RAF Brize Norton, the Royal Air Force’s hub for global air mobility, has been designated a top investment priority under the UK’s new Strategic Defence Review (SDR), as the government commits to implementing all its recommendations in full.
The review highlights the increasing vulnerability of critical military infrastructure to disruption, calling for urgent reforms to how the UK plans, disperses, and protects its air operations.
The SDR outlines how the changing nature of the threat, particularly from long-range missiles, cyberattacks, and grey zone activity, makes current basing models unsustainable in a high-intensity conflict. As such, RAF Brize Norton, which serves as the main launch point for the UK’s Voyager, C-17, and A400M fleets, must be hardened and expanded in partnership with private finance.
“RAF Brize Norton should be a high priority for investment and improvement in partnership with private finance,” the document states.
However, recognising that Brize Norton remains a single point of failure, the review proposes contingency planning for civilian airfields to be brought into operational readiness in the event of its disablement. This may include legislating for emergency use of commercial sites under the forthcoming Defence Readiness Bill.
“Given it is not affordable to establish a military alternative to Brize Norton should it be unavailable for operations, alternative commercial facilities must be planned and, if necessary, legislated for,” the review warns.
The RAF is already sharpening its logistics model through the Agile Combat Employment (ACE) concept, a strategy adopted from the United States, which emphasises rapid dispersal of aircraft across multiple operating locations, deep munition and spare part stockpiles, and survivability under attack. The UK intends to push this approach further, especially across NATO’s area of operations.
This move comes as allies in Europe and the Indo-Pacific increasingly adopt ACE-like doctrines to remain operationally viable in a contested environment.
In a previous age of hard earned experience, there was a saying.
“Don’t put all your eggs in one basket”.
History teaches us that we learn nothing from history.
This has always been the case. In event of a major conflict in Europe. All commercial air traffic would cease and civilian airports become part of the Air Bridge from the USA and Canada. The issue will be protecting them. This I see as a role for a new Home Guard.
That comment has rather a large number of implicit assumptions about the behaviour of the USA inside.
Agree during threat of hostilities civil aviation will stop and there will be many airfields available. Possible those in mod will consider flying civilian commercial aircraft to Ireland or elsewhere if west Europe is under threat. Think we have to hope there is a dispersal plan of action obviously we won’t get to know.
If only we hadn’t closed Lyneham to save money. Imagine two bases for the AT fleet to operate from. Our politicians and civil servants are very good at ignoring service advice or even common sense. The emergency access to the runway at Fairford is OK but only works to receive aircraft already away from Brize if we lost the runway, if for example DIO didn’t monitor contractors and their quality of work again.
RAF Brize Norton would not be a single point of failure for AT if they had kept Lyneham.
Worth noting that, although flying operations from Lyneham have ceased, the runway is still there and would, presumably be suitable as an alternate base in emergency.
Not affordable????
We had RAF Lyneham until the idiots closed it.
How about utilising RAF Fairford?
I think so much of this will be reinventing the wheel.
There must be dusty copies of the old “War Book” in the ministry somewhere. This has been done before.
Airfields were hardened, and some still are.
Dispersal was planned and exercised.
A roads were earmarked.
RE had ADR pre positioned.
Various private premises were earmarked for requisition, and were exempt from the Telephone Preference Scheme.
The GPSS still exists, although again the idiots have sold it off. Bring it back and get it fully operational.
Hi M8 I actually think reinventing the wheel is a bad idea, we need to invent a better one !
Just bear in mind that all the old military Airfields are mapped out and just moving the eggs from one to another isn’t a good idea. For instance Fairdford is just obvious and it’s so close to Brize the ground crews could commute, but it is really close and just way to easy a target.
IMHO this is a Golden opportunity to avoid the obvious, think outside the box and actually embrace some of the thinking in the SDR, forget the purely Military mindset and embrace lateral thinking.
These are very large Aircraft so HAS aren’t an option, besides which they would cost a fortune and be very large fixed targets. But they are also very mobile and can move around at will.
I think dispersion and confusion is a far better option, where better to hide and support them than our Civilian Airports. These are Transport Aircraft, not high tech fighters that require specialist maintenance and our Airports are Chocker full of ex RAF bods, it’s called a “career move”, and they are an untapped resource.
They all have refuelling facilities ATC, basic Airport security which could be supplemented by local Cadets or the sort of armed home reserve they are talking about, and from space one A330 looks very like another (hidden in plain site).
IMHO what they actually really do need to do first is to provide the U.K. with proper Air Defence with decent stocks of missiles. Also I’d re purpose the RAF regiment to highly mobile SHORAD and also get them something like Skyranger mounted on Boxers.
After all wasn’t it specifically founded after the disasters in Crete when the Army didn’t prioritise defending the temporary Airfields at Meleme, Chania and Heraklion ?
And it might give some of the Army who served in Afghanistan a laugh 🤷🏼♂️ Oops did I say that 😯
I’d leave the other military bases alone and available to disperse other units too especially those with HAS.
Well, there is quite a list of MoD owned runways and civil to choose from.
Yep you could make life very difficult for targeting purposes. TBH one of the biggest things HMG really need to do is actively engage with the other parties and agree a joint strategy to wake our general population up and engage.
First step is get the media onboard (the BBC is horribly woke) and then use the best communicators you can find regardless of who or their beliefs.
Setting up a home defence National Guard of say 30,000 and encouraging Lorry drivers, mechanics, Pilots etc etc to register for emergency duties would be a very practical step.
But if you really want to wake the Population just pass a bit of legislation that all able bodied people between 18 and 35 have to register for possible National Service with an exemption for those deemed to be in a reserved occupation.
That should sort the labour / skills shortage pdq as 600,000 NEET all try to get into the later categories, and maybe do something about all those young men practicing their boat skills in the English Channel.
You’re talking far too much sense mate.
Meant to add, they’d offend too many, that is half the problem.
Defence national guard you the ones they disbanded in the late 90s
National service or conscription wouldn’t work today. Too many refuseniks, plus it’s politically toxic. I can’t blame youngsters and I wouldn’t encourage my own to either.
This reminds me of how Russia has from time to time bombed things in Ukraine that used to be military premises back in 198x when they were owned by the Soviet Union.
And they don’t seem to have updated their target Rolodex.
A persistent theme, running through every government, past and present, is a constant lack of COMMON SENSE!
It scares me how complacent the government and civilian population are. All this talk of GDP to 5% by mid next decade will be making Putin rub his hands with glee. His target nations will not be ready to reple his attacks.
Even then, he will just flatten the 1 point of military resistance as nimbys won’t allow planning to go ahead to increase resilience.
RAF St Mawgan is still operational
Aka Cornwall Airport. I think you would have remove the commercial businesses that occupy the infrastructure.
If it came to a shooting war there wouldn’t be a lot of civilian flying going on so plenty of planes and tarmac.
That is just the eastern side of the runway, though?
I think most the western side is still MoD St Mawgan proper with SERE.
There is a HAS complex there too, and a bloody great bunker ( old JMF )
So a valuable site.
They do have the HAS, but they are currently occupied with businesses at the moment. They would need to be shifted.
Ah, didn’t know that.
With no planes or runway of their own,it’s a training center for something.
For Combat Survival, and some RAuxAF elements too
It also parents DHFCS St Eval up the road, a DHF communications site ( transmit or receive, I don’t recall. )
Its twin in the SW is at Penhale sands.
Well there we are, it’s all coming home to roost now isn’t it… This is what you get when you cut back and penny pinch, short term gain over strategic long term thinking. Peace dividend my arse. I say get Lyneham and Kemble (now Cotswold airport) reopened and sort out Fairford. don’t piss around with it, get it done now and double the amount of transport aircraft in the process. Start defending these bases with laser and radio directed energy weapons. Who cares about how much it costs. And in the meantime, start practicing dispersals to Civvy airports..
They have been displaying all kinds of bravado and rhetoric for decades, and they are now panicking over contingency plans that decades ago were marked in pencil with common sense written in the corner, then left in the drawer, collecting dust and forgotten about.
Those once important airfields left to be taken over by nature, or built on with housing estates
Any that remain now require £ billions to make ready
It is embarrassing 🤔🙄😒😤
Before the fall of the Berlin Wall that is exactly what we used to do.
Isn’t this already part of the contingency planning. For example: recent upgrades to Braize airfield resulted flight taking off from Stanstead. A few years ago I board a RAF Voyager from Exeter or they RAF St Mawgen in Corwall which has deep underground bumkers for storage of parts is in Newquay adjacent to Newquay airport, with one of the longest runways in UK.
Mmm these deep bunkers at St Mawgan had a very different storage use, hence the signs about lethal use etc and guards in watch towers with guns.
I don’t think they were even deep. I think they’re surface cut and cover bunkers, double fenced around, with razor wire, with a lit dead zone in-between.
A typical SSA, a storage area for nuclear assets. These, like at Macrihanish, for nuclear depth charges.
Several other RAF Airfields have them, the one at Honington that sometimes held Trident convoys springs to mind, and Marham, Wittering and other places have them.
The JMF Joint Maritime Facility is the daddy bunker there I believe, though what it is used for now that the operation moved to Dam Nek I’m unsure.
I know about the St Mawgan set up for a rather odd reason. Many moons ago when in my early 20s I went on Holiday with my then Girl friend and her family to a cottage in Tregurrian, and quite naturally we liked to “go for walks” away from her parents.
Favourite spot was a corn field on a hill side overlooking the bunker compound.
Apart from the obvious I took my binoculars as it was also a great spot for plane spotting. I can assure you the sirens going off and lots of lenses flashing at us encouraged us to cease manoeuvres and relocate. Oh and back then the signs on the fences also mentioned mines.
Talking of Fairford are you going to RIAT this year ?
No. I’ve still never got to RIAT. No time in my life.
One day I will.
Civilian airfields enter British war contingency planning, well it looks like the UK is starting to realize the peace is over.
The SDR has a problem in that it doesn’t make clear how we grow our AFs outside of drones. That includes bases. If we do go to 3.5%, that extra money has to address that.
Because they do not want to, I believe that. I’m yet to see any indication they’ll order a single extra ship, sub, plane, helicopter or Armoured vehicle, if they can just say Drones and Cyber are the answer to all.
If they’re serious, which I doubt.
Leeming and Leuchars in recent memory were fast Jet Stations linked to the GPSS, with storage areas and HAS for the jets.
And there are dozens of other runways on MoD Estate.
Agree. Growth is an anathema to a generation of politicians that have done nothing but cut. It’s almost as if they can’t get their heads around the idea that we are at an historic low in nearly every metric.
M8 My Theory is they are going at a snails pace because they all quietly hope the war in Ukraine will end, the US will welcome Russia back into the world, trade will resume and everyone in Europe can go back to sleep.
Unfortunately for them and us that isn’t the end of the story and Mr Trump has other ideas, knows what he wants and how to get there. And so far he is playing a blinder and not just in Europe but the Far East as well.
So the U.K game plan is to do very little other than boost the capabilities of what we already have, follow a typical Civil Service style strictly regimented process of SDR, spending review and then based on those 2 outcomes deliver a command paper in the Autumn. And then and only then will the but as little as humanly possible.
Problem is Mr Trump has other ideas and plans of his own and so far he is on track to get his own way.
He sees China as the main threat and Russia as an inconvenience, he wants to concentrate on the first but reduce the US defence spend overall by ensuring the locals start to do their fair share of the paying.
Tariff / Trade wars and continuous ups and downs have jittered all the US Allies in Europe, Canada and the Far East. By doing so he has reminded all of us just how much we need a peaceful co existence with the US.
It’s significant that NATO has set its requirements at 3.5% + 1.5% (which would match the total US defence budget) and he is attending the NATO summit on 24 – 26 June. Meanwhile nearly all of his partners are trying to conclude Trade Deals (ours isn’t signed yet) and it doesn’t look like anyone will have any signed off before the NATO summit is concluded.
I still think it will be less than 3.5 +1.5 but it will be a significant uplift from the previous 2% target (3.25 + 0.75 🤷🏼♂️).
If that happens then just watch the purse strings loosening, Trade getting settled and he then goes and does the same to Canada, S Korea, Japan and Australia (Japan is really in for a shock).
One thing is for sure we can’t defend ourselves properly without spending more and 4% ok is a massive uplift. In US$ 2.33%=82.1 Billion but 4%=140 Billion which is a 71% increase. We may even be able to buy a few Cannons and Carrots for the Horses 🤣
So cheer up one way or another the outcome is getting nearer.
I’m cheered!
Using civilian airports, airstrip etc is a logical idea, so is following the Swedish model of using public roads. The Ukraine forces showed how vulnerable aircraft parked on a airbase are to a relatively cheap attack that could be set up months in advance.
The best alternative is to identify civil airport, airstrips and suitable sections of dual and motorway roads. Multiple eggs in multiple baskets , in pre prepared area to quickly hide the aircraft.
I live in a fantasy world where our top brass are constantly making sure the country is robustly prepared for conflict. Contingency like this (and roads for Typhoon etc, like they do in Sweden) seems so obvious to me.
This shouldn’t be news.
Precisely.
Our local airport (south coast) has a regular RAF & red arrows visit for refuelling and crew R&R. In the 80s we had a couple of Vulcans dispersed. It also has a restricted maintenance facility. Used to be Flight re-fueling. I would have thought with a medium cost programme these facilities could be upgraded in a couple of years. At least to take a squadron of typhoons & support aircraft. Easy protect London, Paris, Portsmouth & Plymouth from here.
In his 1986 classic “Red Storm Rising,” Tom Clancy used RAF Stornoway as a key northern base. I think that was an earliest end-of-Cold War closure.
The Runway is still there and a newish Distillery’