Is The Isle of Skye (UK) Being Used As A Testing Ground For A SHTF Senario ?

Hey Woody!

Thanks for bringing this to my attention. Military/Airforce/Naval activities in the UK are of most interest to me, there is sooo much going on in America at the moment, one can't help but wonder what preparations the UK are making... Like it or not we're hand in hand with the Yanks.

The disturbing thing is, while infomation on Americas operations are quite readily available (ish) it seems a lot harder to grasp what the UK are up to. I guess over here our agencies a lot more talented and keeping things quiet and secret.

You can choose to take that as a good point, in assuming not much *is* going on, or like me, find your self filled with apprehension at what they might be doing that we don't know.

All I'm going on is the fact, we give the term *big brother* a whole new meaning. 80% of the police force have encountered over the last few years have been as bent as Goerge Michael, the riots lasts year *were* completely orchastrated (I was at the Birmingham riots) and the fact is, there was *no* riot untill the media went mad telling us there was... The profiled and kettled black youths... New internet policies are encroaching on our privacy, and our prison systems are gradually being privatised, starting in Brum, and last but not least, the Olympic security contractors GS4 (I think) are an illegal organisation that have helped the Israelies persicute the Palis.

We really are just one step behind the US. For some reason, the atmospere is a lot quieter over here, mind you, us British are rather subdued...

Please keep hunting to uncover operations in the UK, and I will do the same.

The thing with the electrics and the ATMs is intruiging.. Copper theives or test operation?? Hmm...
We rely on electronics so much, that's a clear way for them to control us, and create panic.. Keep an eye on these things I should think..

I wonder what under ground bases we have over here? Do we have anything similar to the FEMA camps??

Sorry for the typos, on me phone

Originally posted by woodwytch
And the recent events would certainly have made a good case study for TPTB in a contained area (an island) ... to see just how people would react in a situation where vital technology and communications go down leaving people unable to access emergancy services or even buy provisions if they did not have cash.

Things like this happen every day. Power cuts, cable breaks/thefts etc all do this very same thing, on a daily basis, around the UK and the world. It makes no sense to stage such an event when it is well documented how we react as a group when we lose our technology, nothing really. We just get on with it. I had a power cut last week, lasted for several hours, no TV or Internet. What did I do? Broke out the candles, had a smoke then went to bed.

Originally posted by woodwytch
Can you imagine if such an experiment were to be played out in a major city ... my guess is it would have resulted in looting again.

Depends on the length of such an outage as to what people would do. A temporary loss of a day or two, I'd like to think, would not result in people going mental. Plus, the Government simply would not allow it unless it was incapable of doing anything about it, as the harm to the economy of a city being offline for days is incalculable.

First of, thanks for posting Woody I love reading about these types of things, USA has all there Area 51 mysteries yet in the UK we don't have to many military stories like they do across the pond.

I love learning about modern inner workings of our military,

I found it fascinating that people where in the loft with out ever knowing. I'm also a bit of a sap for electronic/cyber war fair I love reading about it.

One thing that I probably would of assumed about mobile base stations is that surely that also can be wireless meaning they themselves can connect to another station wirelessly, they don't all need a cable backbone do they?

Originally posted by stumason

Originally posted by woodwytch
Ok ... judging by the main consensus it seems there is nothing untowards going on and all is as it should be ... as I said in the OP I was unsure whether to post or not as I certainly do not know enough about the military / MoD to make any solid claims ... I simply wanted to get some feedback from people who probably know more about such things than I ever will.

That's cool, asking questions is good and, even better, you seem to accept the explanations, unlike many round these parts

Originally posted by woodwytch
I would also like to hear from anyone that can confirm that damage to a BT fibre optic subsea cable could shutdown ATM's as well as phones and internet and most mobile networks ?

I still can't understand why the MoD would claim responsibility for the damage initially only to retract that statement and say it is cable theft ... also it isn't just the absence of BT engineers at the claimed location ... it is the absence of any engineers / technicians of any description ... and how could the school / hospital computers still be operational when everything else was dead.

>puts hand up< me me me!

Ok, to answer your first point, "how damage to a BT fibre optic subsea cable could shutdown ATM's as well as phones and internet and most mobile networks ?"

Well, ATM's need links bank to the banks, same with the mobile base stations and the phones, they are connected into core networks, hence why a break on the subsea cable could shut them off, as they cannot communicate. Mobile stations don't broadcast calls between themselves, but are connected via backbone fibre networks.

As for "and how could the school / hospital computers still be operational when everything else was dead.". Maybe they used a different supplier? Like my company? We didn't suffer a cable break that day and we do supply comms to such places like Hospitals, schools and business, so maybe they used us? Also, such places, especially Hospitals, have protected services so a break won't necessarily bring them down. Normal peeps don't have protection.

I can go into lot's of detail, but it would just be fluff. The jist of it is there. Maybe the MoD thought their sub had snared a cable, but actually found it wasn't them? The MoD is usually quite good at owning up when a sub has done something, especially since the furore after one sank a trawler years back.

Excellent information and put in simple terms that even I could follow I'm a real technophobe.

Thank-you Woody

Friends from Skye tell me this cable theft was a seriously issue, especially as mobile reception is poor on the island at the best of times. Of course, it also shows how reliant we have become on technology that can, quite literally, be cut off.

Only took a day to get it restored though.


btw: no complaints at Woody raising this and suggesting a 'possible conspiracy' - this is, after all, a conspiracy website - but kudos for humbly accepting the more boring, and likely, explanation

Originally posted by AndyMayhew
Friends from Skye tell me this cable theft was a seriously issue, especially as mobile reception is poor on the island at the best of times. Of course, it also shows how reliant we have become on technology that can, quite literally, be cut off.

Only took a day to get it restored though.


btw: no complaints at Woody raising this and suggesting a 'possible conspiracy' - this is, after all, a conspiracy website - but kudos for humbly accepting the more boring, and likely, explanation

edit on 10-6-2012 by AndyMayhew because: (no reason given)

Completley agree with what you say about our reliance on technology and that's the point I was making when I suggested TPTB (whoever the he!! they are) would be interested to see how people reacted to the loss ... it would have been a valuable exercise for both the MoD and the people effected.

Living in a rural community myself we are often left with power outages and I have been banging on for years that whilst technology is great to have as the easy option ... we really should maintain the ability to cope without it and know how to deal with such things when they occur without too much fuss.

I found the loss of ATM's very informative because it would have shown people just how important it is not to let cash become obselete as it seems the government would like to happen ... technology is far from infallible and we need access to the back to basic methods when this happens ... the people of Skye coped relatively unscathed because they are used to coping with unexpected hardships (island life) ... but as I said my guess is that city dwellers would not have coped so well without the ATM and access to their credit

Woody

Originally posted by definity
One thing that I probably would of assumed about mobile base stations is that surely that also can be wireless meaning they themselves can connect to another station wirelessly, they don't all need a cable backbone do they?

Yep. It's actually one of the reasons Vodafone have bought the company I work for (lets see if you can work it out, for fun ), as we provide them with a far amoutn of their backbone and carry their traffic.

That said, some towers have microwave links instead of fibre, depending on the location, but these serve the same purpose and aggregate all the traffic from the tower into the core network.

As an aside, I was treking in Wales last week and walked for 2 days without any mobile phone reception at all .....

Hi there Woody,

I used to work on the Isle of Rona on a test range that QinetiQ used for testing UAV`s and other tech.
They also have a less well known base on a smaller nearby Isle.
there is a lot of Mil people and places around that neck of the woods.

As a previous member has said the Mil Exercise is normally held in Galloway.
There are also a few places in Galloway that are used by QinetiQ ( and others ;-) ).




reply to post by stumason


C & W by any chance ?

good company to work for.

snoopyuk

Originally posted by snoopyuk
Hi there Woody,

I used to work on the Isle of Rona on a test range that QinetiQ used for testing UAV`s and other tech.
They also have a less well known base on a smaller nearby Isle.
there is a lot of Mil people and places around that neck of the woods.

As a previous member has said the Mil Exercise is normally held in Galloway.
There are also a few places in Galloway that are used by QinetiQ ( and others ;-) ).

Hey there snoopyuk long time no type ... I hope you're well and it's great to see a familiar face (avatar) here.

Thanks so much for the information good to hear from someone who actually knows the area an companies firsthand

Woody

reply to post by woodwytch


your welcome Woodwytch, great to see that some of the old members are still here, been checking in from time to time , but have not had much time to visit ATS as I used to.

take care

snoopyuk

I realise that suggestions made by stumason and others are the probable answer, however, none of these answers are proven so I'll add my twopence worth

War games.
Probably the first priority would be to disable ALL communications. As most countries in the world do have mobile phones and internet etc then it makes sense to test their ability to knock out these devices. Also, because it is just a game it would make sense to leave hospitals etc alone.

As those who are local say they have not seen any repairs being done could it be possible they were testing some kind of jamming device? A device that can target specific services? that would fit in with the hospital and schools being untouched and the fact no repairs appear to have taken place.

Example. The signal on the phone lines that deliver broadband are actualy quite small, it would not take much interference to dissable these services without doiing any harm to the system. My own broadband refused to work when I used a heavy duty battery charger (home made switched mode) that was close to the phone socket.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
I realise that suggestions made by stumason and others are the probable answer, however, none of these answers are proven so I'll add my twopence worth

Hehe, no worries. If you don't mind, I'll counter

Originally posted by VoidHawk
Probably the first priority would be to disable ALL communications. As most countries in the world do have mobile phones and internet etc then it makes sense to test their ability to knock out these devices. Also, because it is just a game it would make sense to leave hospitals etc alone.

Given the nature of modern comms, it would be very hard to selectively jam communications that would leave the Hospitals unscathed, as they ultimately use the same network as us plebs, within the same frequencies etc.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
As those who are local say they have not seen any repairs being done could it be possible they were testing some kind of jamming device? A device that can target specific services? that would fit in with the hospital and schools being untouched and the fact no repairs appear to have taken place.

In the example of the "cable break", that would have been fibre optic, not copper, so would not have been affected by any EM jamming equipment. The only device known to man that can "jam" an optical signal on fibre is a bolt cutter

Originally posted by VoidHawk
Example. The signal on the phone lines that deliver broadband are actualy quite small, it would not take much interference to dissable these services without doiing any harm to the system. My own broadband refused to work when I used a heavy duty battery charger (home made switched mode) that was close to the phone socket.

Aye, because at that point your broadband (ADSL I presume as you mention the phone socket) is an electrical signal on copper as is very susceptible to EM interference , especially ADSL as it is a bag of arse. When I had ADSL years ago, it only had to rumble with thunder before it started flaking out, let alone any actual visible lightning!

Originally posted by stumason

The only device known to man that can "jam" an optical signal on fibre is a bolt cutter

Ok, ya got me on most of it But the above is not true. Its quite easy to insert an optocoupler then you can do anything you wish with the signal, the realy hard (maybe impossible) part is to do so without being noticed because you have to cut the fibre. But I'll concede because we were realy talking about remotely jamming the signal....however, wasn't there mention of sas in the roof space of a house? yep, he fitted an optcoupler that was remotely controled

reply to post by VoidHawk


Well, as you said, they'd need physical access and actually have to disconnect the fibre to insert said device... My "bolt cutter" remark was just a tongue in cheek reference to the having to physically break the connection to do anything to the signal

Originally posted by VoidHawk
I realise that suggestions made by stumason and others are the probable answer, however, none of these answers are proven so I'll add my twopence worth

War games.
Probably the first priority would be to disable ALL communications. As most countries in the world do have mobile phones and internet etc then it makes sense to test their ability to knock out these devices. Also, because it is just a game it would make sense to leave hospitals etc alone.

As those who are local say they have not seen any repairs being done could it be possible they were testing some kind of jamming device? A device that can target specific services? that would fit in with the hospital and schools being untouched and the fact no repairs appear to have taken place.

Example. The signal on the phone lines that deliver broadband are actualy quite small, it would not take much interference to dissable these services without doiing any harm to the system. My own broadband refused to work when I used a heavy duty battery charger (home made switched mode) that was close to the phone socket.

Hey there VoidHawk and thank-you for this information ... the jamming devises sounds very plausible.

I agree that nothing is set in stone and it is good to take all suggestions under consideration ... because no matter how much some people would like to deny it and have us believe everything is 'normal' we would be foolish to think we know everything ... however experienced and knowledgable we are ... there is so much we don't know ... they only show us the tip of the iceberg and I can understand why as far as security is concerned ... but I don't think they should treat us like idiots by making outright denials only to be caught out further down the line (dummy torpedo incident).

Perfect example how one of the posters claimed adamantly that there is no SAS base on Rona with a full sense of authority ... but the 'fact' is ... there is a SAS base on Rona and this is common knowledge amongst the islanders (not just Skye) particularly the shrimp fishermen who are banned from certain areas ... and on the odd occasion they have strayed beyond the markers SAS inflatables have appeared from nowhere in a matter of seconds to usher them out of the zone.

I can genuinely see the logic behind some of the suggestions that have been made and there is a high probability that they are correct ... but we should never accept another man's words blindly in the presence of firsthand accounts of those who are on the spot ... and when these people who live on the island (some even born there) claim that there is something different about certain activities ... then I am inclined to believe them ...
what exactly the 'differnce' is I have no idea ... but there local knowledge should not be dismissed without consideration ... after all that would be the action of an ignorant (wo)man.

>>>Edit To Acknowledge Stumansons counterclaim concerning jamming devises

reply to post by woodwytch


Hi woody, thanks for listening.

Stumason does speak some truth but i feel he's missed some relavent points.

He says you cant jam optical cable. As far as I know this is true, unless you do as I suggested and fit your own coupling device. If you fit such a device you totaly own the system and you would be able to deny the locals while maintaining connection for the hospital and school.

However, what Stumason missed is the fact that the locals WILL be connected via copper wires and Stumason acknowledges how easy it is to jam signals that use copper wire.

Originally posted by stumason
Aye, because at that point your broadband (ADSL I presume as you mention the phone socket) is an electrical signal on copper as is very susceptible to EM interference

Originally posted by stumason
it only had to rumble with thunder before it started flaking out, let alone any actual visible lightning!

Even if optics were connected to each individual home the user still connects to it via copper wires. Their PC connects to their router using copper and the router connects to the phone socket using copper and these wires are not even of the sheilded type. In my opinion not only could they jam the system, but I suggest they could remotely inject their own signals.

Was I jokung about the sas guy fitting devices? Well, it was said tongue in cheek, but I suspect that would be a part of their training and the best way to train is to actualy do it for real, so why not!

The part of your post that I find interesting is the multiple excuses used for the loss of services and the lack of repair men, it suggests remote devices were used.

I'm enjoying this thread, good post woody

reply to post by VoidHawk


I didn't miss, quite the contrary.

For the fibre side of life, the act of inserting any kind of device would not only cause alarms that people like me would notice (who would then investigate), but the coupler itself would introduce a certain amount of attenuation which may well prevent the system from restoring at all, depending on the link budget, thresholds etc.

(EDIT: Lets not even mention that all Telco's have pretty tight security. We can tell if anyone is on any of our sites at any time. It isn't simply a case of walking in and unplugging stuff. You'd need to know the network topology very well to even begin to interfere in the correct circuits)

Not only that, but inserting a signal onto a line that is not of the designed frequency will cause it to at least error (causing investigation) if not drop totally.

If they did insert the correct frequency (such as 1550nm for a long haul system assuming it isn't DWDM, then it becomes even more unlikely) then it will conflict with the existing signal, again causing investigation by nosy types like myself.

As for the copper side of life, yes, the military could blanket the area with massive amounts of EM radiation to disrupt comms, but this again would cause a whole slew of problems which would be detected by bods like me and investigated, not to mention potentially interfere with the operation of critical systems such as the power grid, hospital equipment etc.

We have stuff on the Isle of Skye and we were not affected one iota by any loss of communications and we use the same kit as BT and any other Telco.

Originally posted by stumason
the coupler itself would introduce a certain amount of attenuation

I disagree, it could attenuate, but it could also boost, or It could do what the user required. If anything were to be noticed I suspect it would be the extra time for the signals to pass through the device.

Originally posted by stumason
Telco's have pretty tight security.

We must remember woody was not suggesting criminal activity, he was suggesting military activity. so its VERY likely that the staff who usualy monitor these systems would find themselves on a health and safety course for the required dates.

Originally posted by stumason
As for the copper side of life, yes, the military could blanket the area with massive amounts of EM radiation to disrupt comms,

Why blanket the area? much better to hit specific targets.

We should remember woody was suggesting this was a trial run for something. If thats the case then the MoD would have people at both ends. There would be those actively breaking in or denying access and others monitoring how effectively tasks were achieved.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
I disagree, it could attenuate, but it could also boost, or It could do what the user required. If anything were to be noticed I suspect it would be the extra time for the signals to pass through the device.

It would attenuate and the addition of an extra signal would cause issues, like I said. You can't just "boost" the signal with more power just like that. If we wish to boost a signal in comms, we use multiplexors in a regen mode and a mux is a hefty bit of kit, not something you can just insert without anyone noticing. It's not a case of just upping the power, which itself would require explicit knowledge of the kit you are facing as you need to get the level right so as to not blind the receiver.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
We must remember woody was not suggesting criminal activity, he was suggesting military activity. so its VERY likely that the staff who usualy monitor these systems would find themselves on a health and safety course for the required dates.

Not, it isn't likely at all. Every NOC is a 24/7 operation, it's why I am at work right now.

Originally posted by VoidHawk
Why blanket the area? much better to hit specific targets.

Now you're getting silly. If it took down all the phone lines, ATM's etc as the OP advised, then it can be only one of two things. Either a genuine cable break (whether sub or theft) or there is a wide area of affect on whatever it is you're suggesting the MoD used, which would have impacted us.

There is no way that they could have selectively interfered with a BT circuit on copper with an EM device and leave ours unaffected. Due to the intertwined nature of networks (we use a lot of BT for the final mile) we would have been affected if BT had their cooper lines targeted. We were not. All of our services to Skye remained up during the period this exercise took place, proving that the local loop was technically fine, it was BT's external link to the mainland that was down, as they and the MoD maintain. We have our own external links which remained unaffected.

Originally posted by VoidHawkWe should remember woody was suggesting this was a trial run for something. If thats the case then the MoD would have people at both ends. There would be those actively breaking in or denying access and others monitoring how effectively tasks were achieved.

I know, but the scenario you're presenting is wholly unlikely and, to be honest, technically impossible. It relies on a whole bunch of "what if's" coupled with a good deal of good luck and magic.