Gloucestershire Weapons Inspectors

Support the B-2 OR NOT B-2 campaign

Major protest 26 Jan 2003 - NO BASIS FOR WAR, NO BASES FOR WAR - come and inspect USAF Fairford with us on the last day of inspections before Hans Blix reports to the Security Council. Poor old Hans can't find WMD's in Iraq but we can show him where to find them in the Cotswolds!

UPDATE - 10 Jan 2003 - Recent information leads us to believe that the MOD was a bit slippery with us. Veteran campaigners with intimate knowledge of the US military in Britian have informed us the Fairford should be regarded as the bomber extension of Mildenhall. Since Mildenhall is permenantly activated then so, effectively, is Fairford.

It seems possible to us that the MOD is playing games with the status of Fairford - whether or not it's RAF or USAF. The sign on the gate now says both... RAF and USAF. So it could be that bombers technically speaking need permission for RAF Fairford but not for USAF Fairford - even though they're the same place! - this is currently a working hypothesis and we're gathering information to either support or refute it. In the mean time you should continue to hassle you're MP - after all they should be even more irate about being tricked as well as not consulted.

URGENT - Join the campaign to prevent the bombing of Iraq from RAF Fairford. The UK government has not yet (9-Dec-2002) given permission for the the US air force to bomb Iraq from RAF Fairford. So now is the time to raise this issue with your MP and with all your media contacts. Support for this war is fading by the day - let's not let our land be used to launch this unjust war.

We anticipate it is only a matter of days before the US military requests permission to use RAF Fairford as an operational base for B-2 Stealth bombers. They will likely also deploy B-1 and B-52 bombers - however the B-2 is the most advanced long range bomber in the world and the first wave of attacks on Iraq will likely be by B-2's flying from Fairford and Diego Garcia.

The MOD says the "UK Government will have to be fully consulted" before the USAF can use Fairford.

So it's time to contact your MP and ask them to make sure they're consulted on this and speak out against bombing Iraq from Britian. One easy way to do this is using the Fax Your MP website. If you can get to speak to them all the better.

On Friday 13th December our Chief Weapons Inspector received a letter from the MOD (dated 9th December 2002) which states -

Follow this link for more details of our questions and the MOD response.

The B-2 Stealth bomber is the most advanced and most expensive bomber in the world. Costing upwards of £1.5billion each there have only ever been 21 made. Fairford has recently undergone major refurbishment at a cost of almost £100million in order to upgrade it's facilities to the standards needs for the B-2. The B-2 is nuclear capable and has been tested for use with the new generation of mini-nuke bunker busting bombs. It's quite possible the next nuclear device to be dropped will be from a B-2 flying from Fairford.