Research sources

A. deployments

To research deployments you need:

• information on military units getting deployed
• information on the structure of the military, in order to make a good interpretation of the information
• information on how troops deploy and their logistics

1. A good starting point is the website of the ministry of defense and of the military

http://www.nato.int/cps/en/natolive/nato_countries.htm - an overview of links to the MoD of the NATO countries

On these website you often find:

• an overview of operations in which the military participate
• press releases with information on units deploying or training for deployment
• the structure of the military and the military units

Sometimes this delivers already all the information you are searching for. Otherwise you have to look for other sources to fill in the gaps.

2. Alternative sources on the military structure

Wikipedia contains pages on most national military and their branches. It has often good overview maps.
Ex: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Structure_of_the_British_Army - http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/4/4c/Field_Army_(UK).png

3. deploying units

• military magazines:
  US: Stars & Stripes - http://www.stripes.com/
  Fr: http://www.defense.gouv.fr/terre/mediatheque/bibliotheque/terre_informa…
• unit websites
• press articles
• ...

This is the most time-consuming part. Store the links to your main sources in your bookmarks, so that you can re-visit the regularly. Very useful is also to store some Google-searches of specific websites like unit websites or Stars & Stripes, which you can perform regularly. With advanced Google-searches you can indicated which sites to search and how recent the documents have to be.

B. bases

Again, first get an idea of the function of the base. Then you can look to more specific information useful for actions and dossiers

• MoD
• unit websites / Wikipedia
• military regulations - ex US nuclear weapon bases: http://bits.de/NRANEU/others/end.htm
• contract information and tenders:
  https://www.fpds.gov/ - see http://mcmilitary.org/en/procurement_contracts
  ex: http://www.klekoon.com/boamp/boamp-appels-offres-adaptation-depot-armes… / this French example makes clear that this base will store new nuclear missiles.

Searching such sites for specific bases gives quite a good idea of the future plans. Most countries publish tenders on a specific website.

C. civilian infrastructure (transport means and facilities)

First, identify what has to be transported. Second, look to the available means.
Ex. military material is mostly transported by RoRo-ships. While ports are very large, the spots where RoRo-transport is handled are just a few. So you can use these spots as filter to the traffic. A similar reasoning works for companies (ex RoRo-shipping on the Rhine)

• time schedules
  planes: http://www.flightstats.com/go/TravelPlanning/countryInformation.do?coun…
  realtime: http://www.radarvirtuel.com/ - http://www.flightradar24.com/ - http://casper.frontier.nl/
  ships: realtime:http://www.marinetraffic.com - http://www.vesseltracker.com/en/Home.html
  shipping registers of ports, ex. http://www.sss.be/site/Public/puba11.html
• contract information and tenders

Enjoy using this information and drop the results on mcmilitary.org !!