LIST OF SITES

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The Atomic Weapons Establishment (AWE) is a United Kingdom Ministry of Defence research facility responsible for the design, manufacture and support of warheads for the UK's nuclear weapons. It is the successor to the Atomic Weapons Research Establishment (AWRE) with its main site on the former RAF Aldermaston and has major facilities at Burghfield, Blacknest and RNAD Coulport.

Royal Air Force Brize Norton or RAF Brize Norton (IATA: BZZ, ICAO: EGVN) in Oxfordshire, about 75 mi (121 km) west north-west of London, is the largest station of the Royal Air Force.

It is close to the village of Brize Norton, and the towns of Carterton and Witney.

We have two main locations in Berkshire, less than ten miles apart: Aldermaston and Burghfield. 

It’s from here, and from additional facilities at Blacknest and Coulport, that we carry out research and production work on behalf of the MOD supporting the defence and security of the nation. We have around 6,000 employees working across our sites.  

AWE Aldermaston covers a site of approximately 750 acres. Once a wartime airfield, today Aldermaston is a centre of excellence, housing advanced research, design and manufacturing facilities. 

A former munitions factory, AWE Burghfield is a 225-acre site where warheads are assembled and maintained while in service, and decommissioned when out of service.

His Majesty's Naval Base, Clyde (HMNB Clyde; also HMS Neptune), primarily sited at Faslane on the Gare Loch, is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Devonport and HMNB Portsmouth). 

It is the navy's headquarters in Scotland and is best known as the home of Britain's nuclear weapons, in the form of nuclear submarines armed with Trident missiles.

Royal Naval Armaments Depot Coulport, shortened to RNAD Coulport, on Loch Long in Argyll, Scotland, is the storage and loading facility for the nuclear warheads of the United Kingdom's Trident programme.  

The base, near the village of Coulport, has up to 16 reinforced concrete bunkers built into the hillside on the eastern shore of Loch Long.

It is the last depot in Britain to retain the "RNAD" designation, indicating a Royal Naval Armaments Depot.  The depot was established during the Cold War as the storage, maintenance and loading facility for Polaris nuclear weapons. 

Today, Coulport is mainly used for handling Trident warheads. 

Two docks are located on the shoreline at the foot of the hill. 

There, weapons are loaded onto Vanguard-class nuclear submarines before they go on patrol and unloaded before they return to base at nearby Faslane. 

An older jetty is known as the Polaris Jetty, while the newer, covered Explosive Handling Jetty (EHJ) is used for handling Trident warheads.

Royal Air Force Croughton or more simply RAF Croughton is a Royal Air Force station which is currently a United States Air Force communications station in Northamptonshire, England. It is southeast of the village of Croughton. 

The station is home to the 422nd Air Base Group and operates one of Europe's largest military switchboards and processes approximately a third of all U.S. military communications in Europe.

His Majesty's Naval Base, Devonport (HMNB Devonport) is one of three operating bases in the United Kingdom for the Royal Navy (the others being HMNB Clyde and HMNB Portsmouth) and is the sole nuclear repair and refuelling facility for the Royal Navy. 

The largest naval base in Western Europe, HMNB Devonport is located in Devonport, in the west of the city of Plymouth, England. 

The base began as a Royal Navy Dockyard in the late 17th century, designed and built on open ground by Edmund Dummer as an integrated facility for the repair and maintenance of warships, centred on his pioneering stone dry dock (one of the earliest stepped docks in the world).

Over the next two centuries it expanded, reaching its present extent in the 20th century.

Historically, the yard was also used for shipbuilding: over 300 naval vessels were built there, the last being HMS Scylla (launched in 1968).[4]  

The yard was known as HM Dockyard, Plymouth until 1843, when it was renamed HM Dockyard, Devonport. (In the late 20th century, here as elsewhere, the term 'Naval Base' replaced 'Dockyard' in the official naval designation.)

Today HMNB Devonport serves as the home port of the Devonport Flotilla. FOST, the training hub of the front-line Fleet, is also based there, as is the Royal Navy's Amphibious Centre of Excellence (at RM Tamar).

Although shipbuilding ceased at Devonport in the late 1960s, ship repair and maintenance work has continued; the now privatised maintenance facilities are operated under the name Devonport Royal Dockyard by Babcock International Group, who took over the previous owner Devonport Management Limited (DML) in 2007 (DML had been running the Dockyard since privatisation in 1987).

Babcock owns around a third of the overall area of the base (having been sold the freehold in 2011).

Accommodation and support services are provided within the base for naval personnel. 

The Royal Naval Barracks, dating from 1889, were first commissioned as HMS Vivid, before being renamed HMS Drake in 1934. Since the early 21st century the name HMS Drake (and its command structure) has been extended to cover the entire Naval Base, while HMS Vivid is Plymouth's Royal Naval Reserve unit (which has its headquarters within the base).

Royal Air Force Fairford or more simply RAF Fairford (IATA: FFD, ICAO: EGVA) is a Royal Air Force (RAF) station in Gloucestershire, United Kingdom. 

While being an RAF station, Fairford hosts United States Air Force personnel. Since 2019, the base has played host to a Lockheed U-2S Dragon Lady detachment from the 99th Expeditionary Reconnaissance Squadron.

It is the USAF's only European airfield for heavy bombers and routinely supports Bomber Task Force (BTF) operations.

Its most prominent use in recent years has been as an airfield for United States Air Force B-52s during the 2003 Iraq War, Operation Allied Force in 1999, and the first Gulf War in 1991. 

RAF Fairford was the only TransOceanic Abort Landing site for NASA's Space Shuttle in the UK. 

As well as having a sufficiently long runway for a shuttle landing (the runway is 3,045 m (9,990 ft) long), it also had NASA-trained fire and medical crews stationed on the airfield.

The runway is rated with an unrestricted load-bearing capacity, meaning that it can support any aircraft with any type of load. 

RAF Fairford is also the home of the Royal International Air Tattoo (RIAT), an annual air display. RIAT is one of the largest airshows in the world, with the 2003 show recognised by Guinness World Records as the largest military airshow ever, with an attendance of 535 aircraft.

Royal Air Force Feltwell or more simply RAF Feltwell is a Royal Air Force station in Norfolk, East Anglia that is used by the United States Air Forces in Europe – Air Forces Africa.

The station is located about 10 miles west of Thetford, and is in the borough of King's Lynn and West Norfolk at approximate Ordnance Survey grid reference TL 715 900. 

A former Second World War bomber station, the airfield is used as a housing estate for United States Air Force personnel stationed nearby at RAF Mildenhall.

Royal Air Force Fylingdales or more simply RAF Fylingdales is a Royal Air Force station on Snod Hill in the North York Moors, England. Its motto is Vigilamus ("We are watching")

It is a radar base and is also part of the Ballistic Missile Early Warning System (BMEWS). As part of intelligence-sharing arrangements between the United States and United Kingdom (see, for example, the UKUSA Agreement), data collected at RAF Fylingdales are shared between the two countries. 

Its primary purpose is to give the British and US governments warning of an impending ballistic missile attack (part of the so-called four minute warning during the Cold War). 

A secondary role is the detection and tracking of orbiting objects; Fylingdales is part of the United States Space Surveillance Network.

As well as its early-warning and space-tracking roles, Fylingdales has a third function – the Satellite Warning Service for the UK. It keeps track of spy satellites used by other countries, so that secret activities in the UK can be carried out when they are not overhead. 

The armed services, defence manufacturers and research organisations, including universities, take advantage of this facility.

Royal Air Force Lakenheath or RAF Lakenheath (IATA: LKZ, ICAO: EGUL) is a Royal Air Force station near the village of Lakenheath in Suffolk, England, UK, 4.7 miles (7.6 km) north-east of Mildenhall and 8.3 miles (13.4 km) west of Thetford. 

The base also sits close to Brandon. 

Despite being an RAF station, Lakenheath currently only hosts United States Air Force (USAF) units and personnel. 

The host wing is the 48th Fighter Wing (48 FW), also known as the Liberty Wing, assigned to United States Air Forces in Europe - Air Forces Africa (USAFE-AFAFRICA). 

The wing operates the F-15E Strike Eagle and the F-35A Lightning II.

Royal Air Force Menwith Hill (RAF Menwith Hill) is a Royal Air Force station near Harrogate, North Yorkshire, England, which provides communications and intelligence support services to the United Kingdom and the United States.

The site contains an extensive satellite ground station and is a communications intercept and missile warning site.[1] It has been described as the largest electronic monitoring station in the world.

RAF Menwith Hill is owned by the Ministry of Defence (MoD), but made available to the US Department of Defense (DoD) under the NATO Status of Forces Agreement 1951 and other, undisclosed agreements between the US and British governments. 

His Majesty's Government (HMG) is entitled to possession of the site and retains control over its use and its facilities, though the administration of the base is the responsibility of the US authorities, with support provided by around 400 staff from Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), in addition to United States Air Force (USAF) and US National Security Agency (NSA) personnel. In 2014, the number of American personnel was reduced as part of a streamlining of operations due to improvements in technology.

The site acts as a ground station for a number of satellites operated by the US National Reconnaissance Office,[5] on behalf of the NSA, with antennas contained in numerous distinctive white radomes, locally referred to as "the golf balls", and is alleged to be an element of the ECHELON system.

The site is one of three main sites operated by the United States across the globe as a major satellite monitoring station and intelligence gathering location. 

The other two sites are located in America and Australia, having similar roles and working together with RAF Menwith Hill to develop knowledge around American, British and Australian interests. The Australian site is known as the Joint Defence Facility Pine Gap.

Royal Air Force Mildenhall or more simply RAF Mildenhall (IATA: MHZ, ICAO: EGUN) is a Royal Air Force station located near Mildenhall in Suffolk, England. 

Despite its status as a Royal Air Force station, it primarily supports United States Air Force (USAF) operations, and is currently the home of the 100th Air Refueling Wing (100 ARW).  During the Second World War, RAF Bomber Command used the station for operational combat missions until 1945. Placed on standby status after the war, it was reopened by the Royal Air Force and became a USAF-RAF joint operation base on 11 July 1950.

It was assigned to Strategic Air Command (SAC), and began hosting B-50 Superfortresses in 1951, and KC-97 Stratofreighters from 1953 until 1958. The Military Air Transport Service transferred its main United Kingdom terminal to Mildenhall in 1958. In the late 1970s and throughout the 1980s U-2 and SR-71 Blackbird operations took place from the base. 

On 8 January 2015, the United States Department of Defense announced that operations at RAF Mildenhall would end and be relocated to Germany (Spangdahlem Air Base) and elsewhere within the UK. After a period of uncertainty it was confirmed in July 2020 that the relocation of operations would no longer take place. RAF Mildenhall, together with its sister base RAF Lakenheath, have the largest United States Air Force presence in the United Kingdom.

Northwood Headquarters is a military headquarters facility of the British Armed Forces in Eastbury, Hertfordshire, England, adjacent to the London suburb of Northwood. 

It is home to the following military command and control functions: 

• Headquarters, Strategic Command, formerly Joint Forces Command
• Permanent Joint Headquarters Commander 
• Operations for the Royal Navy 
• NATO Allied Maritime Command

The headquarters is on the grounds of Eastbury Park. In 1938 the Royal Air Force took over the site for the use of RAF Coastal Command which made use of the Eastbury house and also created a network of underground bunkers and operations blocks.

The house was used as an Officers' Mess though it was subsequently damaged by fire.

Porton Down is a science and defence technology campus in Wiltshire, England, just north-east of the village of Porton, near Salisbury. 

It is home to two British government facilities: a site of the Ministry of Defence's Defence Science and Technology Laboratory – known for over 100 years as one of the UK's most secretive and controversial military research facilities, occupying 7,000 acres (2,800 ha)[1] – and a site of the UK Health Security Agency.

Since 2018, part of the campus has housed Porton Science Park, which is owned and operated by Wiltshire Council and has private sector companies in the health, life science and defence and security sectors.

Royal Air Force Molesworth or more simply RAF Molesworth is a Royal Air Force station located near Molesworth, Cambridgeshire, England with a history dating back to 1917. 

Its runway and flight line facilities were closed in 1973 and demolished.

New facilities were constructed to support ground-launched cruise missile operations in the early 1980s. 

It was one of the two British bases to house cruise missiles and a focus for protests.

It is now a non-flying facility under the control of the United States Air Force (USAF), and is one of two Royal Air Force (RAF) stations in Cambridgeshire currently used by the United States Air Forces in Europe (USAFE). 

Molesworth, RAF Alconbury and RAF Upwood were considered the "Tri-Base Area" due to their close geographic proximity and interdependency until RAF Upwood closed in late 2012.

RAF Alconbury and RAF Molesworth were the last Second World War era Eighth Air Force airfields in the United Kingdom that were still actively in use and controlled by the United States Air Force. 

It was from Molesworth on 4 July 1942 that the first USAAF Eighth Air Force mission was flown over Nazi-occupied territory. 

Today the base is home to the Joint Intelligence Operations Center Europe Analytic Center, and a number of units from the 423rd Air Base Group.

Royal Air Force Waddington otherwise known as RAF Waddington (IATA: WTN, ICAO: EGXW) is a Royal Air Force station located beside the village of Waddington, 4.2 miles (6.8 km) south of Lincoln, Lincolnshire, in England.  

The station is the RAF's Intelligence Surveillance Target Acquisition and Reconnaissance (ISTAR) hub and is home to a fleet of aircraft composed of the Shadow R1, RC-135W Rivet Joint and operating base for the RAF's MQ-9 Reaper.

Since October 2022, it has also been home to the RAF's Aerobatic Team the Red Arrows.