Seriously? You never saw the giant prefab concrete walls around Bagram and Phoenix, and Eggers? Where were you in Afghanistan?
I have been to just about every significant ISAF base (while it was still called ISAF, not RS) and US DoD base in the country, and can assure you that giant prefab concrete walls lifted into place with cranes are everywhere.
A FOB somewhere near Lashkargah. I never went to Bagram, Phoenix or Eggers. I spent a few days in Bastion, which, as the name suggests, was also constructed from Hesco bastion.
https://static01.nyt.com/images/2010/07/15/blogs/atwar-afgha...
My Google-fu thinks FOB is short for Forward Operating Base.
FOBs are established by cargo that arrives by truck. The only FOBs I ever heard of being established by air cargo (Chinook, and in very mountainous regions of Kunar and Nooristan mostly) were not exactly what you would call a FOB in the context of Afghanistan, but were much smaller sites on hilltops that would be designated COPs (combat outpost) or firebases.
They were support for very (very) small sites. They were called FOBs by the airborne guys, but I don't know much about military terminology, and can't vouch for the correctness of the use of that term in this case.
EDIT: This doesn't look like what we worked on, but I just found this:
- http://www.foxnews.com/tech/2011/12/02/military-base-in-box-all-rage.htmlThe Army loves their t-walls. So much in fact they give out little awards that are shaped like t-walls.[1]
[1]: http://uswarriorsoutdoors.org/us/wp-content/uploads/2014/11/...
Got called out on quite a few. One in particular was a dude out at a COP in the middle of no where Farah, taking a piss next to a Hesco, looked up and saw a mine poking out of the barrier. Afghanistan is one of the most heavily mined countries in the world. It's not surprising.