US Withdraws B-1s From Fairford

The Pentagon confirms that all B-1 bombers deployed to RAF Fairford in the UK have returned to the US: "Due to operational security considerations, we could not confirm the aircraft's movement in real time; however, we can now confirm that all US bombers deployed to RAF Fairford in the UK have returned to their home bases in the US."

— Eli Afriat 🇮🇱 (@EliAfriatISR) October 4, 2026

As of yesterday,

The US has withdrawn all of its bomber jets from RAF Fairford after air force commanders received new reports of an Iran-backed plot against the base.

The Pentagon said all bombers deployed to the base, which US forces have used to strike Iran, have returned to the United States.

Counter-terror police are investigating whether Iran was behind a suspected plot to target the base on Sept 27.

The initial announcement was bare bones:

The need to move the bombers was so urgent that some of the planes were ordered into the air while refuelling aircraft were still being scrambled.

A Pentagon official told The Telegraph: "While operational security precluded us from confirming the movement of our assets and forces in real-time, we can acknowledge now that all US bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have re-deployed to their home stations in the United States."

Air & Space Forces Magazine provided more detail:

All 12 American bombers deployed in Britain rapidly returned to the U.S. on Oct. 4 following security concerns about a potential Iranian threat to their base in the U.K.

The dozen B-1B Lancer bombers, which were stationed at RAF Fairford amid ongoing hostilities with Iran, departed over the course of a day, local aircraft spotters said. The U.S. military later confirmed the unexpected departure of the aircraft.

“All U.S. bombers that were deployed to RAF Fairford have redeployed to their home stations in the United States,” the Pentagon and U.S. European Command said in statements to Air & Space Forces Magazine.

The U.S. military emphasized that bombers could still strike targets across the globe from the continental United States—something B-1B, B-2 Spirit, and B-52 Stratofortress bombers all did during the height of operations against Iran this spring.

“The Airmen that operate America’s bomber force, including B-1s, B-2s, and B-52s, remain ready to deliver precision global strike capabilities—including through operations that launch and recover from the continental United States—anywhere, anytime,” the statement read.

Still, stationing bombers at RAF Fairford sharply reduced the flight time U.S. bombers needed to strike targets in Iran. The open-source group Military Air Tracking Alliance recorded 29 separate bombers that deployed to RAF Fairford, located in southwest England, at different points during the conflict.

The departure of the last 12 bombers comes a week after arrests were made following a suspected plot against the base. Six people have been arrested in connection with the episode. U.K. Prime Minister Andy Burnham said there were “strong indications” that Iran was behind the threat.

. . . At the height of the deployment, which began in early March during Operation Epic Fury, the U.S. had around two dozen bombers deployed to RAF Fairford at a single time—some 18 B-1B and half a dozen B-52H bombers. Since the U.S. reached a shaky ceasefire with Iran in April, the bombers have mostly conducted training missions, and the B-52s left months ago. One B-1B that arrived just last week to replace another bomber was part of the exodus on Oct. 4.

The UK minimizes the issue:

Downing Street has insisted RAF Fairford is secure a day after the US air force suddenly withdrew a dozen B-1 bombers that had been stationed at the Gloucestershire base amid security concerns about a possible threat from Iran.

The prime minister’s official spokesperson, speaking during a scheduled briefing, said “yes” when asked if the military site was safe – contrasting with the concern showed by the US military during the hasty redeployment the day before.

Pointing to comments made last week by the defence secretary, Wes Streeting, the official said there were “tried and tested approaches to defend our bases around the country and throughout the world”, highlighting protection of the airbase.

. . . US officials told the New York Times that commanders had received new threats about an Iran-backed plot against the site. Some of the bombers left so quickly that refuelling aircraft had to be scrambled to support their flights to the US.

It's hard to avoid inferring that the US has received a new threat, beyond what was implicit in last week's episode with the van dudes, and thought the threat was serious enough to pull the B-1s out of harm's way. Comments on the news suggest the US has lost confidence in the UK's ability to handle the problem. On the other hand, this comes at a time when the US Air Force has been expanding and upgrading its UK operations. As of July,

The United States Air Force is about to pour $4.2 billion into its three main operating bases in the United Kingdom — the single largest American basing investment in Britain in decades. A presentation by the Air Force Installation and Mission Support Center, obtained by The Guardian, lays out sweeping upgrades to RAF Lakenheath, RAF Mildenhall, and RAF Fairford that will reshape America's military footprint on British soil for a generation.

The spending surge comes as U.S. forces in the UK are more operationally active than at any point since the Cold War. Lakenheath's fighters have deployed repeatedly to the Middle East for Operation Epic Fury, Fairford's bombers have flown daily combat sorties to Iran, and Mildenhall's special operations aircraft remain on permanent standby for contingencies across three continents.

The lion's share — $1.6 billion — goes to RAF Lakenheath in Suffolk, home of the 48th Fighter Wing and one of the most combat-experienced fighter units in the Air Force. The base currently operates two squadrons of F-15E Strike Eagles and two squadrons of F-35A Lightning IIs.

. . . RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire rounds out the trio with $500 million in planned upgrades. The base was placed in care-and-maintenance status in 2010 but has grown steadily more active since 2014, hosting near-annual rotations of B-52s, B-1Bs, and B-2 Spirits. In 2019 it became home to a permanent U-2 Dragon Lady detachment.

Whether the withdrawal of the B-1s from Fairford reflects a potential overall policy change toward UK bases is a complete unknown.

What Are The Cornell Seven Teaching Us About College?

This remarkably silly piece says parents are rethnking sending their kids to Cornell:

[I]n recent days, college counselors and admissions consultants have fielded frantic messages from shaken parents, questioning whether the university should remain on their campus tour lists. Would my daughter be safe? Is Greek life less entrenched at other colleges?

But sometimes they're asking: Will it actually be easier to get into Cornell this year?

. . . Cornell is a platinum brand institution with international standing, which -- like many of its highly selective peers -- can be shielded from its troubles by an elite school halo. It received more than 67,000 applications last year and admitted roughly 9%.

Among the Ivies, Cornell isn't all that selective. Brown's acceptance rate is more like 5%, Columbia 4%, Harvard 4% as well. Even Dartmouth, apparently the current title holder for Joke of the Ivy League, is 6%. Maybe they'll revisit this at some point. But let's check in on other higher ed news I've covered here.

Back in July, I noted that Brown had a cheating scandal:

This spring, after three decades of teaching at Brown, [Prof Robero] Serrano let his students take their midterm exam at home, upping the difficulty to compensate for the unlimited time. The average score, which had historically run between 65% and 80%, jumped to 96%.

Was that a particularly studious class? Maybe. But Serrano suspected a simpler explanation: AI.

He announced that the final would be given in person, causing 18 students to drop the class. Nine more didn't bother showing up for the exam.

The average score on the final was 48.6%.

Serrano shared the anonymized results of the 59 students who took both tests with Inside Higher Ed. A handful can be safely called honest. One scored 95.5% on the midterm and 95% on the final. Another went from 55% to 59%, the only student whose score actually improved.

Many more students fell from highs in the top percentile to failing grades. Two who submitted perfect midterm exams scored exactly 0% on the final.

I suspect a similar investigation at Cornell would bring equivalent results. An Ivy degree is going to be hit-or-miss if you ask how many Ivy students routinely cheat. Then there's the problem of Greek life, which we see nervous parents bringing up about Cornell. In August, I looked at the 2022 murders of four University of Idaho students at an off-campus residence.

[T]his residence was widely known as a "party house" and something of an eztension of the on-campus Greek scene. The door locks were combination-style; the combination was widely known and never changed. Outsiders were routinely in and out of the place, it simply wasn't secure.

The levels of blood alcohol in all four victims ranged from the precariously high, 0.282 g/100 mL, to 0.107 g/100 mL, which would be just a plain ol' DUI or maybe drunk and disorderly. Two of them also had amphetamines in their blood.The BACs of the eight students involved in the Cornell Seven affair were not recorded, but "Jane Doe" reported some passing out, with additional use of ketamine over a period of several hours. Just another day in paradise.

While some colleges and universities have striven to eliminate Greek organizations, this had little effect on student life. Georgetown, with a reputation roughly comparable to Cornell, eliminated fraternities in the 1950s, but Hunter Biden, who graduated in 1992, first developed his cocaine habit tbere and continued the alcohol abuse he'd started earlier. Unfortunately, religious affiliation generally doesn't make a uniiversity more safe. In fact, it occurred to me that all eight of the students involved in the Cornell Seven episode were, and still likely are, in Hunter Biden territory.

This reminds me of a remark my uncle, a corporate CEO, made. In a chat with my father, his brother, he mentioned one of his subordinates, who'd met my father. "What did you think of him?" my uncle asked.

"He seemed like sort of an ass-kisser," my father answered.

"Well," my uncle replied, "I run an ass-kisser factory."

In this case, the US higher education system is actually running a Hunter Biden factory, irrespective of Greek life or religious affiliation. Whether or not they have Greek houses, and whether or not students are members of Greek houses, underage alcohol and narcotics are freely available, in part because many students develop drinking and narcotics habits by their early teens, and what they find in college isn't new. Add to that an institutionally enabled culture of promiscuity:

Students in the sixties demanded that college administrators stop setting rules for fraternization. “We’re adults,” the students shouted. “We can manage our own lives. If we want to have members of the opposite sex in our rooms at any hour of the day or night, that’s our right.” The colleges meekly complied and opened a Pandora’s box of boorish, sluttish behavior that gets cruder each year.

At best -- and this has probably always been then case in higher ed; look at Evelyn Waugh's Brideshead Revisited for what life was like at Oxford in the 1920s -- kids of good character are dumped into a sea of kids of less-good character and have to struggle their way through as best they can. Why would we see anything good in such a situation? Why would we pressure a younger generation to sacrifice their childhood and adolescence to compete to get into such environments?

Just as one possible strategy, if trying to work out a solution for a child approaching college age, I might consider a commuter school, with the kid living at home, just as one possibility.

I Have Questions About The Latest Terrorist Attempts

The two terrorist attempts over the pasat week, that is, the Fairford vans with mostly empty cannisters and Flydubai flight FZ1073, were as best we can tell so far both badly bungled. Let's look at Fairford first.

Eight to ten dudes wearinbg black and in masks turn up after midnight in three vans in a rural village not far from the Fairford airbase. Most of the cannisters in the vans are empty, although one is full of gasoline. One of the dudes calls 999 on himself and the rest of the group, although police don't turn up for nearly an hour, and then only after a local resident has also called 999. At that point, they scatter in apparent panic, but five are caught.

What on earth did they think they were going to accomplish? Some UK commentators ventured the theory that it was some sort of "dry run", or maybe an attempt to see how the authorities would react, but the problem with the latter is that five of them got caught and have apparently been talking to authorities. This also tipped off authorities that something was up and blew operational security. My questions about this incident, as well as FZ1073, boil down to "Where have you gone, Osama bin Laden?" His operations were meticulously planned and rehearsed.

I asked Chrome AI mode, "How would Osama bin Laden have prepared for the Fairford raid in order to keep from getting caught?" It answered,

Had a historical Al-Qaeda operative from Bin Laden’s era planned a major operation against a high-security military installation like RAF Fairford, their doctrine—outlined in captured training manuals and intelligence files—relied on strict operational security to avoid detection.

To evade electronic surveillance from agencies like the NSA or GCHQ, Bin Laden strictly banned the use of cell phones, internet, and satellite communications among his inner circle, relying entirely on physical couriers.

Prior to major strikes (such as the 1998 embassy bombings or 9/11), operatives spent months or even years conducting passive surveillance on targets to map out security rotations, response times, and perimeter vulnerabilities without drawing attention.

It appears that actual strikes were also carefully rehearsed. So for starters, none of the van dudes would even have had a cell phone, much less called 999 on himself, and any surveillance on the base would have been carefully concealed. Eight to ten dummies in three vans running off in a panic wouldn't have happened if a real professional was running the op.

I have the same reaction to the co-pilot on Flydubai flight FZ1073, who attacked the pilot with the plane's crash axe while both were in the cockpit. There have been a number of suicides by members of the cockpit crew in recent decades in which they crash the plane and take out the passengers as collateral damage, although in most cases, these haven't been politically motivated, and whether suicide was actually involved has also been in dispute. The clearest example is Germanwings Flight 9525 on March 24, 2015:

The crash was deliberately caused by the first officer, Andreas Lubitz, who had previously been treated for suicidal tendencies and declared unfit to work by his doctor. Lubitz kept this information from his employer and instead reported for duty. Shortly after reaching cruise altitude and while the captain was out of the cockpit, Lubitz locked the cockpit door and set the plane to fly downward in a controlled descent into a mountain.

In this case, Lubitz planned things so he could avoid a struggle with the captain, which would have had an unpredictable outcome. Hamam al-Hammami, the Flydubai co-pilot, doesn't seem to have taken the possibility that the captain could resist him long enough to open the cockpit door into consideration. There's also the precedent of United Airlines Flight 93. Osama bin Laden appears to have reckoned that five hijackers would be necessary to seize a cockpit and keep the passengers under control on 9/11; for some reason, only four were on Flight 93, and the passengers were able to thwart that attempt.

Flight 93 appears to have entered some type of collective consciousness, and there was no way a single terrorist would be able to maintain control of both the cockpit and determined passengers, something Hammami doesn't seem to have thought through. The video embedded at the top of this post suggests that although Hammami was trying to disable the flight controls and shut down the engines during his attack, he was trying to fight the design of the 737, and he would have had to get every last thing right, which he didn't.

So we're left with the inescapable impression that a competent terrorist would have planned these incidents much more carefully and used better-trained and more reliable participants. In other words, both incidents were badly bungled by incompetent terrorists, which is something they both have in common. Were they both hired by incompetent masterminds?

Prime Minister Burnham has said Iran is behind the Fairford incident. President Trump so far has said Flight 1073 is linked to Iran "based on what I'm hearing," while Prime Minister Netanyahu is non-committal. All we can surmise is that if Iran is in fact behind both incidents, they can be motivated by nothing short of last-ditch desperation. Whoever is behind these incidents is definitely no bin Laden.

Almost Nobody Gets The Point About The Cornell Seven

The best overall discussion of tne "Cornell Seven" case is from Miranda Devine at the New York Post:

A young woman who goes by “Jane Doe” has filed a civil lawsuit two years after she alleged she was gang-raped by seven men in a sordid, drug-fueled sexual encounter at the Chi Phi fraternity house at the elite Cornell University, where she was a student at the time.

. . . Yet, according to Tompkins County District Attorney Matthew Van Houten, citing Doe’s sworn statement to campus investigators in November 2024, she “described her participation in drug use and sexual conduct as voluntary, conscious and consensual.” When she told the young men to stop, they did.

While describing the allegations as “heinous and despicable” and “morally disturbing,” he said they were not criminal.

He has been bombarded with threats and abuse since news of the lawsuit broke two weeks ago, and has now reopened the investigation, saying that her current lawsuit and her initial sworn statement, signed under threat of perjury three weeks after the 2024 encounter, tell very different stories.

The point isn't was she or wasn't she -- two years later, she's filing suit in civil court, where the standard isn't beyond reasonable doubt, it's the preponderance of the evidence, and she has a pretty good crack at getting a settlement, irrespective of what did or didn't take place. If it al works out, her name stays out of the news, and her ship comes in. Lotsa luck, especially the name stays out of the news part.

The question for me in this case is the perennial one: how come so many dummies get admitted to Ivy League schools? "Jane Doe" was one of them. From the Post link:

In her sworn statement, she admitted to willingly engaging in two threesomes during an hours-long encounter on Oct. 19, 2024, in which she consumed alcohol and ketamine of her own free will, describing her intoxication level when she arrived at the fraternity as a “5 out of 10.”

The first threesome ended prematurely when Male 1 passed out and Male 2 “began to dry-heave as if he was going to vomit.”

Male 3 arrived, and he and Male 2 engaged in a threesome with her while Male 1 slept.

Male 1 then woke up and asked for a foursome, to which she said “hell no,” and the men backed off.

She told police she had agreed to the threesome “due to how attracted [she] was to [Male Number 1] on top of [her] drunken curiousness.”

Four more men arrived in the room after Male 2 despicably announced on the fraternity Snapchat that there was “free p–sy” available.

Male 4 asked if they “all could do drugs off of [her] perfect body.” Jane Doe responded, “Sure.”

She recounted another threesome “until at some point, around 5:45 a.m., [Jane Doe] said [she] was tired and needed to turn in. At that point, both guys stopped the threesome.”

Males 1-4 were hardly smarter. Frat boys have been aware for generations of what can happen when parties get out of hand, that's the theme of Animal House. At least Otter, the smooth-talking rush chairman in the film, was able to wangle the bros out of some of their predicaments, but it doesn't appear that anyone at Cornell's Chi Phi was anywhere near even Otter's intelligence:

A Cornell University frat brother asked if the “shop [was] still open” in reference to the female student who was allegedly drugged and raped in an hourslong gang assault in their Ithaca house, according to sickening newly obtained messages.

The message was sent in a Snapchat group chain between members of the Phi Chi fraternity on the night the student, referred to in court papers only as “Jane Doe,” claimed she was plied with drugs and sexually assaulted by seven students in October 2024.

“Shop still open?” read the text, obtained by CBS New York.

Earlier in the chain of Snapchat messages, one of the New York frat brothers announced that there was “free p–sy” upstairs, in reference to the woman, around 1:42 a.m., according to the woman’s lawsuit, which was filed in Manhattan Supreme Court earlier this month.

“I f–king love Chi Phi,” one of the members responded, while another added, “Like you can walk in and whip it out,” the suit alleged.

One of the accused fraternity brothers then messaged the woman two days after the attack to apologize for “how things went down,” according to texts between the pair, CBS reported.

The young man, who was not identified, admitted that he should have “shut it down and kick[ed] people out before it got way out of hand,” a text said.

As far as I csan infer, everyone involved in the episode was at least 20 years old, and it seems to me they should have begun to acquire life skills like not putting this sort of thing into writing, or maybe, considering how stereotypically these stories turn out, not doing this stuff in the first place. I certainly recall from my own time at an Ivy that I had a pretty clear idea of what could get me thrown out of school, and I knew enough to avoid that sort of thing. These guys didn't.

At City Journal, Heather MacDonald talks about a campus rape industry that's been around at least since the 1980s. She comes a little closer than most to the real lesson of the episode by referring to

another discredited idea: college is for learning. The adults in charge have gone deaf to the siren call of beauty that for centuries lured people to the classics. But fighting male dominance or catering to the libidinal impulses released in the 1960s are sorry substitutes for the pursuit of knowledge. The campus rape and sex industries are signs of how hollow the university has become.

But I think it's more productive to return to the issue I keep raising: the hypocrisy in the college admissions rat race. The Ivies and comparable institutions acquire a reputation of being "selective", but as I keep discovering, fewer than 25% of entering classes at such prestige schools are selected via grades, SATS, and extracurriculars. The chances of legacies, preppies, athletes, and offspring of the rich and powerful are far better.

I'd love to see the admissions files for "Jane Doe" and Males 1-4. Cornell admitted roughly 9% of applicants to this year's entering class, but this averages out the wide differences among applicant "baskets". It seems fairly reasonable to surmise that kids who're trying to build an application package for an Ivy are going to spend a good part of their lives focused on study, SAT crammiong, and extracurriculars.

So how does it turn out that "Jane Doe" and Males 1-4 seem already by age 20 to have put themselves on the road to a very serious alcohol problem? You'd think that working toward an Ivy admission would have kept them on a more positive direction -- and you'd think that an Ivy admissions office would be intent on building a student body where positive character traits would predominate. Instead, we're seeing what we're seeing. If I were an Ivy president, I'd be asking the admissions office serious questions, but of course, that's a big reason I'm not an Ivy president.

The fact is that this is the sort of student body Cornell wants. At least 600 alumni vowed this week to halt donations until the university offers a full accounting of its handling of the case. They'll take that line only until they realize that if they stop their donations, their kids won't get into Cornell.

Yet More Fairford

As of yesterday,

Andy Burnham has revealed there are “strong indications” Iran played a part in a major security incident at RAF Fairford.

The Prime Minister confirmed the incident remains the subject of an ongoing police investigation after five men were arrested on suspicion of preparing to carry out a terrorist attack.

Speaking to GB News Political Editor Christopher Hope at the Labour Party Conference in Liverpool, Mr Burnham said: “What I can say is that there are strong indications that Iran played a part in what happened over the weekend.

“It is, though, still an ongoing and very serious police investigation.

“So I hope you’ll understand that I don’t say more at this point, but I wanted to confirm what we can say.

“This will continue now. It’s obviously a very serious investigation involving our colleagues in the United States, and we are working very closely with them.”

He added: “I will say more when I can. Obviously, I’ve been dealing with this while I’ve been here in Liverpool.

“We have held a Cobra meeting here during the week. We are completely on top of things, but we will say more when we can.”

I strongly suspect that these remarks were the result of pressure from Washington over and above Trump's public reaction to the suspects being released on bail: "I will tell you, I would have said, 'Don't let them have bail.' I'm surprised that they released them. I wouldn't have done that." Burnham's remarks also went farther than Secretary Rubio's Monday statement that the incident "clearly involves the hand of a foreign actor".

Let's recall that as of Tuesday, the pro-Labour UK Independent was insisting that Trump couldn't be trusted with intelligence:

Marco Rubio is “disturbed” and Donald Trump “surprised” that five suspects in what the US president and his secretary of state continue to insist was a suspected terror plot have been released on police bail.

Despite a recent charm offensive by Andy Burnham, America’s leaders will be among the last to know genuine secrets held by British intelligence because Britain’s intelligence services do not trust the White House not to leak.

Burnham's line is now that this is actually very serious, and we're working closely with the US. Benjamin Netanyahu has also weighed in:

Benjamin Netanyahu claimed Israel had warned the UK about an “Iranian-sponsored attack” ahead of the incident at RAF Fairford.

Asked about the “recent scare in Britain”, Mr Netanyahu told US broadcaster Fox News the situation was “wild” and “absurd”.

The prime minister of Israel added: “You talked about the thing in Britain. Do you want to hear how absurd things are there? And how far the anti-Israeli propaganda has gone?

“We gave the Brits the intel, that there was going to be an attack, and it’s an Iranian-sponsored attack, and pretty much the next day they slap sanctions on us.

“It’s wild, the caving in, the collapse before the Islamist-Marxist alliance is very dangerous for the future of the West.”

. . . The announcement of the sanctions last month, in response to the expansion of Israeli settlements in the occupied West Bank, sparked a diplomatic row between the Israeli and UK governments.

It's beem hard for me to avoid thinking the Fairford incident is a very delicate issue for Burnham and Labour, given the likelihood that an Islamist power was involved. It's worth reiterating that then-UK Prime Minister Starmer initially refused to allow US access to Fairford, likely to appease UK Muslims:

British Prime Minister Keir Starmer has blocked a request from US President Donald Trump to allow US forces to use UK air bases during any preemptive attack on Iran, saying it could break international law, according to multiple reports in British media citing government sources.

According to The Times of London, which first reported the split over airbase access, Starmer has denied the use of RAF Fairford in England and Diego Garcia – the British overseas territory in the Indian Ocean – for any strike on Iran.

The two bases have long served as crucial overseas US military staging posts for operations far from home, with Diego Garcia a key airfield for the US’ heavy bomber fleet.

It took Starmer more than a week to reverse his position, after which Trump publicly characterized Starmer as "unhelpful" and "no Winston Churchill". I think it's reasonable to surmise that what was ssid behind the scenes was both stronger and more convincing, and I also suspect that equivalent pressure was placed on Burnham go get with the program.

So far, Trump has been able to get what he's needed from the UK, but Starmer and now Burnham have had to choose whether they'd rather look weaker to Trump than to the Muslims in the UK.

More On The Fairford Incident

The biggest thing we've seen in the wake of the RAF Fairford incident has been confusion, and at least from the UK, a deliberate attempt to minimize what happened, although perhaps characteristically from the UK, there's also a great deal of bumbling on all sides. For instance, from the Guardian:

One of the five men arrested near RAF Fairford as part of a terror investigation that prompted fears of an Iran-backed plot called the police to report the incident, it has emerged.

The call from the man, in his 20s and from London, was one reason armed police were scrambled to arrest the men, who were with three vans close to the military base used by the US in its attacks on Iran.

In the YouTube video embedded above, Major General Chip Chapman, a former head of counter-terrorism, says it's possible that the actor recruited proxy dummies who were told

to go to X location, and this guy said, "where are we?" you know, "RAF Fairford," "What's in the back?" "a bomb," . . . and he thought that was too much. This is psychologically what we call prisoner's dilemma, where you can get a defection and not everyone stays loyal.

Nevertheless, the timeline doesn't add up. The claim from the BBC is that one of the van dudes called 999 at 12:45 AM, but he farmer who called 999 at 1:36 AM, nearly an hour later, said there was no response from police until after her call. In addition, the farmer said the "MoD number" she called before she finally dialed 999 had been given to local residents specifically to report unusual activity around the base 24/7, but it wasn't picked up. In addition, the Guardian link says this of what was in one of the vans:

The Guardian understands that police first on the scene found several barrels in the vans, one of which contained petrol, while the others were empty.

Nevertheless, legacy media in both the US and UK misrepresented this to claim, as NBC did,

No explosives were found in vehicles searched after five men were arrested in connection with a huge security operation near an air base the U.S. Air Force uses to facilitate strikes on Iran, British counterterrorism police confirmed Tuesday.

In an update explaining Monday’s decision to release all five suspects who were arrested on terrorism and explosives charges on bail, Laurence Taylor, Britain’s head of counterterrorism policing, said “a quantity” of gasoline was recovered from three vans near RAF Fairford.

“Those vehicles have been subject to extensive examination, with the support of military assets and forensic experts, and we can confirm that no improvised explosive devices were found,” he said, adding that investigators had searched properties in London.

The "empty" barrels must have contained something, and we may assume that this would be easy enough for law enforcement to determine. What was it, and what happened to it? Another question is why the village was evacuated from Sunday morning to apparently Tuesday. Again, via The Guardian,

Eighty-five households were forced to decamp to a leisure centre on Sunday as the bomb squad and counter-terror police descended on the village of Whelford, where the men were arrested.

Some of the evacuated residents were able to stay with families, about 60 people received support from a Cotswold district council rest centre in Cirencester and 28 people were accommodated overnight in hotels.

Not mentioned in the link, however, is the criticism from the Whelford farmer that although there was intense law enforcement activity immediately after her 1:36 AM call, the village wasn't evacuated until 6:00 AM, while residents weren't allowed to return until Tuesday. Newsweek raised other questions about the investigation:

The three white vans the farmer described have also been the subject of speculation.

. . . "Those vehicles have been subject to extensive examination, with the support of military assets and forensic experts, and we can confirm that no improvised explosive devices were found," [ Assistant Commissioner Laurence] Taylor said in the updated press release Tuesday, adding that "a quantity of petrol was recovered."

But who owns the vans? Who painted the phony FUEL2YOU sign on one of them? Also from Newsweek:

Local politicians have expressed concern about the messaging around the investigation, and residents and analysts have claimed the site was already on high alert before Sunday's arrests.

. . . [Flashpoint security expert Kathryn] Raines also said that the base appears to have been on high alert before the arrests, with open-source accounts reporting that Fairford had moved to FPCON Delta, the highest U.S. military Force Protection condition, at 8:45 p.m. on Friday.

Trump's comments on Sunday that the suspects had been "under view" for some time suggested cooperation between the U.K. and the U.S., and that their capture was the culmination of an ongoing operation between the countries.

This clashes with the official Counter Terrorism Policing account that the incident began when a member of the public alerted authorities to suspicious vehicles. The farmer's account also points toward a chance encounter with the suspects as key to raising the alarm.

Taylor did not specify the men were already under surveillance.

Elsewhere in the Newsweek piece, another UK source notes,

Meanwhile, Chris Phillips, former head of the U.K.'s National Counter Terrorism Security Office, told Newsweek on Monday that it was unlikely that British police would have allowed a group to put together a bomb and take it to the site.

"I think it's unlikely they were under tight surveillance," Phillips said.

So there are lots of unknowns, and a certain amount of conflict, in the official story as we get it, but despite UK attempts to discredit Trump's and Rubio's versions, my money is still on what they've said.

The UK Fairford Airbase Incident

The wildly divergent stories surrrounding the UK Fairford Airbase incident, in which five UK nationals were "detained" near the Fairford airbase in the UK on charges related to explosives and terroriism and subsequently released on bail, raise real questions for me on whether the press freedoms we've assumed were largely equivalent in the UK to those in the US actually exist. Here's the initial version we heard on Sunday:

British police arrested five men on suspicion of explosives and terrorism offences on Sunday near an air base that has been used by the US to ​strike Iran, after a tip-off that three vans had been seen heading to the military airfield.

US President Donald Trump said the suspects had been looking to ‌do "big damage" and had been under investigation by British and US authorities.

British counterterrorism detectives leading the investigation said police had received a call about three suspicious vehicles that appeared to be travelling towards RAF Fairford in the west of England in the early hours of Sunday.

Five men were arrested by armed officers and later held on suspicion of preparation of a terrorist act. Police, who said they believed the incident was now contained, have ​not yet publicly stated who they assessed was involved.

But soon enough, it emerged that police responded to the scene only because a local woman returning with her husband from a party found the suspects and three vans blocking the road to their farm:

The farmer who told police about the suspected RAF Fairford terror plot has claimed she saw up to 10 masked people by the base - as police said five men arrested will be bailed.The woman, in her 50s, from Whelford, alerted police after seeing three vans blocking a road near the base, which has been used by the US to bomb missile sites in Iran, while on her way back from a party.Five British nationals were then arrested in the early hours of Sunday morning on suspicion of explosives offences and later terrorism. The farmer who dialled 999 has now claimed there were "definitely more than five", and estimated she saw between eight and 10 people with their faces covered and wearing "slim-fitting clothes".

. . . One of the vans had some "strange sign writing on it" she said and initially she believed it was a vehicle belonging to undercover police.

She said: "We had a bit of a look at the vans, established there was no one in there, tried to phone the number on the side, just in case we could get it moved, so we could drive down to the farmyard, and the number didn't work."

.. . The farmer then said she tried to call the MoD police, but the phone "just rang and rang and rang, and no one answered", before she called 101 and was put on hold.She phoned 999 at 01:36am and messaged the village WhatsApp group to alert people to the unusual activity. "Literally within five minutes of that, everything sort of kicked off, and armed police arrived, the guys were arrested," she said."The helicopter was up searching, probably for a couple of hours and there was a lot of shouting." She added: "The strange thing is, there was no kind of follow up."The police didn't ring me, they had all my details, they didn’t phone me back, and nobody told anyone in the village what was going on apart from me. It wasn’t until probably half six in the morning when they suddenly decide to evacuate people."Meanwhile, those vans were right in the middle of the village, next to everyone’s houses and no one did anything."

As of this morning,

Secretary of State Marco Rubio confirmed that a recent thwarted terror plot near a United Kingdom military base used by the United States involved a "foreign actor," linking the incident to global threats from adversaries such as Iran.

"What happened, what almost happened, what could have happened in the U.K. over the weekend is a very serious situation," Rubio told Fox News' "Hannity" on Monday night. "It's one that clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor."

"I won't get into great detail about that yet."

. . . "I want to thank the U.K. for their cooperation and their help on it," he said. "There's a lot more news that will come out on this in the days to come. But there's only so much I can say right now at this point about it, other than this was a very serious thing, and it was responded to appropriately."

British police declared a major incident at the RAF Fairford base in western England following the arrests early Sunday, and the government held a national emergency meeting.

On the other hand, according to the UK Independent,

Marco Rubio is “disturbed” and Donald Trump “surprised” that five suspects in what the US president and his secretary of state continue to insist was a suspected terror plot have been released on police bail.

Despite a recent charm offensive by Andy Burnham, America’s leaders will be among the last to know genuine secrets held by British intelligence because Britain’s intelligence services do not trust the White House not to leak.

The Five Eyes arrangements in which the US, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and the UK share almost all the "product" of espionage still exist.

But the most sensitive stuff is kept out of the general circulation because the US president has a record of blurting “eyes only”, higher than “top secret” data to other nations – like Russia.

. . . On Fairford, it is clear that the US was briefed that there was, or could have been, a plot to attack the base. Security was ramped up at the site and even locals were told that something was afoot.

The US has a massive signal intelligence gathering system in the National Security Agency that may, along with Britain’s GCHQ, have picked up electronic traffic that suggested a plot. But any other information would have come from British intelligence operating in Britain.

American agencies do not, and are not allowed, to work in the UK.

Trump’s White House lives in a state of permanent delusion about how the world works. It bases its national security strategy on the great replacement theory – a racist lie that Europe is being overrun by Muslim immigrants.

The official UK position is unclear as of this morning:

[P]reiminary reports from the British Press Association and others suggested the materials in the vehicles were not viable explosives, but counterterrorism and explosives experts continued to examine the scene.

The head of UK Counter Terrorism Policing, Assistant Commissioner Laurence Taylor, acknowledged the "significant interest in whether the current geopolitical context has a bearing on this incident," and said investigators were considering "every possible angle."

One of these angles, he said, was the possibility "that this may be actively committed by proxies or individuals either knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state."

Taylor said that the men had been released under stringent conditions, and that granting them bail did not in any way signify an end to investigations against them.

Defense Secretary Wes Streeting said that decisions like granting bail were operational matters for police and prosecutors, not politicians.

Prime Minister Andy Burnham chaired a security meeting known as Cobra, after the secure Cabinet Office Briefing Room A that hosts such sessions, on Monday evening.

Certainly the position we're now hearing from within the UK is that maybe this isn't such a big deal after all, and Trump and Rubio are, as usual, "delusional". But why were three white vans with 8-10 masked guys dressed in black blocking a farm road near the airbase in the small hours Sunday morning? And one of the trucks was marked "FUEL2YOU", similar to a company called FUEL2U that delivers bulk fuel, but

https://t.co/AKgcwbom9y

— GeoInsider (@InsiderGeo) September 27, 2026

Nevertheless, as of yesterday, The Guardian was relieved that this was probably no big deal:

Investigators may be some way from determining exactly what led five men with three vans to a village just outside RAF Fairford in the small hours of Sunday – but the fact they have all been released on bail without immediate charge suggests they are not deemed to pose a serious and violent threat.

In a moment where wider geopolitical tensions mean external threats are perceived to be close, the question of whether Iran had a hand in the alleged plot remains open. Nonetheless, the bailing of the men is a mercifully lower-key development in an investigation that appeared of the utmost gravity.

Nigel Farage, the leader of Reform, had earlier insisted that the Fairford incident “proves my point on Iran” and argued that anybody arriving on small boats should not be allowed to move around in the UK. The latter point was an irrelevant argument, already weakened when police said at lunchtime that all five were UK nationals from London.

Though the five were arrested on suspicion of carrying explosives and involvement in a terror plot, after more than 24 hours of searches, nothing had been discovered that would prompt further police action – perhaps explaining why MI5 had no idea that the men and their vans would turn up a mile from the base with unclear intent.

British officials admitted on Sunday the arrests were not led by intelligence, but rather last-minute warnings on the ground. Counter-terror police said they were first aware of three vehicles travelling to the base at 12.45am on Sunday, while a local farmer phoned 999 at 1.36am after the vans blocked the entrance to her drive.

But whether or not those arrested were UK nationals, police are refusing to release their names. Any suggestion that Muslims, especially home-grown ones, coulld be involved in an anti-US plot could be extremely embarrassing to the government, and clearly the UK press is working to minimize potential damage. What we can say for now is:

• Secretary Rubio, not given to hyperbole, is saying with apparent confidence that a "foreign actor" is involved
• Three vans, one with a fictitious sign, and 8-10 masked men were encountered on a farm road near RAF Fairford early Sunday
• Sources suggest these were related to other activity known to US and/or UK intelligence.

That seems awful hinky to me, but UK legacy media is trying to downplay it, apparently with government connivance. We'll have to see what else comes out.