Kind of Location

Icons used in the OpenStreetMap view and further classification infos.

Foreign or Overseas Base

Property operated and mostly exclusively used by foreign military forces and only supported by national forces.
This definition includes bases in overseas territory, even if it formally belongs to the same nation (concerning USA, UK and FR and CN). Embassies and consulates are generally not included, although U.S. facilities all over the world play an important role as spy listening stations and other activities with military importance.

Shared Base

Operated by the national military, but permanent deployment of foreign military forces or telecommunications installation.
Locations which include NATO Center of Competence and NATO command units are always defined as shared locations, if not included in a foreign base. An official declaration as NATO Air Base is mostly a shared base, but not in cases of main sites with a lot of single units.

National Base

National bases are temporary and not permanent used from foreign forces. This can happen as part of logistical support during maneuvers. Concerning training areas for national military there is no unique allocation possible. If the training area will be expanded with new facilities to support foreign forces, then the location should be defined as shared base.

USA Global Base

Bases within the USA with special facilities as part of a global network, i.e. for missile defence systems, radar tracking or drone warfare.

Closed Base Location

Former foreign/overseas military base which is officially closed and not developed for civilian use. The location has typically no cleanup from inherited burdens and could be re-activated for military use on demand.

Civilian Location

Official not declared for military purpose, but strategically important and frequent used from military,  as any other form of military cooperation.

Additional Facility View

Additional view in map or for special purpose based on specific tags.
See also: additional facilities are shown in Openstreetbrowser with zoom level 14 or higher.

General Notes

• With few and justified exceptions the single location category follows the existence of a military layer in OpenStreetBrowser. Civilian locations don’t have a military layer, based on the definition.
• Airports can be defined as civilian (without military layer) or also as shared base (with military layer).
• Military training sites can be national, shared or foreign, depending from the category of other locations in this region.
• Closed base locations don’t include civilian conversion areas.

Kind of special Facilities

Command Center

A command center is normally defined with additional tags.

Use of Civilian Airport

Many military bases have not their own airfield, but use a basically civilian airport. But the difference between a civilian and military airport is not clear. Especially the airports in Afghanistan are defined as „military/civilian“ in Wikipedia.

Airplane Landings Sites and Helipads

The military defines not only Air Force bases but also all helipads as airfields.
In Visualbases all „airfields“ which can only used by helicopters are defined as helipads, different from military airplane landing sites.

Communications Station

This definition means: Radar systems and gateways as part of a global network, normally for special purpose. Mostly these installations have separate postings as special facility view and additional tags like Fac_Radar or Fac_Listening.