USAF RAF Croughton

[TonyGosling]

Croughtonwatch
http://www.fraw.org.uk/croughtonwatch/index.shtml
This site is devoted to USAF Croughton (and its outstation, Barford St. John), the USA's communications and combat support base on the border of Oxfordshire and Northamptonshire.
Croughton is part of a global system of electronic communications, control and surveillance that works on behalf of the US military and intelligence establishment; it is an active part of both US foreign policy, and the projection of American military power across Europe, North Africa and the Middle East.
This site brings together information about what Croughton is/does, those working to highlight its role in conflict and the use of advanced surveillance and weapons technology, and recent reports/articles which highlight the role of Croughton.


What does USAF Croughton do?

Croughton is one of a number of bases operated across Britain (including Menwith Hill, Alconbury, Molesworth and Fairford) by the United States Air Force's (USAF) 501st Combat Support Wing (501CSW).

It was announced in 2015 that, as part of the creation of a NATO 'Joint Intelligence Analysis Centre', Molesworth and Alconbury would close and their functions transferred to a new establishment at USAF Croughton.

Croughton is the headquarters for the 422nd Air Base Group (422ABG), as part of which it co-ordinates communications support operations for the US Department of Defence and "civilian agencies" (which includes other US government departments and agencies, such as the FBI or DEA, but also the NSA and CIA). According the 422ABG's own publicity information, Croughton handles a quarter to a third of of all the US military traffic between Europe and the continental USA, and supports over twenty different communication and defence systems. According to the US Department of Defense's guide to military installations –

RAF Croughton supports Presidential, NATO, European, and Central Command, operations with 23 communications and information weapon systems. The base provides 30% of all DOD communications between Europe and CONUS, and communication for deployed and en route war fighters. Supports functions which include Civil Engineering, Services, Logistics, Medical, and Security Forces.
In November 2013, The Independent newspaper identified Croughton as a "relay centre for CIA clandestine and agent communications" – which was used to ferry the intercepted data from Chancellor Merkel's mobile phone back to the USA. It also noted that Croughton is used as a way-station for communications with the US forward operating base in Djibouti, used to co-ordinate drone strikes over Yemen – a claim elaborated upon in an article in the Mail on Sunday.

RAF Barford antenna masts
USAF Barford St. John's directional antenna masts
Together Croughton and Barford make us a "transceiver complex" – one site mostly transmits signals, whilst the other receives, and the few miles distance between the two prevents excessive interference occurring between the transmission and reception of signals. The two bases are tied together with a point-to-point microwave link – easily recognised by the identical tall masts at the centre of each site, and which are lit with red warning lights at night.

However, since the end of the Cold War, changes in technology have meant that whilst Croughton has grown to become a globally important satellite waystation, Barford St. John has been slowly winding down as its HF (shortwave) and VHF equipment has become progressively obsolete – as shown in the 'sunset silhouetter' of Barford's antenna installation at the beginning of the 1990s: title image

Barford is being maintained, but it may be that at some point in the near future the site is used for a new type of communications development – perhaps augmenting the functions of Croughton, or to support a wholly new communications system.

[TonyGosling]

US to spend $317 million on British intel hub upgrade - report
Published time: 18 May, 2014 17:24
https://www.rt.com/news/159792-us-base-croughton-uk/

Washington is to upgrade RAF Croughton, one of its UK bases allegedly involved in mass surveillance and drone strikes, to make it the largest intel hub outside mainland US and a center for its operations in Africa, The Independent on Sunday reports.
Tags
UK, Law, USA, CIA, Air Force, Intelligence
The US government will spend $317 million upgrading Royal Air Force (RAF) Croughton, a US Air Force base in Northamptonshire, in southern England, to an ultra-secure intelligence facility with up to 1,250 personnel. It will become a new center for US counter terrorism activities called Africom or Africa Command, according to the report.

The new plans will include an installation for the Defense Intelligence Agency, the Pentagon’s main military intelligence service and will see Croughton grow in size and importance to that of RAF Menwith Hill in North Yorkshire by 2017.

Menwith Hill is the National Security Agency (NSA’s) main listening post in Europe and is co-staffed with members of the British intelligence family.

The USAF briefing document, seen by The Independent on Sunday, makes it clear that RAF Croughton will be at the forefront of intelligence activities and will also include personnel from British spy agencies.

The upgrade will reportedly involve consolidating six existing US intelligence groups, which are currently based at RAF Molesworth and RAF Alconbury in Cambridgeshire into one facility at Croughton. The Pentagon has said that the project will save at least $75 million a year and that accommodation for staff at RAF Molesworth is outdated and unsuitable.

RAF Croughton, which is just 20 miles from Prime Minister David Cameron’s constituency, already has a direct cable link with the British government’s GCHQ in Cheltenham and is currently used as a CIA communications relay station.

It was revealed last year that British Telecom laid a high speed fiber-optic cable between RAF Croughton and Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti, the Horn of Africa, where the US has a major counterterrorism operations base used for operating drone strikes in Yemen.

The communications link between the two bases led to concern that RAF Croughton is also to be used in drone operations, although the British government has strenuously denied this.

The Ministry of Defence (MoD) insists that US personnel at Croughton “neither fly nor control any manned or remotely piloted aircraft anywhere in the world.”

It was also reported by The Independent last November that RAF Croughton was used to send back information from the CIA’s global network of spy listening stations in US embassies, including the Berlin station where the NSA allegedly hacked Chancellor Angela Merkel’s phone calls.

The news that Croughton is to be upgraded has sparked anger among campaigners and senior politicians that there is no proper oversight of US bases in the UK. US bases in Britain are currently governed by a law dating back to 1951, when surveillance technology was in its infancy.

“The new spend of $317 million on facilities at RAF Croughton is a shocking revelation. There can be no doubt now that communications activities there must be thoroughly reviewed, and arrangements governing the use of the base updated,” said Labour MP Tom Watson, a former Defense Minister.

According to a report in The Guardian last year, the UK government has no plans to change or update the legal basis of US bases in Britain.

“There is no requirement for an additional agreement regarding the use of RAF Croughton by the United States visiting forces, the Department [MoD] has no plans to review this arrangement nor review the activities undertaken by the US at the base,” an unnamed government minister told the paper.

On Saturday, the MoD again insisted, when asked by The Independent, that under “no circumstances” could bases “made available to the US be used operationally without the agreement of Her Majesty’s Government.”

But Lindis Percy, coordinator of the Campaign for the Accountability of American Airbases, said there needs to be debate in the UK parliament on the issue.

“This massive new development at Croughton is clearly of great importance to the American military and government, but what say has the British Parliament or the Ministry of Defence had?” she said.

The weak regulation of US bases in the UK has led some commentators to compare Britain to George Orwell’s description of the UK in his novel, 1984, as “Airstrip One”, subservient to a US-led super-state.

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