No one talking about the "attack" on the RAF refueling aircraft?

Werewolf said:
Remind me again of the last time someone tried to plant a bomb on a military aircraft in the UK. You don't risk doing millions of pounds of damage, or critically damaging an aircraft* (not to mention hitting someone hundreds of meters away) with a missed shot, or shooting someone who may actually be allowed on site but is not where you expected them to be, just because of some fantasy situation in peace time.
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I get where you're coming from but when was the last time someone took a military aircraft out of action in the UK with an electric scooter, some paint and a fire extinguisher? I bet plenty of people thought that would never happen, which has now lead to them looking a bit silly with a big bill.
 
tom_e said:
I get where you're coming from but when was the last time someone took a military aircraft out of action in the UK with an electric scooter, some paint and a fire extinguisher? I bet plenty of people thought that would never happen, which has now lead to them looking a bit silly with a big bill.
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This could've easily been prevented with a fence, and proximity sensors/cctv.
 
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There is a fence, they cut the fence…

Proximity sensors are not all that, the amount of false positives are also significant. Your are not going to dispatch a group of armed guards every time a bird lands near the fence and breaks the beam.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
There is a fence, they cut the fence…

Proximity sensors are not all that, the amount of false positives are also significant. Your are not going to dispatch a group of armed guards every time a bird lands near the fence and breaks the beam.
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I've got a fairly off the shelf CCTV setup at home on a reasonable size property and even at a distance it can trigger alerts for a person being detected with very rare false positives or failure to detect - sure if someone went to enough lengths they might fool it but human monitoring would mostly offset that.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
There is a fence, they cut the fence…

Proximity sensors are not all that, the amount of false positives are also significant. Your are not going to dispatch a group of armed guards every time a bird lands near the fence and breaks the beam.
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So you have cctv to go along with it. I've done cctv gaurd, it's fully possible.

Put two fences in, not an uncommon thing at numerous bases. Theres multiple, multiple ways to enforce base security.

Did they cut the fence? Can't see anywhere reporting on that? Have you seen the fence at Brize.....
 
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Isn't the rumoured new head of the defense staff an RAF engineering officer? Maybe he can rig something up.
 
Rroff said:
I've got a fairly off the shelf CCTV setup at home on a reasonable size property and even at a distance it can trigger alerts for a person being detected with very rare false positives or failure to detect - sure if someone went to enough lengths they might fool it but human monitoring would mostly offset that.
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That’s not a proximity sensor though. That’s a CCTV camera with AI detections.

A perimeter sensor is typically just infrared point to point beams. If beam gets broken, alarms are triggered.

It’s also one thing covering the perimeter of a house, it’s another covering a perimeter measured in miles or kilometres.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, it absolutely can but the costs involved are significant to both build, operate and maintain.

These bases were built long before commodity fibre optic networking was a thing, I highly doubt there are suitable ducts running around the perimeter to pull fibre and power through (ethernet isn't going to work due to distances).

Then there is the issue of what cameras do you use. The current leaders in AI cameras are also the Chinese, not sure the MOD would want those. Likewise, it will need to be fully closed circuit, no cloud.

I’m sure we can all come up with a lot of ‘why don’t they just’ form our armchairs but in practice, it’s a lot more difficult and very expensive.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
That’s not a proximity sensor though. That’s a CCTV camera with AI detections.

A perimeter sensor is typically just infrared point to point beams. If beam gets broken, alarms are triggered.

It’s also one thing covering the perimeter of a house, it’s another covering a perimeter measured in miles or kilometres.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, it absolutely can but the costs involved are significant to both build, operate and maintain.

These bases were built long before commodity fibre optic networking was a thing, I highly doubt there are suitable ducts running around the perimeter to pull fibre and power through (ethernet isn't going to work due to distances).

Then there is the issue of what cameras do you use. The current leaders in AI cameras are also the Chinese, not sure the MOD would want those. Likewise, it will need to be fully closed circuit, no cloud.

I’m sure we can all come up with a lot of ‘why don’t they just’ form our armchairs but in practice, it’s a lot more difficult and very expensive.
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None of those are insurmountable and for critical assets we need to invest in a suitable level of security. In this day and age CCTV can cover large distances - it isn't like we are stuck with less than 500 vertical res and low FPS any more. CCTV would be part of the solution and help to deal with false positives from other systems.
 
esmozz said:
Probably not unfortunately, if previous court cases are anything to go by.

pounds 1.5m Hawk attack women freed

Four women walked free from Liverpool Crown Court yesterday after a jury found them not guilty of criminal charges despite their admission that they did more than pounds 1.5m worth of damage to a Hawk warplane.
www.independent.co.uk www.independent.co.uk

"Four women walked free from Liverpool Crown Court yesterday after a jury found them not guilty of criminal charges despite their admission that they did more than pounds 1.5m worth of damage to a Hawk warplane."

Although possibly the political climate has changed nowadays.
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We need a system for dispensing with juries for trials in the UK in such cases.

Juries swear/ affirm that they will judge a case according to the law, not their own personal agendas.

If they can't competently even manage the basic task of following legal directions from a judge they should be removed from the process.
 
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Rroff said:
None of those are insurmountable and for critical assets we need to invest in a suitable level of security. In this day and age CCTV can cover large distances - it isn't like we are stuck with less than 500 vertical res and low FPS any more. CCTV would be part of the solution and help to deal with false positives from other systems.
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I never said it couldn’t, I just said it’s more complex than sticking a few cameras on the side of your house.

CCTV can work over long distances during the day but not at night.

There isn’t enough light round an airbase to use colour night vision cameras so you need to use IR, that limits the distance you can cover with a camera to get anything which isn’t just a blurry mess at night.

To cover something like an airbase you are talking about hundreds of cameras which will probably run into a 7 figure investment to install and operate. Plus any other measures you want to put in place.

That’s just one base and we know the MOD isn’t exactly flush with cash right now.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
That’s not a proximity sensor though. That’s a CCTV camera with AI detections.

A perimeter sensor is typically just infrared point to point beams. If beam gets broken, alarms are triggered.

It’s also one thing covering the perimeter of a house, it’s another covering a perimeter measured in miles or kilometres.

I’m not saying it can’t be done, it absolutely can but the costs involved are significant to both build, operate and maintain.

These bases were built long before commodity fibre optic networking was a thing, I highly doubt there are suitable ducts running around the perimeter to pull fibre and power through (ethernet isn't going to work due to distances).

Then there is the issue of what cameras do you use. The current leaders in AI cameras are also the Chinese, not sure the MOD would want those. Likewise, it will need to be fully closed circuit, no cloud.

I’m sure we can all come up with a lot of ‘why don’t they just’ form our armchairs but in practice, it’s a lot more difficult and very expensive.
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You dont need any of this, you just stick two sacs in a hut monitoring the cctv cameras.
 
b0rn2sk8 said:
I never said it couldn’t, I just said it’s more complex than sticking a few cameras on the side of your house.

CCTV can work over long distances during the day but not at night.

There isn’t enough light round an airbase to use colour night vision cameras so you need to use IR, that limits the distance you can cover with a camera to get anything which isn’t just a blurry mess at night.

To cover something like an airbase you are talking about hundreds of cameras which will probably run into a 7 figure investment to install and operate. Plus any other measures you want to put in place.

That’s just one base and we know the MOD isn’t exactly flush with cash right now.
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The damage they just caused will run well into 7 figures. Also if those were more nefarious actors we'd be looking at a much larger figure, total loss of a voyager.
 
Sensors won't work due to bases being a haven for large numbers of wildlife, the false positives would be a nightmare. I suppose you could have multiple layers of fences which should stop the wildlife for a while until the rabbits dig under them, sensors might work until that happened. CCTV would be ok but you would have to swap the human observer out frequently as sitting watching scores of screens with nothing happening on them will get boring quickly, especially at night. All of this would cost a fortune though and there isn't the political will to spend on either manpower or security equipment as there is no way it could come out of a bases annual budget.
 
200sols said:
The damage they just caused will run well into 7 figures. Also if those were more nefarious actors we'd be looking at a much larger figure, total loss of a voyager.
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Yup it will. But that wasn’t the point, the point is the MOD hasn’t got the budget to do all the things.

In any case they could just fly a drone over and do it anyway at which point the CCTV was useless.

Begbie said:
Correct. Put some in. It doesn't need to be that complicated. A fence and cameras would've resolved this issue.
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Better ask the treasury for the 7 figure investment needed to do it.

Ah wait it’s empty and has been for 15 years….

I swear we are just going round in circles.
 
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