Secret and Not So Secret UK Bases and Installations

Sorry but a lot of the above post is absolute rubbish. Having spent most of my career on many of these sites, there's a clue in my avatar I can tell you what's not true.

Beith is missing, but it's about as boring as a military site gets.

There are no UK COG facilities that are 4 miles underground and no UK facility or weaponry is discretionally controlled by AI, in peace time or at war.

Machrihanish was never a TAL site (Transoceanicabort Landing Site) for the shuttle and was certainly not the only one in Europe. It's runway is actually rather short and TAL sites in Europe include Zaragoza, Moron, Istres, Cologne, Rota. RAF Fairford was the TAL site in the UK with a 3,000m long runway, the same as Mach. There are no underground facilities at Machrihanish.

No chemical weapons or biological weapons research is conducted underground in the UK. Why would you do that when it's perfectly feasible (under international treaty obligations) to do this as Porton, which of all the sites I've ever been to is the most secure.

The only military nuclear sites in Scotland are Coulport and Clyde. Any work you refer to is carried out by AWE and is not in Scotland.

The cold fusion story is utter bull. The only real scale fusion reactor is in Oxfordshire and that's hot fusion.

I'm not saying that there are many very interesting sites in the UK, but pretty much all of the post above is complete fiction.

Cheers
Robbie

a reply to: stratsys-sws

Interesting info - Aren't the COG/Disaster and Emergency planning places more like 40m underground and kitted out with 70s/80s tech at best (all analogue for practicality/reliability).

The phone number for the 'top secret' Command and Control base at MoD Corsham where the PM and 5000 odd civil servants, MPs etc... are evacuated to in the event of nuclear war is listed in the phone book and has it's own facebook fanpage/google reviews page and is suprisingly low tech.

a reply to: bastion

Hi Bastion. Whilst I wouldn't quote exact depths, most C&C sites are not very deep at all, ultimately if you drop a thermonuclear weapon on top of any site, it's ability to communicate with the rest of the world, and your ability to ever get out of it is pretty much nil. Add this to the fact that almost all strategic war doctrine is based on total destruction, there really isn't much point on very deep sites - you're actually much better off being in the air aboard a flying command post, or at sea. Hence why the idea of these deep sites was canned with the advent of very accurate ICBMs carrying MIRV Thermonuclear weapons.

Modern COG centres and hardened facilities are actually very well equipped, with recent hardware. If by the site at Corsham you're talking about what was Burlington/Site 3/ etc then it's completely decommissioned. I'm not on Facebook so I can't check, but you may also be referring to the CCC, which is often mistaken for a CoG site, it really isn't. Having visited many times in a previous life - (again clue is in the username) I know what it is, but it's not a CoG site and in reality the name Corhsam Computer Centre is very accurate. The other very hardened site at Corsham is the GOSCC, which is very cool....but again it's not a CoG facility, there are also other hardened and underground communications facilities in tunnel quarry, but think more like server rooms and network hubs than ultra secret top brass bolt holes. Like most military sites the rest of the site has bomb shelters, but these aren't really designed to fend off anything other than terrorist initiatives. Corsham is unfortunately much less interesting than it used to be....but there are still some very interesting things there.

Typically the sites that have the most hardened facilities are the active military bases, like places you need to control air warfare, communications systems, remotely piloted vehicles, national command centres and national support centres etc


Cheers
Robbie

Cley Hill in Wiltshire is a hotspot for UFO activity. It's also near Boscombe Down, where (ahem) stuff goes on!

Salisbury Plain is a very large MOD training area.

Also, Keevil Airfield, Wiltshire, used to be RAF Keevil. It is still used by the military for touch and go landings, cargo drops and helicopter activity.

Nice list.

Bumping this for giggles what is in the original post about bases in Scotland does not even scratch the surface of what is hidden away underground and very very few people know or remember ? .

I got told to fill the work van up as a 16 year old one morning and ended up at what I thought was just a brick shed with a metal door , when the door was opened a 160 foot metal staircase beconed and there was many many levels below that , the size of that place blew my tiny young mind you could easily get lost for a whole day there .

I have worked at the RAF bases at Lossiemouth and Kinloss doing construction work ,nothing there and at the time mid 80s one of my drinking buddies was a pilot there .

Done the Benbecula Base again nothing of importance ditto the Tain bombing range and the listing posts at Brora and Portmahomack which was not listed .

It is what you don't see that is interesting , I was blown away with what I found out about 12 years ago from other guys in construction, not half a mile from where I was brought up is a hidden underground Base and nobody knew especially me , we would hear 2 or 3 choppers in the small hours of the morning and think it was just the SAS getting dropped of on a training exercise in them there hills , 20 or so miles away is 4 massive cathedral size bunkers dug in WW2 and a bolt hole for the royal family not far from that and not more than a hand full of people know about that one , I used to work in those places and nutlear plants and not give it a second thought when I was young .

a reply to: stonerwilliam
Really interesting old thread to bump!👍
The deepest I've ever gone is a few ROC bunkers, and an old tin mine lol, so I've nothing to add to the thread, but replying mainly to keep it in 'MyATS'
....totally hope some ex service person or a 'former base' whistle blower decides to come out here on ATS!!!🤪