Britain’s military chief has said he has “confidence” in the security of bases in the UK after a fortnight of arrests relating to U.S.-operated air force bases in the country.
The Chief of the Defence Staff, the professional head of all Britain’s armed forced, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton made remarks on Thursday afternoon while addressing troops on exercise asserting despite a fortnight of confidence-knocking news stories that British military bases remain safe.
While repeating what others have said, including in Washington, that the decision to fly the remaining U.S. Air Force bombers back to America is an “operational decision to reduce the risk”, Air Chief Marshal Knighton also appeared to imply the greatest guarantor of base security on home territory was not Britain itself, but American intelligence. The top officer said, reports The Times: “we have enormously close relationships from an intelligence perspective and operationally with the US, and that’s what gives me confidence around the safety and security of our bases here.”
The remarks came hours after two Latvian men were arrested at RAF Molesworth, a joint U.S.-UK-NATO intelligence facility near Cambridge, after having apparently broken through the perimeter fence. Allegedly, they may have been at liberty inside the facility for as long as four hours.
Latvia is in the European Union and is a NATO member in the Baltics, in Europe’s north-eastern corner. It directly borders the Russian Federation and has a sizable Russian-speaking minority. RAF Molesworth is a non-flying station and is focussed on intelligence analysis. As reported:
As well as the United States’ European Command Joint Intelligence Analytics Center and the Africa Command’s Joint Intelligence Command, the base also hosts NATO’s Intelligence Fusion Center (NIFC). Part of the NATO project to integrate intelligence networks between all alliance member states, the NIFC states of their mission:
The NIFC produces full-spectrum, multi-domain operational and strategic intelligence. We are enabled by a wide range of intelligence disciplines, national collection capabilities, and subject matter expertise from personnel who have extensive military and civilian intelligence experience.
The present round of scrutiny of the security of American bases on British soil began on September 26th when it became visible that security had been considerably stepped up at RAF Fairford, another legally British but de facto U.S. Air Force base in England. The following day, five British passport-holding men spotted allegedly acting suspiciously in the vicinity of the base’s outer perimeter were arrested. Two other men, one of them an Iranian citizen, were subsequently arrested at London addresses. All have now been released on bail.
The following Sunday, Fairford was decanted of its remaining U.S. B-1 bombers, which were temporarily stationed at the facility to contribute to U.S. strikes on Iran. Speculation on the exact nature of the threat to the base rolled on for days until President Donald Trump made clear there was concern about an Iran-backed, Ukraine-style mass drone wave hitting the base in an attempt to take out American bombers on the ground.
A spokesman for the U.S. European Command, which is one of the organisations with a presence at RAF Molesworth, said: “We are aware of the reports. It is inappropriate to discuss matters of intelligence, and we will not discuss specific force protection measures. We will continue to assess the threat environment surrounding our installations and take appropriate actions to protect our people, our platforms, and the bases where our forces operate from.”