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Inside Fylingdales |
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Military makes peace and tea with protesters |
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The three metre high electrified fence that surrounds the military base at Fylingdales moor in Yorkshire is built to keep us out and notwithstanding some more determined efforts is normally very good at what it does. But on one clear evening in October, the station commander invited the Missile Defence Working Group for a grand tour a cup of tea before we left. The fence opened like Jonah's whale to swallow us and we spent three surreal hours in its belly before being gracefully deposited back onto the moortop once more. The Fylingdales radar tracks space objects and the flights of ballistic missiles. Its new role as a British outpost in a US 'missile defence' system has increased its profile and it has been the focus of protests for many years. According to the Project for a New American Century - a group that includes the US Defence Secretary among other senior figures in the US Administration - the purpose of the new system includes 'to provide a secure basis for US power projection around the world.' How would the station commander respond to these concerns? In the briefing room, he and his colleagues were at pains to describe the base as wholly British by explaining that all operations personnel are part of the UK chain of command. Even so, he conceded that the operations equipment was built by arms manufacturer Raytheon in the 1970s and belongs entirely to the US government. Were our two countries to fall out, the US would certainly want their radar back. On one side of the briefing room stood the Union flag and the RAF insignia, whilst on the other hung the Stars and Stripes and the insignia of United States Space Command, which is the base's link in the US military. Space Command are staunch advocates of dominating space as the ultimate military high ground, of putting weapons in space and even of fighting wars in space. They are also keen to develop the potential of missile 'defences' for offensive purposes. Given that the British government is theoretically committed to keeping weapons out of space, did staff at Fylingdales find the plans of Space Command alarming? No, not officially, although their discomfort at the question was plain enough. The briefing over, the Commander fulfilled his promise to show us the heart of the facility - the Operations Room buried in the bowels of the radar
building and encased in walls several feet thick. The room contained very little besides four 1970s computer screens, each reflecting a green wire image of the world. Specialist
operators peered at the screens waiting for things to appear on them. A simulation was run for us, in which the radar pretended to see a missile launched from the Ukraine and hurtling
towards western Europe. It took the operator exactly 34 seconds to identify the blip on his screen as a ballistic missile. My suggestion that it was really a nippy Norwegian weather
balloon like the one that caused a nuclear scare in 1995 was roundly repudiated. More seriously, had
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