In the defense industry of the United States, a mobile offshore base (ie MOB) sometimes called a Joint Mobile Offshore Base (ie JMOB) — is a concept for supporting military operations where conventional land bases are not available. Such a floating offshore base has been researched and proposed, but never developed.
A MOB is a modular floating base that can be deployed to provide flight, maintenance, supply and other forward logistics support operations. MOB modules will most likely be semi-submersibles which have significantly smaller wave-induced motions compared to conventional hulls.
This modularity supports the widest possible range of air support, ranging from vertical/short takeoff and landing (VSTOL) aircraft using a single module to conventional takeoff and landing (CTOL) aircraft using several serially aligned modules approaching 2 km (6,000 feet) in length. In addition, a MOB accepts ship-borne cargo, provides nominally 280,000 m² (3 million square feet) for equipment storage and maintenance, stores 40 million litres (10 million gallons) of fuel, houses up to 3,000 troops (an Army heavy brigade), and discharges resources to the shore via a variety of landing craft. The cluster could have an air strip that could hold a large aircraft such as the C-17.
Read more about Mobile Offshore Base: History, In Fiction
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