Latest news with #RAFMarham
Daily Mirror
26-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mirror
Flimsy fence protects air base set for Britain's new nuclear-armed jets
The flimsy barrier is 300 metres from the runway at RAF Marham, Norfolk. Our revelation comes just weeks after protesters were arrested for causing £7million of damage to aircraft at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire An airbase set to house the RAF's nuclear-armed jets is protected by a five-foot wooden fence. The flimsy barrier is 300 metres from the runway at RAF Marham, Norfolk. Our revelation comes just weeks after protesters were arrested for causing £7million of damage to aircraft at RAF Brize Norton in Oxfordshire. The fence at RAF Marham can be accessed by five gaps in a hedge in a farmer's field. We visited the spot this week and stood there for 30 minutes but no security guard came to check on us. The rest of the base is surrounded by 18-foot barbed-wire fences. Last night Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, a former army colonel and nuclear weapons expert, said: 'It seems incongruous that at the base for our stealth fighters there is only a picket fence, which a small child could vault, as protection. When our new tactical nuclear bombers, the F-35As, arrive at RAF Marham, a wooden fence is almost encouraging terrorists to 'have a go'.' RAF Marham is the home of 617 Squadron 'The Dambusters' who fly the F-35B Lightning multi-role stealth fighter. A month ago Keir Starmer announced the government was buying at least 12 American-made F-35A fighter-bombers that can carry nuclear weapons as well as conventional ones at an estimated cost of around £700million. At a Nato summit in The Hague, the Prime Minister said the purchase was a 'response to a growing nuclear threat'. Downing Street said the move was 'the biggest strengthening of the UK's nuclear posture in a generation'. It is the first time the RAF will be able to carry nukes since the 1990s. The move comes at a time of growing global insecurity – and as the PM and his European and Canadian allies scramble to convince Donald Trump they are serious about defending Europe, rather than relying on the US. Colonel de Bretton-Gordon added: 'I applaud the design to get a tactical nuclear deterrent but the protection of these aircraft is as important as the aircraft themselves'. A government spokesperson said: ''We take security extremely seriously and operate a multi-layered approach to protect our sites, including fencing, patrols and CCTV monitoring. Following the incident at Brize Norton, we are urgently reviewing security and have implemented a series of enhanced security measures at all sites. After years of hollowing out and underfunding of the armed forces, the Strategic Defence Review concluded that we need to invest more, backed by the largest sustained increase in defence spending since the end of the Cold War.'
Telegraph
08-07-2025
- Politics
- Telegraph
British nukes are back – and so are CND's middle-class campaigners
'Gather round everybody, we're going to do some chanting. And the first one we're going to do is: 'We want the nukes out now.'' It's a scorching hot day in Norfolk, and outside RAF Marham, Sophie Bolt, the general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND), wearing a broad-brimmed straw hat and a vivid floral dress, megaphone in hand, is getting things underway. The 30 or 40 people gather in front of the base's entrance sign, partially obscured by a banner so it now reads: 'Royal Air Force: Welfare not Warfare', while the handful of photographers covering the event take their positions. ' We want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out NOW!' It's a few days after the Nato summit in the Hague, where Keir Starmer had announced that Britain was to purchase 12 American F-35A jets, which are capable of carrying conventional munitions and also the US B61-12 gravity bomb. US nuclear weapons have not been stored in the UK since the last left RAF Lakenheath in 2008 – while Britain has not had its own air-launched nuclear weapons since 1998. Now the planes and the bombs are coming back, to be stationed at RAF Marham. So it was that the word had gone out from the CND to groups, as far flung as Lewisham and Norwich, to assemble at the gates. 'We want the nukes out now, we want the nukes out NOW!' 'I think that's very good on the chanting front,' Sophie says, 'so give yourself a big cheer.' Now the group assembles for a photograph, behind another banner – 'Remember Hiroshima'. The B61-12 gravity bomb, that will be stored perhaps a few hundred yards from where we are standing, has the explosive power of more than three times the weapon dropped on the Japanese city in 1945. A man wearing a Starmer mask holds up two model bombs. Others hold up placards bearing the symbol of the CND, which in the 1960s and beyond became the universally recognised peace sign. Founded in 1958, the CND claims to be Europe's largest single issue campaign, and the longest running. A year earlier, in 1957, Britain had tested atomic and hydrogen bombs for the first time, becoming the third atomic power after the US and the USSR, and spurring rising public anxiety about the dangers of nuclear weapons and proliferation. 'The case is quite simple,' Bertrand Russell, the philosopher and pacifist who was the CND's first president, wrote. 'We think that the policy which is being pursued by the western powers is one which is almost bound to end in the extermination of the human race. Some of us think that might be rather a pity.' Other prominent members included the Rev John Collins, founder of Christian Action and one of the four founders of the charity War on Want, and Donald, Lord Soper, the Methodist minister and pacifist, who was known as 'Dr Soapbox', and who preached at Speakers' Corner and Tower Hill, against war, poverty, drink, gambling, slave labour, racial inequality and capital punishment. Its unofficial headquarters was in a Soho cafe, 'filled with bearded men playing chess', the writer Barry Miles once recalled, but the cause energised a constituency far beyond the Left, students and the clergy. Its annual marches at Easter from London to the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston, Berkshire, which began in 1958, with music provided by a trad jazz band and a skiffle group, drew tens of thousands of people. 'The marchers were mainly middle class and professional people,' The Daily Mail wrote of the first march. 'They were the sort of people who would normally spend Easter listening to a Beethoven concert on the Home Service, pouring dry sherry from a decanter for the neighbours, painting Picasso designs on hard-boiled eggs, attempting the literary competition in the weekly papers, or going to church with the children. Instead, they were walking through the streets in their old clothes. They were behaving entirely against the normal tradition of their class, their neighbourhood, and their upbringing.' It is difficult to conceive, perhaps, how real and present the fear of nuclear annihilation was at the time. The bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had happened a mere 13 years earlier, and the Cold War was at its height, the threat of nuclear apocalypse looming in everyone's minds. As an 11-year-old grammar school boy at the time of the Cuban missile crisis, I can vividly remember reading the newspaper accounts of Kennedy's ultimatum to Khrushchev to turn round the ships steaming towards Cuba, and going to bed wondering if I would wake up next morning. Or what I would wake up to, if I did. The fear receded, if never going away, and the interest in the CND with it. But now Sophie says, the organisation is seeing an upsurge in membership, driven by a higher level of awareness of the nuclear threat, and events in Ukraine and the Middle East. The spectre of nuclear warfare seems to be permeating public consciousness, with the film Oppenheimer and video games like Fallout and Atomfall. Last October, the BBC screened Threads, the apocalyptic war drama first shown in 1984, depicting the horrifying effects of a nuclear apocalypse on Sheffield. A new contemporary adaptation for TV is being produced by Warp films, the company that made the critically-acclaimed Adolescence. Unrest is in the air. Everyone has something to protest about nowadays, and most demonstrations have the appearance of a vortex drawing in all manner of causes from Extinction Rebellion to Stand Up to Racism. But the protest at RAF Marham has a single-mindedness of purpose that makes it seem all the more virtuous. There are no Free Palestine flags or SWP placards. Nobody storms the gates. Nobody glues themselves to the road. Nobody shouts or throws anything. Nobody is arrested. Most are veterans of anti-nuclear protests going back more than 40 years who, one imagines, if not as in an earlier era, pouring sherry from a decanter for their neighbours or painting Picasso designs on hard-boiled eggs, would otherwise be spending a quiet Saturday afternoon on their allotment, or volunteering at their local charity shop. People shelter under a tree for shade, spreading themselves on the grass, or sitting in picnic chairs. There are sandwiches, flasks and sun cream. A small group of shirt-sleeved police stand on the other side of the road, watching incuriously and talking among themselves. Off-duty airmen and women stroll through the gate in their shorts and T-shirts with nary a word being said. A car drives by, sounding its horn in support. Now Sophie hands the microphone to anyone who wants to come up and say a few words. Glen Borrill, 57, has driven the 85 miles from Mansfield to join the protest, after his wife had read about it on social media. He's never been involved with the CND before, he says, 'but with everything that's going on in the news, I thought if I don't get involved now, when that big bang comes around, I'll have only got myself to blame because I've not done anything to stand against it. 'I've not felt so anxious about what could happen since back in the 1980s when everything was kicking off then.' He's watched Threads recently, he says. 'It's based in a city not that far from Mansfield, and it was in a similar situation in the Middle East to what's happening now. That's how frightening it's become. It's like déjà vu. That was just a film, but the actual reality seems to be playing out as that film did.' He points to the guard standing on the other side of the fence. 'Even these lads here, when the bombs come, they're not going to let them in the bunkers.' A woman from Norwich says that people living around RAF Lakenheath are being given iodine to guard against radiation fallout from the base. I have no idea if this is true or not. She has her own chant – 'Starmer, Starmer is an evil re-armer'. A man who worked for the BBC at the time of the Iraq war accuses the corporation of telling lies, and says the mainstream media cannot be trusted. Several people say that. David Pybus is 75, a tall, rangy man with gentle eyes peering out from beneath a bush hat. He's come from Peterborough, an hour and a half by bus. 'Generally speaking,' he says, 'the media just give you what the Government is saying. You only get that narrative, and they roll out some former generals and people with military ties, and that's what you get in the mainstream media.' He has been a member of the CND since 1980 when Margaret Thatcher first announced that ground-launched nuclear weapons would be based at RAF Greenham Common and RAF Molesworth. 'Being a person of Christian faith, I felt I was faced with something very evil that was contrary to that, and it was very important to try and do something if you could to oppose that.' The bombs at Lakenheath and Molesworth had gone, he says, '[and] there was a sense that things were becoming more peaceful. But now they're coming back and the threat has increased again, so here I am.' In the small copse of trees, children from the service housing across the road have been playing hide and seek and watching the gathering with curiosity. The protest has lasted for two hours, but now the steam has run out of it and the heat is taking its toll. People begin to take down the signs on the gate, carefully unpicking the last of the gaffer tape and putting it in a refuse sack. They are packing up their banners and belongings, folding their picnic chairs, and swapping telephone numbers and handshakes. I ask Sue Wright how many protests she had attended over the years. 'Lost count,' she says with a laugh. She is 75, a retired primary school teacher, wearing a CND cap and a T-shirt with the CND symbol made of interlocking flowers. She first became involved with the CND in 1968 when she was student and, when she retired at the age of 60, became more actively involved with Norwich CND. 'It was quite small, all older than me – I was the youngster. And eventually they asked me to be the chair.' The oldest member is 84, 'but he's protesting somewhere else today'. All afternoon, the quiet voice of fatalism and doubt has been whispering in my ear. After more than 60 years of protest, the world still has nuclear weapons, the threat of annihilation is closer than ever, and the future lies in the hands of those far more powerful than the small hardy band gathered at the gates. In the absence of multilateral disarmament, it is Mutually Assured Destruction, MAD, that has kept the peace – such as it is. 'MADness, I call it,' Sue says. 'Total madness. But it's not assured at all. Just one use can set off a chain reaction.' Does she ever feel as if she's banging her head against a brick wall? 'Sometimes. Especially when it doesn't get reported in newspapers and on the TV, and it doesn't get a mention unless someone breaks the law, and we're committed to not breaking the law.' But that, she says, does not mean she was going to stop. She joined the CND when she was 18, she says, 'because I was terrified. I thought that nuclear weapons are so destructive that they should not exist. And I'm terrified now. 'I have a new grandson who will be two weeks old at about 10 o'clock tonight, and I fear for his future. I have seven other grandchildren and I want them to grow up in a peaceful world. I want them to grow up and to have a world to live in. I will do all I can to make people see the madness of it.' David comes up and quietly slips a postcard printed with the World Peace Prayer into my jacket pocket: 'Let peace fill our hearts. Our world, our universe'. His lift to King's Lynn seems to have left without him. We drop him off at the station, he sits down in the shade of the bus shelter, waiting for the bus, and the hour and a half journey back to Peterborough.
The Irish Sun
25-06-2025
- Politics
- The Irish Sun
Chilling maps show terrifying apocalyptic power of Britain's new air-launched NUKES joining RAF's doomsday arsenal
CHILLING maps show the apocalyptic power of air launched nuclear weapons returning to Britain's doomsday arsenal. RAF Top Guns are set to fly with tactical nuclear weapons for the Advertisement 3 Trident 2 missiles can carry up to eight nuclear warheads Credit: PA 3 F-35 bombers will be based in RAF Marham in Norfolk 3 It comes after the government ordered a dozen nuclear bombers that can carry American bombs. The F-35A bombers – to be based RAF Marham in Norfolk – are certified to carry American B-61 free fall nukes. The bombs are designed to give governments options in a spiralling state-on-state conflict. They are less destructive than doomsday weapons carried in the Advertisement But even the smallest H-Bomb – known as the B-61 Mod 3 – can engulf a whole city block in a thermo-nuclear fireball. It's payload is the equivalent of 300 tons of TNT explosives. If the bomb was dropped on a city, anyone inside an eight block radius would suffer The radioactive fall out would wipe an area the size of 200 football pitches. Advertisement Most read in The Sun Latest And if the bomb was primed to explode in the air – a split second before impact – the total blast area would cover an area of 800 football pitches. Larger versions of the B-61with have more than 1000 times more explosive power . Britain to test fire nuke missile in major show-of-force with sub launching 44ft Trident 2 for first time since 2016 But even they are dwarfed by the devastating power of warheads on Each Trident 2 missile can carry up to eight nuclear warheads. Advertisement And the destructive power of each warhead ranges from 90 to 475 kilotons – or the equivalent of 475,000 tons of TNT. The blast radius of an single airburst warhead would flatten homes across an area the size of 12,000 football pitches. The total blast radius would be even bigger. But they warheads are designed to scatter as they plummet to earth from the edge of space – which means a single missile could render a capital totally uninhabitable. Advertisement A former defence chief told The Sun: 'At the moment Britain has a gap in its arsenal . 'We have Tomahawk cruise missiles and Storm Shadows. 'Both of those can take out a hardened building or a bunker. 'But after that the only thing bigger is Trident.' Advertisement Vladimir Putin threatened to drop a tactical nuke in 2022 as a terrifying 'show of force' in Ukraine . His troops had been forced to retreat on three fronts – in Kyiv, Kharkiv and Kherson – and he was furious at western support for Ukraine. It triggered a frantic diplomatic effort that saw China and India helping to to convince the tyrant to abort. We have Tomahawk cruise missiles and Storm Shadows. Both of those can take out a hardened building or a bunker Former defence chief The UK scrapped its air-launched nukes in 1998. Advertisement Before that the WE-177 bomb – known by pilots as 'the shape' – was carried on Tornado jets. The new F-35As will be able to carry conventional and nuclear weapons, like the Tornados before them. Pilots sent on a nuclear raids risk being annihilated the blasts caused by their own weapons. An RAF source: 'These are gravity bombs, so it is not like a Storm Shadow that you can fire 200km from a target . Advertisement 'It will depend on the size of the blast.' Before the Tornado's Britain's air launched nukes were carried on 'V Bombers' including the Avro Vulcan, which served until 1984. Weapons were less precise in the 80s. So the best way to destroy a bridge would have been with a tactical nuke A Top Gun who trained to drop WE-177s During the Cold War the UK's tactical nukes were designed take out Russian infrastructure, including bridges. Advertisement A Top Gun who trained to drop WE-177s said: 'This was before smart bombs, and guided bombs. 'Weapons were less precise in the 80s. So the best way to destroy a bridge would have been with a tactical nuke.' Britain still makes its own nuclear warheads for the Trident 2 missiles on submarines, at the Atomic Weapons Establishment at Aldermaston. But it is not expected to manufacture sovereign nukes for the fleet of F-35As. Advertisement The RAF said the F-35As will be 'available to fly Nato's nuclear mission in a crisis'. They said it would, 'boost Britain's contribution to 'nuclear burden-sharing and deter those who would do the UK and our allies harm.' The RAF added: 'It reintroduces a nuclear role for the RAF for the first time since the UK retired its sovereign air-launched nuclear weapons following the end of the Cold War.' Read more on the Irish Sun The US already has deals with a number of Nato nations to host and fly its nuclear bombs. Advertisement The US Air Force has recently upgraded its nuclear storage bunkers at RAF Lakenheath in Norfolk, where its own F-35As are based.
ITV News
25-06-2025
- Politics
- ITV News
Starmer has bought nuclear bomb-carrying jets - what does this mean for UK defence?
The UK already flies F-35B jets, which operate from the Royal Navy 's aircraft carriers. Now the government is to swap out at least a dozen F-35Bs from its next order for F-35As which fly from conventional runways, have a greater range and which can carry American B61 tactical - or battlefield - nuclear weapons. These can deliver a smaller nuclear yield than the strategic nuclear weapons carried by the Royal Navy's Trident system. The theory is that the smaller yield allows NATO to respond in kind to the use of battlefield nuclear weapons by an opponent like Russia. Without lower yield nuclear weapons, the choice would be between a conventional response which might not work as a deterrent, and using a strategic nuclear weapon which would be a massive - potentially world ending - nuclear escalation. It's believed the United States stores around a hundred tactical nuclear weapons across six airbases in western Europe. The government isn't saying where the nuclear bombs for these new jets will be stored. Britain's nuclear warheads are built in Aldermaston in Berkshire and stored at Coulport near Faslane, but the new aircraft will be based at the other end of the country at RAF Marham in Norfolk. One option for storage is RAF Lakenheath which held American nuclear weapons until 2008 and where the US Airforce has reportedly been refurbishing aircraft shelters with underground vaults. The big question is who would command these nuclear armed jets. The answer is - not us. While the new jets belong to the RAF and the US retains 'absolute control and command' of the nuclear bombs, any mission combining the two would have to be approved by the 31 members of NATO 's Nuclear Planning Group. As a member the UK would always have the option to opt out. But this decision is controversial. Campaigners are accusing the government of nuclear proliferation and are already planning protests at airbases.
Yahoo
27-04-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Donation of £6K to 'life changing' youth scheme
A Norfolk man has secured a £6,000 donation to a youth scheme he said changed the course of his life. Nathan Holland, from Downham Market, was 12 years old when he was enrolled on to the Blue Skies programme, run by the Jon Egging Trust. It helps young people who face barriers to learning and offers them support to boost confidence, academic engagement and work-readiness. Mr Holland successfully nominated the trust for a charity donation from his current employer. He described the programme as "the catalyst for my development". Mr Holland was a student at Downham Market Academy when he joined the programme. His headteacher offered him a chance to take part in Blue Skies training after signs he was starting to switch-off at school. "I went into the headteacher's class after school, where my Mum turned up," he said. "I was being told off, but as part of that telling off he mentioned that I had been chosen to go on the course." Mr Holland said the three years he spent on the programme led him to become head boy at high school, a student ambassador at college and to complete his engineering apprenticeship. "It was the catalyst for my development as an individual. I'm not sure I would have been capable of doing all those things if it were not for the Jon Egging Trust," he said. The donation was presented to the charity's chief executive, Dr Alex Brown, at RAF Marham. He said: "It's really, really beautiful to see that Nathan came here back in 2013 and now he is coming back and supporting us in such a terrific and fantastic way. "We cannot thank Nathan, his employers and RAF Marham enough for their support. "It's really going to allow us to reach more young people." The money will be spent on providing virtual reality headsets for young people to experience what it is like to be flying a Red Arrows plane or travelling to space. The Norfolk airbase hosts many of the Blue Skies sessions, offering youngsters the chance to develop their teamwork and leadership skills. Its station commander, Gp Capt Leonie Boyd, said: "It's fabulous for us seeing the young people come through this programme. "To see someone who has actually completed the entire programme and has found value in it and gone on to have a successful life, it's really great for all of us to see." Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X. RAF Marham chief welcomes more defence investment Charity boss proud of helping 45,000 young people Jon Egging Trust
