Bastion ow6/19/2023 Getting rid of damaged or used items has been another. Redeploying the kit that the UK wants to retain, including 3,345 vehicles, 50 aircraft and 5,500 standard shipping containers worth of items, has been part of the process. He likens it to solving a Rubik’s Cube puzzle, where you have to keep moving things around. As other bases closed and equipment and personnel moved into Bastion and then, as the troop numbers dwindled, so Colonel Quinn has had to plan very carefully how he juggles accommodation and capability requirements within Bastion. I’ve got previous stop lines that I can pull back to, so to get rid of Bastions 3 and 2 I can just pull back to the previous defensive perimeters. One advantage of the organic build has been that Colonel Quinn can dissolve it without having to worry about maintaining defensive integrity. It seems that, when it comes to breaking it all down, the British approach to town planning is resulting in fewer headaches for the infrastructure experts. It’s been a constant struggle to build this in the middle of what Alexander the Great called the ‘Desert of Death’ in the face of an enemy who wanted to kill us.Ī Royal Marines commando is treated at Camp Bastion's medical facility in 2006 (library image) Organic advantage And remember, everything you see here, everything, has been brought in by helicopter or by plane. It is an awesome base, probably the biggest the British Army has ever built, certainly since the end of the Second World War. I can’t see us ever building anything on this scale again. I volunteered because this is the last great infrastructure challenge. He has watched it grow, and he will be there at the very end. Very organic.Ĭolonel Quinn was there at Bastion’s birth. All the might and muscle of the American machine while we Brits went building merrily along filling in bits here and there, leading to Bastion 2, then 3 and so on. Splat! All very well organised on a classic American street grid with a single central power system. Pointing to another, quite different area on the aerial photo, Colonel Quinn continued:Īnd then along came the Americans. He explained how, little by little, we added bits of land and filled them with accommodation and people. This led to instances of conflict with the few humans he encountered and drove him to avoid populated areas in favor of the wild, uncharted regions of the world.The first C-130 aircraft lands at the temporary landing zone at Camp Bastion in 2006 (library image) Though "Bastion" appears to be gentle-even harmless, at times-his core combat programming takes over when the unit senses danger, utilizing his entire arsenal to eliminate anything he perceives as a threat. This inquisitive Bastion unit set out to explore his surroundings and discover his purpose on a war-ravaged planet. With his combat programming all but lost, he instead displayed an intense curiosity about the natural world and its inhabitants. That was until one fateful day, when he unexpectedly reactivated. Overgrown with vines and roots and nested upon by small animals, the robot sat inert, seemingly unaware of the passing of time. He lay dormant, exposed to the elements and rusting while nature slowly reclaimed him. One unique Bastion unit, severely damaged in the final battles of the war, was left forgotten for over a decade. To this day, Bastion units still symbolize the horrors of the conflict. Following the resolution of the crisis, nearly all of them were destroyed or disassembled. But during the Omnic Crisis, they were turned against their human makers, forming the bulk of the omnics' rebel army. Originally created for peacekeeping purposes, Bastion-E54 robot units possessed the unique ability to rapidly reconfigure themselves into an assault-cannon mode.
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