A military building is any structure designed to house functions performed by a military unit. General types include: * Administrative Facilities * Ammunition Storage Facilities * Commissary Facilities * Correctional Facilities * Fortifications * Hospitals * Housing * Mess * Military Intelligence Facilities * Museums * POL (Petroleum, Oils, & Lubricants) Storage and Handling Facilities * Recreation Facilities * Research Facilities * Training Facilities * Utility Structures * Vehicle Repair, Maintenance, & Storage Facilities * Weapons and Ammunition Production Facilities

Administrative facilities

Military organizations of all types must support a wide range of administrative functions including personnel management, accounting, and procurement. Some facilities are quite similar to civilian

office buildings An office is a space where an organization's employees perform administrative work in order to support and realize objects and goals of the organization. The word "office" may also denote a position within an organization with specific du ...

while others are converted from other military uses and can be quite idiosyncratic.

Ammunition storage facilities

Ammunition Ammunition (informally ammo) is the material fired, scattered, dropped, or detonated from any weapon or weapon system. Ammunition is both expendable weapons (e.g., bombs, missiles, grenades, land mines) and the component parts of other we ...

is frequently stored in small quantities in reinforced structures which are widely separated. Standard designs are sometimes called "igloos".

Commissary facilities

Traditionally, military units provided most of the rations,

uniforms A uniform is a variety of clothing worn by members of an organization while participating in that organization's activity. Modern uniforms are most often worn by armed forces and paramilitary organizations such as police, emergency services, s ...

, and other supplies needed by most military personnel. However, modern units often provide fewer items and many personnel must buy some items with their own funds. Personnel with families also must buy food, clothing, and other necessities for the family. This has created the need for modern commissary and “PX” (post exchange) buildings. In some cases, these buildings are similar to modern

supermarkets A supermarket is a self-service shop offering a wide variety of food, beverages and household products, organized into sections. This kind of store is larger and has a wider selection than earlier grocery stores, but is smaller and more l ...

Correctional facilities

{{main, Military prison Most military installations have small jails for temporary holding of suspects or short term punishment of minor offenses. However, military organizations also have larger, centralized facilities for longer term incarceration of persons convicted of more serious offenses. The main correctional facility of the US Army, Air Force, and Marines is the

United States Disciplinary Barracks The United States Disciplinary Barracks (USDB) colloquially known as Leavenworth, is a military correctional facility located on Fort Leavenworth, a United States Army post in Kansas. It is one of three major prisons built on Fort Leavenwo ...

located at

Fort Leavenworth Fort Leavenworth () is a United States Army installation located in Leavenworth County, Kansas, in the city of Leavenworth. Built in 1827, it is the second oldest active United States Army post west of Washington, D.C., and the oldest perma ...

, Kansas.

Fortifications

Fortifications A fortification is a military construction or building designed for the defense of territories in warfare, and is also used to establish rule in a region during peacetime. The term is derived from Latin ''fortis'' ("strong") and ''face ...

vary widely in nature depending on the mission and type of unit engaged.

Hospitals

Full-service military hospitals are a fairly recent innovation in military history. Prior to the nineteenth century, military hospitals as we know them today did not exist. Soldiers wounded in combat were treated in the field or in makeshift facilities commandeered near the field of battle. Medical technology at the time was such that most serious wounds were fatal and, accordingly, there was little need for facilities that provided for long-term care and recuperation. Battlefield

amputations Amputation is the removal of a limb by trauma, medical illness, or surgery. As a surgical measure, it is used to control pain or a disease process in the affected limb, such as malignancy or gangrene. In some cases, it is carried out on ind ...

were one of the most common procedures and were only successful in saving the life of the victim in a limited number of cases. However, beginning in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, advances in

blood transfusion Blood transfusion is the process of transferring blood products into a person's circulation intravenously. Transfusions are used for various medical conditions to replace lost components of the blood. Early transfusions used whole blood, but mo ...

anesthesia Anesthesia is a state of controlled, temporary loss of sensation or awareness that is induced for medical or veterinary purposes. It may include some or all of analgesia (relief from or prevention of pain), paralysis (muscle relaxation), ...

antibiotics An antibiotic is a type of antimicrobial substance active against bacteria. It is the most important type of antibacterial agent for fighting bacterial infections, and antibiotic medications are widely used in the treatment and preventio ...

, and

trauma Trauma most often refers to: *Major trauma, in physical medicine, severe physical injury caused by an external source *Psychological trauma, a type of damage to the psyche that occurs as a result of a severely distressing event *Traumatic inju ...

treatment meant that many more soldiers could survive wounds although the treatment time was much longer. Also, advances in the treatment of

infectious diseases An infection is the invasion of tissues by pathogens, their multiplication, and the reaction of host tissues to the infectious agent and the toxins they produce. An infectious disease, also known as a transmissible disease or communicable di ...

meant that many more personnel required treatment for non-combat conditions. All of these conditions, plus an increasing number of personnel with families, have led to the construction of full service military hospitals. These hospitals treat both members of the military and their families.

Housing

Military housing includes

barracks Barracks are usually a group of long buildings built to house military personnel or laborers. The English word originates from the 17th century via French and Italian from an old Spanish word "barraca" ("soldier's tent"), but today barracks are u ...

, UOQs (unescorted or "bachelor" officer quarters), and family housing. The age and condition of these facilities varies widely. A few officer family housing units are very

historical History (derived ) is the systematic study and the documentation of the human activity. The time period of event before the History of writing#Inventions of writing, invention of writing systems is considered prehistory. "History" is an umbr ...

in nature and can be quite large and ornate. Most family and UOQ housing is now similar in nature to civilian housing stock. In most advanced countries, barracks housing has been modernized, but remnants of housing from

World War II World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a world war that lasted from 1939 to 1945. It involved the World War II by country, vast majority of the world's countries—including all of the great power ...

and older periods still remains in the inventory.

Mess

“Mess” is the military term for any facility serving food to large groups. Some mess halls in remote locations can be rudimentary, but others in established locations can be similar to modern cafeterias.

Military intelligence facilities

These facilities are highly secured. Modern facilities involve intensive use of electronics and computer technology.

Museums

Because of the role military actions have played in determining world history, military

museums A museum ( ; plural museums or, rarely, musea) is a building or institution that cares for and displays a collection of artifacts and other objects of artistic, cultural, historical, or scientific importance. Many public museums make these ...

are common. They range widely from small facilities memorializing the actions of local units to large, sophisticated facilities devoted to an entire branch of service or entire wars.

POL (Petroleum, Oils, & Lubricants) storage and handling facilities

These facilities are engineered to provide safe storage and handling of

petroleum Petroleum, also known as crude oil, or simply oil, is a naturally occurring yellowish-black liquid mixture of mainly hydrocarbons, and is found in geological formations. The name ''petroleum'' covers both naturally occurring unprocessed crud ...

-based materials. Newer facilities include containments to prevent environmental pollution from due to spills.

Recreation facilities

Recreation Recreation is an activity of leisure, leisure being discretionary time. The "need to do something for recreation" is an essential element of human biology and psychology. Recreational activities are often done for enjoyment, amusement, or plea ...

facilities for both military personnel and their families. Athletic facilities are common as are officers' clubs and NCO/enlisted personnel clubs. Recreation facilities are usually exercise or athletic entertainment type places.

Research facilities

Military organizations conduct extensive

research Research is "creative and systematic work undertaken to increase the stock of knowledge". It involves the collection, organization and analysis of evidence to increase understanding of a topic, characterized by a particular attentiveness ...

operations and maintain extensive purpose-built research facilities to support those activities.

Training facilities

Traditional military training facilities focused on physical conditioning and skills training. Newer facilities make extensive use of computer simulations of various kinds to provide more hours or training in more realistic situations at lower cost and with lower risk to personnel.

Military academies A military academy or service academy is an educational institution which prepares candidates for service in the officer corps. It normally provides education in a military environment, the exact definition depending on the country concerned. ...

are devoted entirely to training military officer cadets. Facilities for advanced training of senior officers also exist. Examples include the US

Army Command and General Staff College The United States Army Command and General Staff College (CGSC or, obsolete, USACGSC) at Fort Leavenworth, Kansas, is a graduate school for United States Army and sister service officers, interagency representatives, and international military ...

at Ft. Leavenworth, KS.

Utility structures

Many military installations are large enough to require their own

utility As a topic of economics, utility is used to model worth or value. Its usage has evolved significantly over time. The term was introduced initially as a measure of pleasure or happiness as part of the theory of utilitarianism by moral philosophe ...

systems.

Water treatment Water treatment is any process that improves the quality of water to make it appropriate for a specific end-use. The end use may be drinking, industrial water supply, irrigation, river flow maintenance, water recreation or many other uses, inc ...

plants,

sewage treatment Sewage treatment (or domestic wastewater treatment, municipal wastewater treatment) is a type of wastewater treatment which aims to remove contaminants from sewage to produce an effluent that is suitable for discharge to the surrounding en ...

plants, and

electric power generation Electricity generation is the process of generating electric power from sources of primary energy. For utilities in the electric power industry, it is the stage prior to its delivery (transmission, distribution, etc.) to end users or its storag ...

stations are found on many military installations.

Vehicle repair, maintenance, & storage facilities

Vehicle repair shops can be very large and built to accommodate large vehicles. Aircraft

hangar A hangar is a building or structure designed to hold aircraft or spacecraft. Hangars are built of metal, wood, or concrete. The word ''hangar'' comes from Middle French ''hanghart'' ("enclosure near a house"), of Germanic origin, from Frankish ...

s are some of the largest and most specialized military buildings.

Weapons & ammunition production facilities

Production of ammunition is now largely outsourced to industry contractors. However, facilities such as

Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant The Sunflower Army Ammunition Plant was a smokeless powder and propellant manufacturing facility in De Soto within Johnson County, Kansas. Constructed after the attack on Pearl Harbor pushed the United States into World War II, it was the largest ...

produced small arms ammunition for the US Military for many years. More exotic facilities such as

Rocky Mountain Arsenal The Rocky Mountain Arsenal was a United States chemical weapons manufacturing center located in the Denver Metropolitan Area in Commerce City, Colorado. The site was completed December 1942, operated by the United States Army throughout the late ...

(now decommissioned) was the main facility for production of chemical weapons.

References

US Army Corps of Engineers, Engineering Design Guides

US Navy Facilities Engineering Command, Library
Military buildings and structures Military locations