Britain’s Bases Are Open. The Enemy Has Noticed.
Britain still talks about its military estate as if it were a fortress. It is not. The last eighteen months have shown, in public and at cost, that fences can be cut, drones can loiter, ships can sit undefended in open harbours, and a determined adversary need not fire a missile from abroad to reach the heart of the defence enterprise. The Ministry of Defence has ordered reviews, added cameras and promised new powers. The pattern of incidents suggests something more basic is missing: the assumption that home bases, dockyards and contractors are now part of the battlespace.
On 20 June 2025, activists linked to Palestine Action cut through the outer fence at RAF Brize Norton, the RAF’s principal air-transport hub, and crossed the airfield on electric scooters. They sprayed red paint into the engines of two Voyager tankers and, according to prosecutors, used crowbars. The raid was filmed and claimed online. Repair bills have been put anywhere from £1.7 million so far to as much as £15 million. Six people have been charged. The group was proscribed days later. John Healey, then Defence Secretary, said new surveillance and extra guards had made the base “much safer”. That may be true of Brize Norton. It does not answer why Britain’s largest operational airbase could be entered at night by a handful of people on scooters.
The same complacency is now being examined at sea. Navy Lookout’s recent analysis of the threat to Royal Navy ships in harbour is not alarmism. It is a statement of the obvious after Ukraine. Tobias Ellwood, a former defence minister, flew a light aircraft unchallenged over both aircraft carriers alongside in Portsmouth. There is no physical barrier at the mouths of Portsmouth or Devonport. Leisure craft share the water. A cheap uncrewed surface vessel, or a boat that looks like one, could close the distance in minutes. Ukrainian attacks have already shown that harbours hundreds of kilometres from the front are not sanctuaries. A large strike on 12 August reportedly damaged Russian warships far from Ukraine. Project Royal Oak, a £26 billion waterfront programme announced in July, is the biggest naval-estate investment since the Cold War. There is no public evidence that it includes the hardening, close-in weapons or harbour barriers the threat now requires. The Navy still has 30mm mounts in store. What it lacks, Navy Lookout notes, is the people, money and will to put them where they would matter.
The Sovereign Base Areas in Cyprus have already been struck. In early March 2026 a Shahed-type drone, assessed as Iranian-made and launched from Lebanon, hit RAF Akrotiri. Damage was limited and there were no casualties. Other drones were intercepted. The episode still mattered. It showed that British territory, used for regional operations, is now inside the reach of Iran’s proxies. Tehran has since warned that any base used against it is a legitimate target. Iranian sources have named Cyprus among options for retaliation if conflict with the United States widens. The Ministry of Defence says Akrotiri has “robust, multi-layered” protection. A single low-flying drone still got through.
Ukraine’s Operation Spiderweb, on 1 June 2025, should have ended any remaining fantasy that airfields are safe because they sit deep inland. One hundred and seventeen small drones were smuggled into Russia, hidden in wooden cabins on trucks, driven to the vicinity of five airbases - one of them more than 4,000 kilometres from Ukraine — and launched remotely. Strategic bombers burned on the tarmac. Distance, fences and peacetime routines did not save them. The method is available to any state or group that can buy commercial drones and rent a lorry.
That method is already being practised, at lower intensity, against the British defence industrial base. Palestine Action and its successors have rammed gates, smashed machinery and occupied roofs at sites linked to Elbit, Teledyne, Moog, Ultra and logistics firms such as DSV. Courts have found a terrorist connection in some of the worst raids. Copycat groups appeared after proscription. The aim is not symbolism alone. It is to interrupt production and intimidate the people who keep aircraft, sensors and munitions flowing. A contractor’s factory is not an airbase, but it is part of the same system. If it can be entered with a van and a sledgehammer, the system is not secure.
Overhead, the picture is worse. Official figures obtained by the BBC showed 266 drone incidents near UK military sites in 2025, more than double the 126 recorded in 2024. Ministers have said they cannot rule out hostile state actors. Unidentified aircraft were reported over RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall, Feltwell and Fairford - bases of high value to both the RAF and the United States, including the site later used for the return of US nuclear weapons. Jets were scrambled. Almost none of the drones were captured or shot down at the time. New powers to engage threatening drones near bases are welcome. They arrived after the fact. Restricted airspace and extra CCTV are not a substitute for a dense, practised counter-uncrewed-air system around every critical site.
The human route is the least discussed and perhaps the most serious. In July, The Telegraph reported that individuals with links to Iranian intelligence had been intercepted while attempting to enter Britain on small boats. Smugglers described passage offered in return for a later “favour”. Some routes are said to involve the IRGC’s logistics arm. Officials believe more IRGC-linked people still arrive legally by air. MI5’s director-general has said the service tracked more than twenty potentially lethal Iran-backed plots in a year, often using criminals as proxies. Iran’s campaign against dissidents and Jewish targets in Britain is already a matter of record. The same networks that move people can move reconnaissance, sabotage teams or the next set of instructions. A base that can stop a scooter at the wire still has to assume that the person who planned the raid may have arrived months earlier, legally or otherwise.
None of this requires a declaration of war. It requires a change of mind. Home bases are no longer rear areas. They are targets for activists, proxies and states that have watched Ukraine and drawn the correct conclusion: the cheapest way to hurt a Western military is to hit it where it parks, refuels and repairs. Reviews after Brize Norton were necessary. They are not sufficient. Britain needs physical barriers at naval harbour mouths, armed close-in defence for high-value ships alongside, a permanent counter-drone layer at every major airbase and contractor site of national importance, and an immigration and intelligence effort that treats hostile-state use of irregular routes as a defence problem, not only a Home Office one.
The lesson of the last year is simple. If activists on scooters can reach a Voyager, a drone can reach a hangar in Cyprus, and a truck can empty a bomber force in Siberia, then Britain’s bases are not defended to the standard the threat now demands. Pretending otherwise is how wars begin at home.