The UK has launched a new Strategic Defence Review and within a week there is a political ‘scandal’ as Ministers fail to rule out scrapping the RAF’s next generation fighter aircraft known as Tempest. Cue outrage all round as Ministers refuse to commit to the programme, breathless commentary in the papers ranging from informed insight to articles by Lewis Page, and a general sense that we’re all in trouble. Clearly silly season is upon us again. For those unfamiliar with UK politics, the summer lull, usually late July to early September is a period when politics and government is paused ..read more

  The Royal Navy has a long and proud history of sending submarines to carry out highly sensitive missions in places they shouldn’t be, taking pictures of things they shouldn’t see, and listening to private conversations that weren’t intended to be overheard. For very good reasons the vast bulk of these operations remain sealed away, unlikely to ever be seen by the public. Yet occasionally, and for reasons which seem to make no rationale sense, the odd file emerges which casts a little bit of light into this dark and mysterious world. There are other Pinstripedline blogs on naval intellig ..read more

  The 2024 UK General Election has been held, and a new Government returned. For only the 4th time in 45 years, there has been a handover of power, on this occasion between the Conservative and Labour party. The new Prime Minister, Sir Keir Starmer MP had, within hours of his election victory assumed office in a peaceful and smooth transition of power, the sort of moment that makes you realise how truly fortunate the UK is to enjoy an election where the outcome is accepted without question or debate. Now that the Prime Minister is settled in No 10 Downing Street, the detailed business of ..read more

  The UK is currently in the middle of a general election campaign, in which political parties are seeking to form the next government. These parties put forward ideas to form the core of their manifesto, which set out the policies they intend to adopt if they were to form the government. It is the long-standing position of this blog that it is strictly non-political, and it will not take a view on any of the parties defence policies, nor advocate for one party at the expense of another. But this blog can, and will, provide factual analysis and assessment of underpinning numbers to provid ..read more

  The Thin Pinstripedline blog has now been running for around 12 ½ years. For the last seven years it has been published on an at least weekly basis, and now hosts 673 published articles, has had over 4.5-million-page hits and has roughly 1.5 million written words of content. That’s an awful lot of time and writing invested in what is, at its heart, my spare time hobby. The blog began back in 2012 as a means of providing objective factual analysis of defence issues, many of which were being covered poorly in the media. It was common to see stereotypical lines blaming Civil Servants or ou ..read more

  The decision to withdraw the RAF C130J from service far earlier than planned, in early 2023 is continuing to have an impact. In the UK on Sun 19 May, the media cycle has been leading on the news that the RAF will not have enough A400M transport aircraft available to support the planned D-Day commemoration parachute drop, with only a single airframe available from the four requested. This decision, which has, reportedly, seen a direct intervention by the Secretary of State to try to address, highlights the critical shortfall of tactical airlift in the RAF since the withdrawal of the C130 ..read more

The story of HMS CHALLENGER remains one of the most unusual of all post war Royal Navy vessels. Born in the late Cold War, she was in the eyes of the public a ‘white elephant’ commissioned and never operationally used and sold after just a few years’ service at the end of the Cold War. She was to the few public that had heard of her, ‘the Warship that never was’. But revealing files in the National Archives tell a story of a ship that was designed to fill a range of highly secretive intelligence support functions and clandestine espionage activity that, had she been successful, would have made ..read more

  The British Government has confirmed that it is expelling the Russian defence attache, reduce the length of diplomatic visa accreditation for diplomats and remove the diplomatic status of certain Russian Government sites in the UK. This is a significant move and one that reflects the deeply challenging state of Anglo-Russian relations. But why is it so significant and does it really matter? All governments who maintain diplomatic links with other nations will usually have a varied range of facilities at their disposal. There will be a main Embassy / High Commission building, potentially ..read more

  The National Archives in Kew is one of the world’s great repositories of information. Acting as the official archive for the British Government, its vast shelves and, literally miles, of storage containing information that in its day was often classified as TOP SECRET, but today is available for any member of the public to read. Kew is somewhere well worth a visit because it gives a chance to see papers handled by great political and military figures and hold them in your own hands, reading the files that tell the stories of how decisions were reached and policies enacted. It is also a ..read more

  At around 2pm on Monday 5th November 1984, at the Phoenix Wharf in Rainham, a small port on the river Thames, an MOD delivery van from the Admiralty Research department at Portland drove up to the Russian merchant ship ‘Ikaterina Belashova’, a freighter owned and operated by the Soviet State Shipping Lines. It was unloaded, and a large crate weighing 1.5tonnes was hoisted aboard. The bill of lading simply stated that the cargo was ‘One Crate, Navigation Buoy’ and was being shipped from the MOD in London to Archangel in the USSR. Shortly afterwards the Belashova slipped her moorings, and ..read more