The US Army has begun sending rapid prototyping Expeditionary Labs to Afghanistan, to create and modify tools and weapons in the battlefield. Each lab is built out of a standard 20-foot (6m) shipping container, costs $2.8 million, and contains more tools than you can ever imagine — including a state-of-the-art 3D printer.

As it currently stands, the Army’s Rapid Equipping Force (REF) is tasked with making sure that soldiers are equipped with the latest and greatest situational gear. It is also the REF’s task to iron out hardware bugs as quickly as possible — if a piece of equipment isn’t working as expected (due to Afghanistan’s climate, for example), the REF has a team of scientists and engineers that quickly prototype a replacement and send it out to the soldiers.

The problem is, this process usually takes a couple of months. The scientists and engineers have to fly over from the US, talk to the soldiers to suss out their requirements, and then head back to the motherland to actually produce the new prototype. With the first Expeditionary Lab now in place at Regional Command South near Kandahar, and a second one planned for deployment at RC East later this year, prototypes can now be produced in hours. A third lab will remain in the US and will be used in the case of natural disasters.

Each Expeditionary Lab contains the following equipment: a 3D printer (plastic), an industrial CNC machine (steel and aluminium), plasma cutters, welders, routers, magnetic mounted drill presses, circular saws, jigsaws, and electric hacksaws. Each lab also has a big ol’ dish for satellite communications — and, of course, each lab comes with two engineers that will actually operate the equipment. The satellite link will primarily be used for video conferencing, so that the vexed engineers can pick the brains of other engineers around the world.

If needed, the whole lab can be trucked or airlifted by helicopter to another location — and yes, because each lab is equipped with its own electricity generator and air conditioning/heating system, they really can be placed anywhere.

Read: What is 3D printing? and The world’s first 3D-printed gun