Rust: the Airfield's control tower has had two terminals since Power Trip — one speeds up airdrops across the whole map

The Airfield isn't just a monument to loot anymore. Since the Power Trip update and the force wipe on August 6, 2026, its control tower has been reworked, and its second floor now houses two terminals that didn't exist before. One of them changes the pace of airdrops across the entire map, for everyone.

It's a fundamental shift: the monument goes from being a loot chest to a server-wide lever. And since it remains a tier 2 puzzle, it's accessible much earlier in a wipe than the Launch Site or the Military Tunnel.

Here's what you need to bring, what the monument gives, and exactly what the two terminals do.

Two fuses, a green card, a blue card: what to bring

The Airfield puzzle requires four items — three different types — and an action to perform on site:

• 2 Electric Fuses
• 1 Green Keycard
• 1 Blue Keycard
• and a timer to trigger on site, which opens the access window

The monument resets in about thirty minutes. On a populated server, that's short: two groups can run it back to back within the same hour.

The reward that justifies the trip isn't in the crates: it's the red card

Data extracted from the game lists, behind the puzzle, what's guaranteed to appear and what's down to the roll. The first column is the most interesting:

A Red Keycard for a tier 2 puzzle is the best value in the game at this stage: it's what opens the high-value rooms in higher-tier monuments. The Diesel Fuel powers the Giant Excavator, and the three motorbikes solve the problem of getting back to base with full bags.

On the opposition side, don't overestimate the danger: three scientists, and a radiation level of 11, both at median and peak values. Light rad protection is enough; it's the other players who are the problem, not the monument.

The small terminal speeds up airdrops across the whole map, the large one calls in a Chinook

This is Power Trip's contribution, and Facepunch describes it unambiguously in its devblog: the two terminals on the second floor "charge from fuse boxes connected to the electrical grid."

• The small terminal, once charged, increases the rate at which airdrops fall across the entire map. The benefit isn't reserved for whoever activates it: the whole server benefits from it.
• The large terminal, once charged, allows you to call in a supply crate delivered by Chinook, dropped near the Airfield's tarmac. That one, however, lands right at your doorstep — provided you can hold the area.

The mechanism works on a cycle: "terminals slowly lose their charge after being activated; once the residual charge is fully depleted, they become usable again." So there's no permanent lock, but no spamming either.

The prerequisite is the power grid. The tower's fuse boxes depend on the grid fed from the Power Plant. On a server where nobody has installed the heavy fuses, both terminals remain inert, and the Airfield goes back to being an ordinary monument.

What the control tower changes for a group aiming for mid-wipe

The small terminal creates a situation never seen before in Rust: an action that benefits strangers. Two interpretations clash, and both hold up.

The first is to activate it anyway. More airdrops on the map means more chances for combat around moving objectives — favorable terrain for a mobile, well-equipped group, much less so for a solo player. The second is to only touch the large terminal: the Chinook crate lands on a tarmac you already control, with a tower to watch the approaches from.

The monument also has four zipline landing points, making it as much a fallback destination as a starting point. And an elevator, which you should be wary of: it's a dead-end corridor if someone is waiting for you at the top.

The ten pieces of monument equipment nobody mentions

The Airfield also serves as a forward base. The usable entities found in the game files:

• 2 green recyclers, 1 research table, 1 repair bench, 1 small oil refinery
• 1 telephone, 1 elevator, 3 sofas, 16 switches, 5 heat sources, 4 zipline landing points

Recyclers carry much more weight since Power Trip. Facepunch lowered the base yield of green recyclers outside safe zones to 50%, with a return to 60% "with sufficient power from the power plant." Recycling at the Airfield while the grid is running therefore means 10 percentage points of yield gained on the exact same bag.

Finally, the monument's surveillance camera carries the ID AIRFIELDHELIPAD. Entered on a computer station, it gives a view of the helipad — useful for knowing whether the Chinook has already passed before crossing the runway out in the open.

The key numbers to keep in mind

To place the Airfield among the monuments: Large category, tier 2, a no-build zone of 49,152 m², 11 barrels, 29 crates, an underground tunnel entrance, a drop zone for the Chinook, and a site where the patrol helicopter can crash.

The current cycle began with the force wipe on August 6. The next one falls on September 3: until then, the control tower will remain one of the rare spots on the map where a handful of players decide what falls from the sky for everyone else.