British MPs seek better protection for US war planes

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British MPs have demanded greater investment in hardened shelters for military aircraft after a withdrawal of US bombers from strategic bases. With American aircraft leaving…

British MPs have demanded greater investment in hardened shelters for military aircraft after a withdrawal of US bombers from strategic bases.

With American aircraft leaving established UK sites due to apparent threats from Russia and Iran, the issue of airbase security has prompted an urgent question in parliament about how the government intends to strengthen their defences.

Only a handful of bases have what the RAF calls hardened aircraft shelters – concrete and steel structures designed to protect aircraft from bombing, chemical threats and drone attacks.

US charges three men over alleged Iran-backed terror plots, including at RAF Fairford

Conservative MP John Cooper said his own experience was of “serried ranks” of aircraft in the open at one of Britain's most important operational airbases for air defence and maritime surveillance.

“What consideration has been given to rather than parking them out in the open air, some cheap physical security like hardened air shelters or revetments, because at the moment it looks like the Russian drone jockey's dream,” Mr Cooper said.

Defence minister Luke Pollard responded that the government took “the security very seriously” at the base, which houses four squadrons of Typhoon fighters and the RAF’s entire fleet of nine P-8 Poseidon maritime patrol aircraft, vital for tracking Russian submarines in the North Atlantic.

But Lossiemouth is also a regular operating base for US Poseidon aircraft that have become the target of an Iranian campaign.

In September, US bombers were evacuated from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire after a reported plot to attack the base with drones. Two men have been charged under the National Security Act.

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