The headlines tell a story, the story that military bases are not secure.
We learn that the widely reported drone overflights did not occur only stateside.
In June 2024, in South Korea, authorities arrested Chinese nationals, including a CCP member, “who used Chinese made drones and smartphones to film the ROK Navy Operations Command, naval bases, and a U.S. aircraft carrier in Busan on nine separate occasions over a period of 1 year and 3 months.”
More recently, a few weeks after U.S. bombers had to be evacuated from RAF Fairford base in Britain in early October 2026, local authorities charged a man with “assisting a ‘foreign intelligence service’ over an incident at a military base used by the U.S. for strikes on Iran.”
Closer to home, a young PRC citizen was apprehended in April after taking photos at Offutt Air Force Base in Nebraska.
And then there is the nervousness about Red Chinese land purchases near U.S. bases. In 2024, the New York Post reported that it had “identified 19 bases across the US from Florida to Hawaii which are in close proximity to land bought up by Chinese entities and could be exploited by spies working for the communist nation.”
Trace italienne
“A Modern Trace Italienne: Rethinking Rear-Area Defense Against Drones” is an article that suggests transforming American bases into fortresses. “Perhaps most importantly, we may need to stop thinking about the base as a collection of buildings surrounded by defensive systems. Rather, the base itself must become the defensive system.” The author, appreciating the breakthrough designs of the star forts of old, looks to the age of architects and knights for inspiration.
The knight-architect is hard to come by these days, but the federal government is at least trying in its own way.
There is the Fortress America program, announced September 30 in a Department of War memo. Newsweek reported: “Most U.S. military bases will need to be able to run independently for at least three months should they be cut off from external supplies in the event of a conflict…. The defense secretary wrote in his memo that the initiative is based on five pillars: energy independence; supply chain and defense industrial base resilience; a strategic defense reserve; installation hardening and cyber resilience; and resilience in space and spectrum.”
They’re envisioning multiple, simultaneous sieges of Malta right here.
Then there is The Next Great American Base initiative, also announced in September, “a project to build a ‘premier, world-class power projection platform from the ground up.’ ” A Pentagon spokesman said that the War Department has asked governors, industry, partners and adjutant generals for their “best and brightest ideas.” Theme: “bases are a weapons system.”
They are looking for that modern trace italienne, as it were, but in the wrong places perhaps.
Let’s not forget the Golden Dome program to shield America from missile attacks. Under Golden Dome, five military bases will get missile defense systems.
These are not to be confused with the five bases selected for a pilot program to deploy “directed-energy weapons systems” against drones. “The bases were selected to allow for testing and assessment of different weapons at a cross-section of installations that have different environments and roles.”
Fortresses are expensive. But programs, we’ve got programs. And bases, we have bases too: in 2021, about 750 worldwide. That’s a lot of directed-energy weapons, a lot of anti-missile defenses, a lot of stand-alone energy generation and general base hardening. We’ll need a bigger checkbook, and it’s going to take intense commitment from the next few administrations and Congresses to see it all through.
History teaches us that “Bastion forts [the star forts or trace italienne] were very expensive. Amsterdam’s 22 bastions cost 11 million florins, and Siena in 1544 bankrupted itself to pay for its defenses. For this reason, bastion forts were often improvised from earlier defenses.”
Concentrations
And by the way, what is a base?
Large bases are “military installations larger than 4 hectares (10 acres) or worth more than $10 million. These bases typically have in excess of 200 US military personnel. 439 or 60 percent of the US’s foreign bases fall under this category.”
Small bases or lily pads “are smaller than 4 hectares (10 acres) or have a value of less than $10 million. These include cooperative security locations and forward operating sites. The remaining 40 percent of US foreign bases fall under this category.”
We need qualifiers here. Size and “worth” aside, the American base is also too often single-purpose, concentrating a particular capability or two and thus making itself an especially attractive target. Barksdale AFB, for instance, is the home of Air Force Global Strike Command, “a warfighting headquarters” equipped with B-52 bombers and the nuclear weapons that we will need to “deter, defend against, and defeat enemy aggression.” The enemy that knocks out Barksdale scores an important strategic win.
Another case is that of Fort Detrick, hosting “most elements of the United States biological defense program.” A knockout blow here would remove a major U.S. capability.
There are many such cases.
A point in our favor is the sheer number of U.S. bases; their distribution requires any attacker to disperse effort (and war materiel).
Another way
Instead of the very expensive build-out of bases into fortresses, let’s try more dispersion locally. If the base is going to be a target, move out the housing, the motor pool, administration, day care, warehousing, etc. Revive the humble camp, inferior to the base and built cheaply and quickly with temporariness in mind. Build many camps to spread what you have around. Build cheaply so that after an attack, you can rebuild cheaply. And quickly.
Small is beautiful. Let’s consider that small may also be survivable and that bastions would be a boondoggle.
And when the drones trouble us, we won’t need lasers to shoot them down. □
James Roth works for a major defense contractor in Virginia.
Also see:
StoptheCCP.org: “Why We Don’t Defend U.S. Bases From Red Chinese, Iranian, or Any Drones”
StoptheCCP.org: “The Pearl Harbor Problem With U.S. Air Bases”
