Five British men arrested over a suspected terror plot near a UK air base could have been close to launching a “sophisticated” attack on the site, a former police counter-terror chief has warned.
Counter-terror police today released the men, who are in their 20s and from London, on bail after they were arrested with suspected explosives near RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire on Sunday.
Laurence Taylor, head of National Counter Terrorism Policing, said one line of enquiry is whether individuals may have been working unknowingly on behalf of a foreign state.
The i Paper understands they had been under surveillance for some time, but that the arrests were opportunistic rather than the result of direct intelligence.
Meanwhile, security concerns have been raised over how close the masked suspects were able to get to the key air base without police or security services seemingly being aware.
A farmer who raised the alarm after spotting three vans and masked men near the site on Sunday morning told The i Paper she believes she saw around eight or nine suspects – and criticised police for only evacuating locals several hours after she alerted 999.
What kind of attack could have been planned?
Early indications suggest any plan to target the base, which is used by US and British air forces, may have included “a level of sophistication that isn’t common in terrorism”, a former counter-terror chief told The i Paper.
Nick Aldworth, an ex-detective chief superintendent in counter terrorism policing, said the fact that vans featured fake company branding in an apparent bid to avoid raising suspicion and the alleged targeting of a military airfield suggested detailed planning likely to be beyond self-radicalised terrorists.
Aldworth added that the arrangement of the three vans at the time of the arrests suggested preparations were under way to unload the vehicles.
He said: “It appears that the vehicles were parked in a way that suggests to me separation for unloading. You can see the way they’re all positioned with their doors in that sort of little fan shape – and then people away from the vehicles rather than in them and driving.
“The important thing is if those people that were arrested were not with those vehicles at the point of arrest. First priority is going to be to try and tie them into those vehicles because you know the obvious defence is, ‘Not my vehicle boss.’
“A really important investigative plan at the moment will be to actually confirm that the people who’ve been arrested were associated with those vehicles and with whatever might be in those vehicles.”
What planes could have been targeted?
RAF Fairford has been used by US aircraft involved in the air campaign against Iran. Any attack on the base, would be fraught with difficulty.
Its runway is almost two miles long and is reinforced to support heavy bombers such as the B-1 Lancer and B-52 Stratofortress, and also hosts a detachment of U-2 high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft, said Chris Bergs, an air power analyst at think tank the Royal United Services Institute (Rusi).
“Fairford provides reserve capacity, and the ability to quickly fold in significant US striking power when required. This can be used to send a clear signal to adversary nations,” he said.
Ministry of Defence (MoD) police as well as armed US personnel patrol the base, which is “a significant political and deterrent asset”, added Bergs.
A United States Ar Force B1 bomber on the tarmac at RAF Fairford (Photo: Alastair Grant/AP)It was “very hard” to see how a plan to crash through the gates in a van, and place a vehicle next to a plane before fleeing, could succeed, said Aldworth.
“Maybe there’s the possibility of them having a number of small devices in those vans. And the plan was to take small devices out, try and break through the fence, and then place devices against aeroplanes,” he suggested.
“I don’t think that would be a viable plan because, while these perimeters are big and hard to protect, the assets inside them are more commonly protected. Particularly, the Americans would generally have an armed guard on an aeroplane like that.”
Police ‘took hours to evacuate locals’
People living nearby said security at the site had been ramped up in the days before the incident, with tractors and concrete pillars appearing to have been positioned at entry gates to block access at the start of last week.
The farmer who raised the alarm after spotting three vans and masked men near RAF Fairford in the early hours of Sunday said she believes there were “at least eight or nine” suspects at the scene.
The local resident, who wished to remain anonymous, said she called 999 after there was no response when she rang an emergency number for the Ministry of Defence (MoD) police.
“We think we saw at least eight or nine,” she told The i Paper.
“We had a look in them [the vans]. We didn’t open them, but we realised there was no one sitting in the driver or passenger seats. The vans were empty when we saw them.”
An armoured vehicle patrols the interior of RAF Fairford (Photo: Ben Stansall/AFP)After spotting the men in her headlights, she alerted local residents on a village WhatsApp group warning people to lock their doors.
“I did that at probably 1.45 in the morning, but we didn’t hear anything from the police until they started evacuating people five hours later,” she said.
“So that meant the people whose houses are right next to those vans, if I hadn’t told them about it, they wouldn’t have known.”
How much intelligence did UK authorities have?
The extent to which the UK authorities, including the intelligence services, were already aware of a plot to target RAF Fairford remains unclear.
Defence Secretary Wes Streeting suggested on Monday that the farmer only had a “partial picture” of events, apparently hinting that there had been some prior knowledge of the activity of those under arrest.
The security services and counter-terrorism police routinely monitor dozens of potential terrorist or hostile state threats to the UK at any one time. However, only a small proportion of those threats can be made subject to resource-intensive tactics such as active surveillance or tracking of suspects.
Taylor said CTP was “keeping an open mind” about the investigation, with angles being explored including whether “this may be activity committed by proxies, or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly, working on behalf of a foreign state”
“Often this threat becomes visible to us as criminal activity, often at a small scale and committed by individuals whose primary aim is not terrorism but a quick financial gain,” he added.
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