, everyone! This has been super useful. :-)

[Johnny1A.2]

A little point about the manifests and stuff like MREs, what's actually in the boxes may not be what the manifest says. It's not unheard of for soldiers to raid MREs and the like for candy or other goodies, for ex. That same principle extends all over the facility, there's what the manifest says is there (assuming you can access it), and what's actually there when you open the box, which are not necessarily the same.