A US military plane at RAF Mildenhall base (Picture: Airwolfhound)
Since the Second World War the United States military has maintained a vast network of bases and personnel in Britain. It means Britain is stained with the blood of countless US assaults.
British complicity in the US’s recent attacks on Iran, with the US using British bases as launchpads for “defensive action”, has caused outrage within the anti-war movement.
The US military’s presence here is based on an agreement between then‑president Harry Truman and Winston Churchill, formally made in 1952.
Currently there are 12 official US Air Force (USAF) bases in Britain. But the true extent of the US’s military presence is unknown. Recent documentation from Donald Trump’s department of war suggests there are 22 US military sites in Britain. Other investigations have found more.
The British government refuses to tell the public how many US personnel are based here, or what these sites are doing. According to Keir Starmer, “The overall US force composition across its British footprint is a matter for the US.”
But armed forces minister Al Carns has said there are approximately 11,000 US officers stationed at these bases. Through the smoke and mirrors, the US military presence in Britain reveals Britain’s role as a junior partner to US imperialism.
The widespread, decades-long secrecy around US bases hasn’t stopped revelations of Britain’s participation in atrocities coming to light.
These bases also represent targets for anti-war protests. Take RAF Greenham Common, which was used by the USAF from 1951, including to develop nuclear cruise missiles.
In 1981 the Greenham Common Women’s Peace Camp was set up to protest the missiles. Tens of thousands of women blockaded the base. In 1991 the last of the cruise missiles was removed, with the Peace Camp contributing to this victory.
The Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) has long campaigned against US military sites. Anti-war activists pushing back against the US’s brutal imperialist wars should organise directly against the bases today. We should take the fight to their doorstep.
RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk was built in 1940. Since 1948 the base has been owned and operated by the USAF. Since the late 1950s, the 48th Tactical Fighter Wing of the USAF has been stationed there.
Lakenheath was central to the US president Ronald Reagan’s 1986 attacks on Libya. The US tried, and failed, to assassinate the Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi. As part of the attacks, it murdered 100 people in the bombing of the country’s capital, Tripoli.
The US was responding to Gaddafi closing US and British bases in Libya and partly nationalising oil and other industries.
Prime minister Margaret Thatcher said it was “a necessary and proportionate response” to let the USAF launch part of the attack from Britain. France and Spain had both refused to be complicit.
During the First Gulf War, fought from 1990-91 when a US-led coalition invaded Iraq, the USAF used Lakenheath as a launchpad for F-15E strike fighters.
The F-15Es flew 2,500 missions and dropped 7.3 million pounds of bombs. US-led forces indiscriminately murdered or injured hundreds of thousands of Iraqis.
In 2018, Lakenheath was used for the US bombing campaign in Syria. This saw over 2,000 missions, dropping over 500 bombs. The US campaign killed some 7,000 Syrians that year.
In October 2022, F-15Es from Lakenheath were used to bolster the US presence in Jordan, landing from England at the Muwaffaq Salti Air Base.
In the 12 Day War between Israel and Iran last June, Lakenheath was used to deploy F-22 Raptor planes to Iran.
Last month Starmer said he “does not believe in regime change from the skies”. But this hasn’t stopped Lakenheath being used in the ongoing war on Iran.
According to the Lakenheath Alliance for Peace group, over 100 planes have been tracked leaving the Suffolk base. Lakenheath is also a prime candidate to house future US nuclear weapons on British soil.
RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire has been in continuous use by the USAF since it was built in 1944 ahead of the D-Day bombings.
It currently boasts a 3,000 metre runway, the only one in Europe long enough to launch US heavy bombers.
B-52 bombers, the USAF’s longest‑serving heavy bombers, have been stationed at Fairford. These planes can carry up to 70,000 pounds of weapons at once.
In the First Gulf War, B-52s were launched from Fairford carrying 2,193 demolition M117 bombs, each weighing 340 kilograms. They also held 560 “general purpose” Mk-82 bombs.
In total, B-52s flew 1,714 missions and dropped at least 27 million kilograms of munition. They made up 30 percent of all munitions dropped during the Gulf War.
A pilot of a B-52 in this campaign described the bombings. They said it was “like turning on a light in a cockroach-infested apartment”. The bombers allowing the US to “squish” the Iraqi people “like bugs”.
B-52s were also used for twisted psychological warfare against the Iraqi people. They dropped thousands of leaflets in areas after bombing campaigns, taunting the victims that more bombs would be coming.
RAF Fairford also acts as a hub for US intelligence-gathering missions. It is suspected to have been used in the drone surveillance campaign over Gaza since October 2023.
Just last week a new fleet of B-52s arrived at Fairford to be used in the war on Iran.
The Menwith Hill RAF base in Harrogate, North Yorkshire, is a communications and intelligence base used by the USAF. The secretive site is the largest intelligence-gathering and surveillance base outside the US, covering 545 acres.
It is run by the National Security Agency (NSA) whose 1,000 personnel work with Britain’s Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) to spy on the world.
The intelligence agencies swap information between themselves, using satellites and fibre-optic undersea cables to monitor our phone calls and internet usage and mine our data.
Menwith Hill doesn’t just facilitate this surveillance. It is at the forefront of pioneering new surveillance and intelligence-gathering technologies.
Documents leaked between 2008 and 2018 show that Menwith Hill was vital to the US War on Terror. Since 2001 the base has been used to gather intelligence, spy on and target people in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia and Yemen.
From 2001 to 2016, the NSA tracked over 55 million people in Pakistan alone—only 0.18 percent of whom could be categorised as “terrorists”.
Information harvested through Menwith Hill has been used in “a significant number” of lethal targeted drone strikes. It was sifted from 300 million emails and phone calls. It has been used to kill at least 30 people labelled as Taliban members in Afghanistan, as well as strikes in Yemen that have resulted in dozens of civilian deaths.
In 2022, Lee Baker, a whistleblower and former US intelligence officer at Menwith Hill, accused Britain and the US of carrying out “deceitful” activities at the base.
Baker claimed that activity had “certainly been concealed from parliament, and thus your citizens”. Baker made clear the US’s control of these bases and Britain’s place as junior partner.
He said, “I am absolutely certain that not all of the American intelligence collection activities at Menwith Hill have been or ever will be fully shared with the British government.”
RAF Croughton, in Northamptonshire, is controlled by the USAF and is a vital base for US surveillance and intelligence‑gathering.
The base is linked directly to Menwith Hill and GCHQ. High speed fibre-optic cables link it to Camp Lemonnier, a US base in Djibouti in east Africa, from which it carries out drone attacks on Yemen and Somalia.
Reprieve, an organisation of lawyers and investigators who expose human rights abuses, has revealed Croughton’s action in documents submitted to parliament.
These show that Croughton provides “world-class combat support enabling communications and global strike operations”.
This includes drone strikes in Pakistan that were widely reported to see no difference between civilian and “terrorist” targets. One of these strikes on Pakistan killed 68 year-old Mamana Bibi.
In October 2012 she was picking vegetables in her family’s fields. Hit in a double strike from US planes, she was blown apart in front of her grandchildren. US drone strikes have ruthlessly killed around 4,900 people in Pakistan. Some 80 percent of those murdered have never even been identified.
Though it does not have a lot of fighter or bomber jets stationed there, Lakenheath’s sister base Mildenhall, also in Suffolk, is vital to the US military.
KC-135 refuelling planes are the most common on the base. These were the planes used to refuel the F-111s used in the bombing of Libya from Lakenheath in 1986.
Mildenhall is also home to a section of the Air Force Special Operations Command (AFSOC), a “specialised” operations unit of the USAF.
The secretive group is believed to have been active in Libya, Serbia, Iraq, Libya and Syria via Mildenhall. AFSOC was involved in the First Gulf War, aiding the bombing and psychological warfare.
Mildenhall is believed to have been used to transport armaments to Israel during the 2006 war on Lebanon. More recently Israeli planes have been refuelled at the base.
On top of this, vast surveillance and intelligence activity is carried out from the base.
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