From Alaska to Hainan Island, These Are the 30 Strangest Military Bases Around the World (2024)

Location: Shemya, Aleutian Islands

Background: Once a ballistic missile radar home in the 1970s, the outdated system is still in use, while the airstrip serves as an active emergency landing zone.

How It’s Unique: The location—1,200 miles west of Anchorage, Alaska, and only 200 miles east of Russia on the island of Shemya in the Aleutians—gives this desolate location some intrigue. It’s also used as a refueling station and emergency runway.

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Location: Marshall Islands

Background: One of the largest coral atolls in the world, the United States placed a base there during World War II.

How It’s Unique: Apart from the massive amounts of coral, missiles make up another major portion of this Pacific atoll. The Kwajalein Atoll offers a test site for radars, tracking devices, missile launchers and plenty of other technology. Notably, SpaceX successfully launched its first Falcon 1 rocket from Kwajalein Atoll.

The U.S. leases 11 of the 97 small islands that make up the atoll and surround a central lagoon perfectly suited for reentry of airborne items. The out-of-the-way site helps with plenty of testing of all sorts free of ship and radio traffic. It’s also currently the site of the “space fence,” a radar array designed to spot and track space junk and small satellites.

Location: Frederick, Maryland

Background: What started as Camp Detrick in the 1940s quickly turned into a long-standing home for the U.S. military.

How It’s Unique: Farms in Maryland joined together as Fort Detrick, the site of the United States’ biological weapons program, meaning the 1942 creation of this program, developed soon after the Pearl Harbor attack, was home to some wild experiments of biological toxins and plenty of other things we simply don’t want to know about.

Using creations from the scientists at the fort, the U.S. Navy ran six experiential attacks on San Francisco, sending ships just off the shore of the U.S. city to release stimulants into the air. Once the warfare program ended in 1969, the site turned into the home of the U.S. biological defense program.

Location: Norway

Background: Originally constructed as a Cold War naval base, Norway sold the site and eventually leased it to the Russians, who now use the space for “research.” (Now the U.S. Navy wants a piece of it.)

How It’s Unique: Along with the Norway-versus-Russia backstory that started the site, which has flipped to Russia now operating ships and planes within Norway, the location itself offers quite a site. Chiseled into mountains, the base includes buildings, bombproof areas within the earth, and docks aplenty.

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Location: Washington State

Background: A small island off the coast of Washington State, the U.S. Navy purchased land on Indian Island in 1939. Now one of the smallest bases in the Navy (and most recently named Naval Magazine Indian Island), it has serviced naval ships as the last stop before the Pacific Ocean ever since.

How It’s Unique: The final remaining deep-water ordnance facility on the West Coast without access restrictions, the small island helps ships—as large as Nimitz class aircraft carriers—load and offload ammunition. The site has more than 100 “magazines” for weapon storage, located underground in domed mounds. Every ship leaving the Northwest region gets supplied by the island that has the ability to service everything from U.S. Coast Guard patrol boats to submarines to aircraft carriers.

Location: India and Pakistan

Background: India and Pakistan have long disputed the ownership of the Siachen Glacier, also a four decade-plus home of the Indian Army.

How It’s Unique: Located at over 21,000 feet, the Siachen Glacier isn’t your run-of-the-mill military outpost. High in the mountains north of Jammu and Kashmir, both India and Pakistan have disputed the site, although the Indian Army has a base and controlling interest of two of the main mountain passes. With windstorms, snowstorms, thin oxygen, and frigid temperatures, not only is the site expensive to operate, but it’s also costly in terms of human sacrifice.

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Location: Virginia

Background: The public first heard about this top-secret site now run by the Department of Homeland Security in 1974, but it has operated for longer than that, with weather history dating to the 1800s and uses during World War II.

How It’s Unique: The history of Mount Weather has an ample shroud of intrigue, with an origin story largely unknown. While it was born as a weather station in the 1800s and then became a camp during World War II, the underground portion of the facility was likely done around 1960 and a training ground created around 1980. In more recent times, the Department of Homeland Security has run the subterranean facility, and it has served as an operations center, housing high-level government officials during emergency times, such as then-Vice President Dick Cheney during the 9/11 attacks.

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Also home to the FEMA National Radio System, the Blue Ridge Mountains site was not widely known until a plane crash in 1974 near the site brought the public’s attention to its location when reporters were not allowed near it.

Location: Astrakhan Oblast, southeast of Volograd, Russia.

Background: Kapustin Yar was one of the Soviet Union’s first rocket and missile test sites. It was established on May 13, 1946 and, a year later, testing on the German A-4 (V-2) rocket began. The first of the captured missiles was sent aloft on October 18, 1947.

How it’s Unique: In addition to testing early ballistic missiles, Kapustin Yar was the site of some of the Soviet Union’s first suborbital animal flights. In 1966, the secret base was turned into a cosmodrome, which is still operating today.

The Soviets launched a number of dogs into Earth’s atmosphere in the 1960s, including the pups Kusachka and Otvazhnaya. The missile test site was also the location of five atmospheric nuclear tests and is the site of a number of Soviet-era UFO sightings. It is known to many as “Russia’s Roswell.”

The nearby town of Znamensk was established in secret to support the scientists and engineers who worked at Kapustin Yar. No one was allowed to visit without government clearance and it wasn’t on any official maps.

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Location: North Carolina

Background: The former 1940s military site took on a new identity weeks after the Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. It turned into a weapons testing facility and was also used as a training ground and spy school.

How It’s Unique: Most known for the Osama Bin Laden house mockup built on site for training for the Navy SEALs, Harvey Point —the facility is tucked behind security fences and Spanish moss-laden cypress trees—has served as a CIA site for decades, cloaked in classified veils. As more people start to spill the secrets of Harvey Point, its use as not only a weapons testing facility, but also a training facility, has come to light, with everyone from the CIA, FBI, SEALs and counter-terrorism units the world over going through the site.

Location: Dayton, Ohio

Background: In operation since 1917, the facility saw rapid growth around World War II.

How It’s Unique: Reverse-engineering always sounds so cryptic. The Wright-Patterson Air Force Base outside of Dayton, Ohio, has been reverse-engineering aircraft for much of its 103-year history, especially during the Cold War. Add in the fact that Hangar 18 has a tie to the Roswell crash, and conspiracy theorists enjoy the intrigue—and strangeness—of Wright-Patterson.

Location: Toulon, France

Background: The location first became a port under Louis XII in 1514. An arsenal was added in 1599 and updates have occurred ever since.

How It’s Unique: The first naval base in Europe and now the home to more than 70 percent of France’s navy, the arsenal on the east coast has continued to grow and evolve over the centuries. The site built the country’s first iron ships and world’s first modern submarines.

Location: Hainan Island, China

Background: Likely constructed at some point during the 2000s, the Chinese have turned caverns into a naval base able to hold nuclear submarines.

How It’s Unique: The Chinese have taken a resort island and turned underwater tunnels into an entrance to an underground naval base. This underwater naval base, using technology popular in the mining and petroleum industries, allows submarines to enter the leave without detection, turning caverns and harbors into homes for dozens of nuclear submarines.

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Location: Qaasuitsup, Greenland

Background: Thule Air Base sits within 800 miles of the Arctic Circle, making it the northernmost U.S. military installation. Among the many challenges posed by the region’s climate is that the base’s port is only accessible for three months each year, so major supplies need to be shipped during the summer. The base may be frozen and remote, but the 12th Space Warning Squadron operates an early warning system for Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles from Thule, while the 21st Space Wing is in charge of space surveillance operations.

How It’s Unique: Schulz, who worked on a dormitory replacement project at Thule, explains that construction crews essentially need to build on the most stable layer of permafrost they can get to. With temperatures dropping below minus-60 degrees Fahrenheit, keeping troops warm is crucial.

One of the more interesting weather-specific features is that all of the utilities are above ground, because it would be too hard to quickly access them if something went awry. ”

You don’t bury any waterlines, communication lines or even sanitary lines,” Schulz says. “They’re all insulated and triple-heat-taped.”

Schulz also notes that all the buildings on the base are equipped with so-called arctic vestibules, which provide 24/7 access to shelter while ensuring the buildings remain secure.

Location: Great Salt Lake Desert, Utah

Background: Within two months of the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin D. Roosevelt set aside the first 127,000 acres of Dugway Proving Ground in Utah’s Great Salt Lake Desert. Over the past 60 years, the site has expanded to nearly 800,000 acres, roughly the size of Rhode Island.

How It’s Unique: Dugway’s massiveness allows it to be the premier site for testing defense systems against chemical and biological weapons, as well as military-grade smoke bombs. During World War II, the facility played a vital role in the development of incendiary bombs.In order to test the fire-causing weapons, crews at Dugway built replicas of German and Japanese villages, even going so far as to fill the model buildings with furniture that would be similar to that found in the respective country. Today, the remains of the German village are eligible to be included on the U.S. National Register of Historic Places.

Location: Diego Garcia BIOT, Chagos Archipelago

Background: This joint U.S. and U.K. operation is situated on a tiny atoll about 1000 miles from India and tasked with providing logistical support to forces in Afghanistan and Iraq.

How It’s Unique: “There’s a certain amount of logistical difficulty” with ultra-remote facilities like Diego Garcia, Schulz says, and shipping materials can be costly. Diego Garcia's remoteness, though, allows it to be a key hub for tracking satellites, and it is one of five monitoring stations for GPS. Additionally, the island is one of only a handful of locations equipped with a Ground-based Electro-Optical Deep Space Surveillance system for tracking objects in deep space. As an atoll, the land itself is rather oddly shaped, too. From end to end, Diego Garcia is 34 miles long, but its total area is only 11 square miles.

Location: Gakona, Alaska

Background: HAARP, or the High-Frequency Active Auroral Research Program, is a collaborative project involving the U.S. Air Force, the U.S. Army, and the University of Alaska. Researchers at the facility use a powerful high-frequency transmitter and an array of 180 antennas to temporarily disrupt the ionosphere in hopes of yielding potential communications and surveillance benefits.

How It’s Unique: HAARP has been the centerpiece of countless conspiracy theories, ranging from rumors that it will be used for mind control to claims that it can manipulate the weather of individual countries. The project’s website says the equipment can only function properly if it is located in the auroral region, and Alaska happens to be the only U.S. state that fits that criterion.

A quiet electromagnetic location is needed for the system to operate, which further explains the removed location of HAARP. In past interviews, HAARP’s operators readily admit they’re researching potential defense applications. HAARP is not classified.

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Location: Siachen Glacier, Kashmir

Background: For more than 25 years, India and Pakistan have been battling for control of the nearly 50-mile-long Siachen Glacier. Both sides have set up military installations in the imposing Karakoram range, where 3-mile-high mountain peaks are the norm.

How It’s Unique: Troops stationed in this barely inhabitable war zone face endless peril. While a 2004 ceasefire has been honored, soldiers on the world’s highest battleground still fight altitude sickness, deadly temperatures and bone-crushing avalanches. There are no precise figures on how many lives have been lost during the conflict, but some estimates put the death toll as high as 5000, many of which are attributed to climate-related events. Due to the lack of infrastructure in the region, helicopter pilots are placed in harm’s way as they navigate unpredictable winds and poor weather to delivery basic necessities.

Location: Cheyenne Mountain Complex Air Force Station, Colo.:

Background: This iconic underground base has been inspiring science fiction writers and awing engineers since 1966. Located nearly a half mile under a granite mountain, the labyrinthine facility is run by Air Force Space Command. The base earned its place in pop culture when the television version of Stargate made Cheyenne Mountain the HQ of cosmic time travel.

How It’s Unique: One-of-a-kind bases like Cheyenne pose countless construction challenges and need to satisfy seemingly impossible requirements, like being able to withstand multi-megaton attacks. “It would be hard for a contractor to bid a project like this, because you might be using new construction techniques, new construction technology,” Schulz says.

Aside from sitting under a mountain of granite, an extremely hard rock, the base is protected by 25-ton blast doors, and some rooms sit on massive beds of springs to better absorb a blast. “It’s certainly not a very secret installation, but it’s well-protected.”

Location: Gibraltar

Background: Certain geographic locations will never lose their strategic importance. Case in point: Gibraltar. British control of the territory dates back to 1713, when Spain ceded the land in the Treaty of Utrecht. Nowadays, the Royal Gibraltar Regiment watches over the territory from its Devil’s Tower Camp headquarters.

How It’s Unique: The location’s strategic importance stems from the Strait of Gibraltar, which joins together the Atlantic Ocean and the Mediterranean Sea, but the area also provides unique training opportunities in parachuting, diving and tunnel warfare. Under the streets of Gibraltar is an extensive 35-mile-long tunnel system carved through limestone. On the southern tip of Gibraltar is the Buffadero Training Center, which includes two live firing ranges, an obstacle course, and a mock village that mimics warfare in an urban environment.

Location: Lingiari, Australia

Background: Near the hot, desolate center of Australia, just outside of Alice Springs, is the Joint Defence Space Research Facility Pine Gap. Australia and the U.S. agreed to build the compound in 1966, but desert flooding, blistering heat, and a lack of paved roads slowed initial construction efforts. The site officially opened in June 1970 and has been a joint U.S./Australian operation since.

How It’s Unique: Pine Gap’s collection of eight or so radomes and its remote location have sparked many UFO-related rumors, both in Australia and abroad. The main function of Pine Gap is to monitor any missile activity in the region and relay intelligence to U.S. and Australian forces.

Schulz points out there are certain military installations, like Pine Gap or HAARP, that can only operate effectively in certain geographical areas. “Even though they’re in terrible environments, some portion of that land is strategically important,” he says.

In 2009, the Australian Department of Defence announced plans to upgrade antiquated equipment at the facility, indicating that Pine Gap has a long future ahead of it.

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