TAPROOT

From orbit

The installation from the air at golden hour: a granite mountain on a desert coast with angled portals and beam-director domes on its ridge, a dispersed airfield of earth-covered shelters on the plain, a driverless convoy on the coast road and an uncrewed ship entering a sea channel cut into the rock.
The opening of the film: Earth at dawn from low orbit over the desert coast and the long gulf, city lights to the east.
The mountain cut open as an architectural section: beam directors on the ridge; cavern hangars with drone wingmen; galleries of trucks and magazines; the water plant, reservoir, quarters, medical bay and training hall; the command floor, twin compute halls on steel springs and reactor bays; and a sea pen at the waterline with an uncrewed hull under a gantry.

TAPROOT

The future of installations starts now.

  1. OrbitA satellite mesh, laser-linked in orbit and down to the ridge. The base begins here.
  2. The surfaceShelters, a dispersed runway, solar and decoys, spread wide. Everything up here can be replaced.
  3. Ridge · 0 mSensor masts, beam directors and laser terminals: the only part that has to see the sky.
  4. Cavern hangars · −45 mBehind paired blast doors, drone wingmen wait fly-ready, out of sight from above.
  5. Galleries · −120 mDriverless trucks, maintenance shops, and munitions in separated chambers.
  6. Mid-depth · −300 mThe water plant and its rock reservoir, quarters, the medical bay, the synthetic training hall.
  7. Deep core · −600 mThe command floor, twin compute halls on steel springs, reactor modules in bays of their own.
  8. Waterline · −650 mA sea portal and covered pen. Uncrewed hulls load under the mountain and leave unseen.

Above

Everything that can be replaced stays on the surface, spread wide.

The surface base from the air: beam directors on the ridge, solar fields on the flat, a dispersed runway among earth-covered shelters, a convoy on the coast road, the land-to-water lane on the beach and a sea channel into the mountain.
  • Beam directors and sensor masts on the ridge
  • Solar and storage, spread low across the flat
  • A dispersed runway
  • Earth-covered shelters, never in a row
  • Decoys on the open apron
  • A driverless convoy on the coast road
  • The land-to-water lane
  • The sea channel into the mountain
The surface base. Everything up here can be replaced.
Airfield operations: a drone wingman rolls out of an earth-covered shelter while a refueller and a small inspection rover work the wet apron, a convoy passing under the ridge. Earth-covered shelterone aircraft, under earth
A wingman leaves its shelter; a refueller and an inspection rover work the apron.

Dispersal

Spread thin on purpose. Lose any one piece and the base still flies.

Today. A 2025 report counted more than 650 hardened aircraft shelters at Chinese bases within reach of the Taiwan Strait, while the US had added two in that area since the early 2010s. The Air Force's Agile Combat Employment already spreads units across many smaller sites around an enduring base.

2075. Every aircraft has a hardened shelter or a cavern bay on a dispersed taxiway network. Robots refuel, inspect and patrol. Decoys share the apron. The ridge carries only what has to see the sky.

The energy field at sunset: solar arrays laid low across the flat, earth-covered bunkers among them, robot vehicles on the service road, and the mountain with its portals and ridge domes behind. Bermed bunkerbelow the skyline, nothing to aim at
Solar laid low, bunkers bermed into the ground, the service road running back to the mountain.

Solar and storage

Laid flat and far apart, so no single strike takes the grid down.

Today. MCAS Miramar can already cut its whole station off the grid and run for 21 days on its own gas, landfill gas, solar and diesel. Eielson Air Force Base has asked for 5 megawatts of baseload that runs independently of the grid.

2075. A buried power corridor runs from the field into the mountain, where reactor modules carry the baseload. One microgrid, sized by the beam directors and the compute, islands indefinitely.

The training hall cut into the mountain's flank: crews and walking robots move between mock structures on a wet floor, a cutaway wall open to the coast where a ship and drones are working. The range, through the walllive drones over the coast
The training hall, live and its synthetic twin. Move across it to compare.
The land-to-water lane: an amphibious robot drives off the ramp into breaking surf while three operators watch from the quay, a small uncrewed boat offshore. Amphibious robotramp to surf, uncrewed
The land-to-water lane: road, ramp, surf, and out to the boat.

Ranges

One exercise runs live here and synthetic with allies an ocean away.

Today. In Valiant Shield 26, in mid-2026, live pilots, simulators and computer-generated forces fought one scenario across Guam, Japan and Hawaii, with drone wingmen and tracking satellites in the loop. In August 2026, Marines at Camp Pendleton tested uncrewed systems that work from very shallow water up to the beach, among them an amphibious robot built for the surf zone.

2075. A synthetic hall joined live to allied bases. Outside, one lane runs from test road to ramp, surf, shallow basin and sea pen. Robots drive in, hulls come out, and every run is scored and replayed.

Five rings around one mountain, outside in.
A beam director on the ridge at dusk: an armoured dome with one large dark aperture, radar panels and masts beside it, an operator in the control room below. Beam directorthe aperture; the beam is never seen
A beam director on the ridge. Its effect happens kilometres away.

Defence in depth

No dome. Five layers, each threat sent to the cheapest one that can stop it, and a person approves.

  1. SenseRadar and passive sensor masts on the outlying hills, cued by satellites.
  2. OuterInterceptor cells and megawatt-class beam directors on the ridge, for what flies fast and far.
  3. SwarmHigh-power microwave emitters round the airfield and portals. Nothing is seen at the emitter; a group of drones simply drops.
  4. InnerShort-range laser turrets and interceptor cells set flush in shelter roofs and portal faces.
  5. PassiveEarth-covered shelters, blast walls, decoys and mesh canopies, and finally the mountain itself.

Today. Iron Beam, Israel's 100 kW class laser, went operational in December 2025 as one layer beside Iron Dome, not a replacement for it. The UK puts the cost of a DragonFire shot at about £10. In October 2026 four directed-energy systems went on trial at five US bases to learn what they cost to run day to day.

2075. Beam directors fed by the base's own reactors reach for cruise missiles from the ridge. Weather, line of sight and dwell time keep them one layer of five. Shown here as hardware and its effect on machines only.

Under attack

A swarm at dusk. The base keeps working.

At dusk a swarm of drones tumbles into the sea below the mountain's lit galleries, spray rising where they hit. The swarm, fallingstopped by the microwave layer
Two massive blast doors closing on a portal at dusk, red warning lights on, a truck passing through the last gap, an operator at the control post. Paired blast doorsportal face · −45 m
A driverless convoy of armoured trucks running down a lit rock gallery, a walking maintenance robot in a bay beside the road. Driverless convoygalleries · −120 m
  1. ContactDrones come in low off the sea. The microwave layer drops them together; lasers take the rest.
  2. DoorsThe aircraft are already inside. The blast doors close and filtered air takes over.
  3. Inside, nothing stopsBelow, the convoys keep moving and the lights hold. The base wins by not breaking.

Today. On 1 June 2025, Ukraine's Operation Spiderweb launched drones from trucks against four Russian air bases, and satellite images confirmed strategic bombers destroyed in the open. Aircraft parked outside are the first thing an attack like that finds.

Below

Hundreds of metres of granite over everything that cannot be replaced.

The rock reservoir: a still underground lake with a walkway running out over it toward the lit water plant of tanks and pipework. Treatment plantmid-depth · −300 m
The reservoir in the rock, the treatment plant beyond it.

Water

A closed loop. Every litre is treated and used again, and the reservoir is sized for a siege.

Today. Since 2017 the Army has set a floor of at least 14 days of energy and water for critical missions. Its Net Zero Water pilots showed what that takes: meters, leak sensors, recycled effluent. At one depot, six leaks were losing about 90,000 gallons a day.

2075. Wastewater treated back to drinking standard, seawater made fresh by reverse osmosis on the base's own power, and no water tower on the skyline to aim at.

The reactor gallery: a long rock tunnel lined with bays, a sealed container-scale reactor module in each, a driverless carrier and two technicians at an open bay. One module, one baycontainer scale · −600 m
The reactor gallery. One container-scale module per bay, concrete between them.

Reactors in the rock

Small modules in separate bays. One strike takes one module, not the grid.

Today. Project Pele is a microreactor of 1 to 5 megawatts that ships in 20-foot containers; its fuel reached Idaho National Laboratory in November 2025, with electricity as soon as 2028. The Army's Janus program has agreements for more than 20 microreactors on its bases, the first running by September 2028.

2075. Container-scale modules behind thick concrete dividers. Their waste heat warms the galleries and drives the water plant. Fuel generators come last.

Inside a compute hall cut into the rock: long aisles of liquid-cooled racks, a technician at an open rack, a robot cart in the aisle and coolant pipes running overhead. Coolant loopwaste heat, out to the water plant
Liquid-cooled racks; the loops overhead carry the waste heat on to the water plant.

Compute

The base does its own thinking, on site, because links get cut.

Today. In June 2026 AWS and Anduril answered the problem of cut links with a data centre built for a single forward node. Retired Swiss alpine forts already hold data and archives.

2075. Twin liquid-cooled halls in the deep core, mirrored to other installations. After the beam directors, they are the largest load on the grid.

A compute hall in a rock cavern: a glass-walled steel building of server racks standing on rows of giant coil springs, an engineer on its walkway. Steel coil springthe rock moves; the hall does not
A compute hall on its springs. Its twin stands behind a pillar of rock.

The hall on springs

The building stands on steel springs. A tremor passes under the racks.

Today. Cheyenne Mountain keeps fifteen buildings on 1,319 steel springs, so a blast or a tremor passes under them.

2075. Each compute hall sits in a cavern of its own, its twin behind a pillar of rock.

One organism

Power, compute and water run as one system, and keep running when cut off.

How the base runs

  1. PowerSmall reactors in the rock and solar on the plain feed one microgrid.
  2. HeatThe compute halls' waste heat drives the water plant. The water comes back to cool them.
  3. IntelligenceOne shared layer reads every system and links up to the mesh.
  4. Cut offThe link drops. The base keeps its power, its thinking and its water.
  • Reactor modules Project Pele, 1 to 5 MWe in 20-foot containers. Army Janus, more than 20 microreactors, the first by September 2028.
  • Microgrid MCAS Miramar islands its whole station for 21 days.
  • Intelligence layer CJADC2, a minimum viable capability since February 2024.
  • Satellite mesh The SDA transport layer, 126 satellites planned, laser crosslinks still maturing.
The command floor deep in the mountain: operators at consoles under a curved wall showing the base on the coast and lines to installations around the world, an officer standing behind them.
This base, one nodedeep core · −600 m
The command wall: this base, and the lines to every installation like it.

The command floor

Software prepares the decision. An officer with the authority makes it.

Today. The Pentagon's joint all-domain command and control reached a minimum viable capability in February 2024, and one retired Air Force general puts what it still lacks in three parts: a backbone that moves the data, AI that turns it into something useful, and a commander with the authority to act.

2075. A small, calm floor in the deep core. A cut link slows the network; it does not blind the base.

One node of many

Out by sea, up the shaft, into the mesh.

The covered sea pen inside the mountain: a long dock channel under cavern lights, a yellow gantry lifting a payload module onto an uncrewed hull. Gantrypayload modules, swapped in the rock
The sea pen, a cathedral in the rock. A gantry swaps payload modules on an uncrewed hull.

Autonomy at work

Machines carry the routine. A smaller crew supervises and holds the authority.

Today. The Army is prototyping leader-follower autonomy for its logistics trucks, which could reach the fleet from 2027. The Navy ordered 30 production medium uncrewed surface vessels in September 2026. The Air Force's drone-wingman readiness unit will keep its aircraft fly-ready and fly them as little as possible.

2075. Driverless convoys between portals and quay, uncrewed hulls into the sea pen, wingmen from cavern hangars, robots on runways and fences.

An uncrewed hull at the sea portal at dusk; the giant doors stand open on a lit cavern dock. Sea portal · waterline −650 m
The sea portal at the waterline, where hulls come and go unseen.
Looking up the main shaft from its floor: a drone wingman on a lift platform, lit galleries ringing the rock walls, daylight at the top. Daylight650 m up the shaft
The main shaft, waterline to ridge. Lifts, power and air all run in it.
A drone wingman leaves a cavern hangar through an angled portal into bright sky over the sea, deck crew bracing in the jet wash. Wingman, outboundupper-flank portal · −45 m
A wingman leaves the cavern hangar; the deck crew holds its ground.

Many doors, one core

Close any entrance and every level is still reachable.

Today. Cheyenne Mountain keeps a command centre under about 1,800 feet of granite, in fifteen buildings that stand on 1,319 steel springs behind blast doors weighing 25 tons each. Norway's Olavsvern reached deep-water docks inside a mountain through a 3,000-foot tunnel. Sweden's Muskö shelters warships, offices and a hospital under granite.

2075. Several portals instead of one gate, and a shaft from waterline to ridge carrying lifts, power and air.

From orbit at dawn: a chain of satellites joined by laser crosslinks, three laser links reaching down into the mountain, which is cut open to show its levels, with the whole surface base, the airfield and the coast behind it.
Transport layerlaser crosslinks, satellite to satellite
The satellite mesh over the base: laser crosslinks in orbit, laser links down to the ridge.

Linked through orbit

One hub among many. If one goes quiet, the others carry its work.

Today. The Space Development Agency's data-transport layer is planned at 126 satellites; the first 42 launched in late 2025, and the laser crosslinks between them are still maturing.

2075. A satellite mesh laser-linked in orbit and down to the ridge, buried fibre between hubs, and one shared intelligence layer every installation feeds and reads. Airstrips, coastal sites and ships hang off each hub.

The film

The whole installation in 52 seconds: down from the mesh to the ridge, through the swarm and the closing doors, level by level through the mountain, and out by sea to the ridge at dusk.

The ridge at night: a laser-communication terminal and masts with two operators beside it, the Milky Way overhead and a line of satellites crossing the sky, lights of other sites along the coast below.

The future of installations starts now.

Back to orbit