Apologies if this topic has been already been sufficiently discussed.
Not on the Forum, but it has often been suggested.
One of the greatest constraints in the search has been the limited time available for TIGHAR to be on Nikumaroro
In the ten expeditions to Nikumaroro I have organized and led I have not found that to be the case. Typically we have had between 12 and 15 volunteers working on the island for two to three weeks. It takes about a week to acclimate to the heat and adjust your clothing, footgear, and equipment to deal with the environment. For the next week people are at peak efficiency. By the end of the third week the land team is pretty well used up. Divers not so much, but a diver's day of two or three dives with rest periods aboard the ship in between is very different from a land team day of walking, bush-whacking, and digging.
With the cost for the boat, the lease of equipment and the limited free time of the participants, we can't seem to support the sustained durations that I believe are more typical of successful archaeological digs.
What we do on Niku is not analogous to a typical archaeological dig.
I realize that we haven't identified a site or sites that are obvious candidates for a major long-duration effort, apart from the Seven site which appears to have been successfully explored in a few weeks time on site - over multiple visits. So we haven't really needed to be on the island for extended periods.
Episodic searches of sites like the Seven Site, the Aukeraime Shoe Site, the village, the NW coastline, etc. are far more efficient than a single extended search. Each time we sample a site we collect data, and if we're lucky, artifacts, that must be analyzed and researched before we can assess their significance. Sometimes the data and artifacts tell us that the site is worth further attention. Just as often, post-expedition research and analysis tells us that a site is not worth further work.
Still, that maybe a causal fallacy - our lack of clear targets for extended investigation may in fact be due to the fact we haven't had enough time on site to identify them.
We don't identify targets by wandering around the island hoping we'll stumble across something interesting. We develop hypotheses based on logic, anecdotes, historical documents, and historical photographs.
I can imagine a small group from TIGHAR camping on the island with a desalination rig, photovoltaic power, satellite internet, and scheduled drop-off and pick-up by ship. With weeks of time available instead of days, a much more thorough exploration/investigation could be accomplished, hopefully achieving new discoveries. On the face of it, a month or two's stay would now seem to be practical. It is worth noting that the technology that might make this kind of stay practical (or livable) hardly existed 25 years ago.
With enough money it would certainly be possible to do that, but for the reasons stated above I don't think we'd gain anything by doing it. More importantly, Nikumaroro is a dangerous place. Even with a ship on-site, if somebody is in more distress than the expedition physician can deal with (heart attack, illness, compound fracture, severe machete or chainsaw wound, shark attack, etc., etc.) definitive medical care is more than a full day away if the ship immediately departs for Canton Island (24 hours away) to meet a Coast Guard C-130 dispatched from Oahu. (We make these arrangements with the Coast Guard before every trip). A ship from Samoa would take three and a half days to get to Niku. Fiji is five days.
We're not fighting a war. The expedition leader's primary responsibility is to bring everyone home in one piece. In our many expeditions to Niku we have had some close calls but we've never had an injury beyond a few stitches (the record is nine in 1991). We have never, and I would never consider, leaving people on the island without a ship standing by.