Medium-sized bases are designed to expand from temporary into permanent facilities.

Evidence

Military planners generally design medium-sized bases like Soto Cano and others like it in Singapore, Djibouti, and Romania to be readily expandable. This allows short-term deployments of U.S. forces to visit for training purposes and operations of various kinds and also permits for more permanent construction of the kind that Soto Cano saw during the 1980s and is seeing today. All the while, officials at “forward operating sites” often repeat the mantra that their U.S.-funded, U.S.-operated facilities are not U.S. military bases at all. “This is their base,” Sergeant Edwards emphasized to me before the end of my visit to Soto Cano. “Sometimes we forget that. But we’re here to help them.” — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 145