Modern airlift and sealift make overseas bases save little deployment time.

Evidence

Lily pads have also grown in popularity as some military planners, on both the right and left of the political spectrum, have challenged one of the traditional rationales for maintaining large numbers of bases overseas: deployment speed. According to a Bush administration study, for example, because of technological advancements in airlift and sealift, deploying troops to a conflict from most overseas bases saves little if any time compared to deploying from domestic bases. More and more military analysts are thus concluding that maintaining stores of weapons and supplies overseas—what the military calls “pre-positioning”—is more important than having tens of thousands of troops there, with the attendant costs to support them and their families. Most lily pads can serve this pre-positioning function while also offering, like somewhat bigger forward operating sites, “surge capacity” to expand easily and rapidly in order to accommodate much larger numbers of troops and weaponry in a crisis. — David Vine, Base Nation_ How U.S. Military Bases…, 954

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the reader’s broader interest in whether the deployment-speed and pre-positioning rationale for overseas bases still holds.