8 Tips For Building Military Shelter Systems

It’s important to build excellent quality military shelter systems for military missions, operational exercises, and special forces engagement. These shelters should be able to provide adequate support, enduring extreme weather and other harsh conditions in the environment they’re in.

A successful military operation would require a shelter with reliable power generation, environmental control, and electrical systems. Military shelters should be versatile for various military uses on campsites, bases, or any deployment areas. So how do you go about building a top-notch military shelter system? Keep reading to find out.

1. Choose A Shelter That Is Easy To Set Up

When building a mobile command center, it’s crucial to choose easy-to-set-up soft wall shelters. In this way, battalion-, brigade-, and division-size task forces can quickly scale if needed using different sizes of military shelter systems.

Fabric shelters are popular for military uses because they’re convenient to assemble and disassemble. Here are some important considerations when building a military shelter using portable materials:

• Versatility: Choose a fabric military shelter you can anchor to any foundation such as asphalt and gravel. If you need to frequently relocate, choosing a shelter you can quickly erect and take down is a must.
• Space-Saving Qualities: Because military shelter systems are usually temporary, they shouldn’t consume too much space within your base. You can relocate temporary shelters as necessary to ensure mission readiness. Build a temporary shelter without using guy wires or internal columns so you can use and maximize the interior space for your military operations.

2. Choose High-Grade Materials 

When looking into military-grade tents, select those with durable materials to provide safety and protection for different outdoor activities, warfare, and major disasters.

The best materials include heavy vinyl-coated polyester fabrics with secure insulation to maintain coolness even during high temperatures. Choose a special fabric with flame-retardant, ultraviolet or UV-blocking, anti-tear, and waterproof features.

For your sun shades and hangars, you can ensure mission readiness by installing products that comply with the Air Force Sun Shade Management (AFSM) and other governing regulatory standards.

3. Install A Rip-Resistant Roof

It’s important to install a rip-resistant roof secured to a galvanized steel frame on a military shelter. The roof should be strong enough to withstand harsh weather conditions. You can work with a military shelter expert to design a tough shelter that can provide protection against strong winds and heavy snow.

4. Opt For Large Windows

Build a military shelter system with large windows to allow for proper air circulation and ventilation inside. With larger windows, more natural light will be able to come in, allowing you to save power during the day. You can prevent mosquitoes and insects from entering by installing thin screen layers in window openings and doors.

5. Plan Your Lighting Options

Doing this is essential to reduce energy consumption and costs. There’s a wide range of portable, energy-efficient lighting options you can choose from online. Also, you might want to choose a fabric military shelter with a translucent fabric roof. By doing so, you can use natural light to illuminate the shelter’s interior, reducing the need for artificial lighting.

6. Consider Customized Solutions

Customized military shelter systems help meet the unique needs of military units, most especially during special operations. Some examples of customization for military shelters include installing bay doors, HVAC systems, and tough flooring to support heavy equipment.

Fabric structures are easy to customize into large area maintenance shelters (LAMS), hangars for aircraft, mess halls, barracks, storage facilities, guard shacks, and vehicle inspection shelters. In addition, military shelter systems made of fabric structures cost less to build. They require fewer materials and workers than permanent buildings.

7. Build Reliable Environmental Control Units

Environmental control units (ECUs) or portable climate control systems are slightly similar to portable HVAC, and they’re designed for military applications. This military HVAC system needs to meet military requirements, which means they should withstand military conditions and environments.

Although ECUs are often seen in military applications, they can also be used in satellite broadcasting, sleeper cabins, airplanes, and laboratory environments, which can be part of military operations, too.

Here’s what you need to know about environmental control units:

• Types: ECUs come in different forms, small and big alike. The most common types include trailer, spit, vertical, and horizontal. While some units are intended for heating and cooling, others are used in cooling electronics in telecommunication shelters.
• Reliability: ECUs offer reliable heating, cooling, and humidity control for both soft shell and rigid tent structures. Some of the important factors when choosing ECUs are portability, durability, and rapid deployment, which are needed in military operations.
• Versatility: ECUs are applicable to base camps, mobile hospitals, aircraft hangers, communications enclosures, and weapon systems on military grounds.

8. Install Durable Military Flooring

Military personnel need durable flooring in shelters in order to keep up with creating various military strategies without worrying about boots and other things soaked in mud getting inside the shelter due to harsh weather. Flooring options for military shelters include standard and heavy-duty floors.

The standard fabric floor for military shelters is non-slip, efficient to install, and secured to the base frame. It’s compatible with modular hard flooring and existing concrete flooring.

Heavy-duty flooring options are fast and easy to install, too. They can be removed for cleaning and replacement without disassembling the rest of the shelter. They can keep out small animals with their vector-proof features.

Follow these tips when installing flooring for military shelters:

• Add Extreme Cold Weather Insulation: You can add an extreme cold weather subfloor underneath an existing fabric floor or above substandard subflooring, and this will serve as a thermal barrier.
• Install Composite Modular Hard Flooring: If you’re looking for a portable floor, you can go for a composite modular hard floor. The manufacturer can ship this flooring in pre-snapped sections for rapid assembly. Hard floors are usually made of high-impact polypropylene that can block UV, and they have a loading capacity of thousands of pounds per square foot, depending on the quality and brand.
• Install Pipes And Wires: There’s specially designed hard flooring that comes with cable channels, allowing you to install piping and wiring below the military shelter. This type of flooring comes in rectangles so you can easily snap them together.

Conclusion

Building military shelter systems involves choosing high-quality materials and ensuring the installation of useful features to support different military operations. Fabric military shelters should be easily deployed anywhere, suitable for anchoring to any foundation and designed for quick assembly and disassembly. Whether you choose a permanent or temporary option, keep the tips above in mind so you can build the best military shelter system for your unit.