Inside the top secret world of UK defence intelligence
Forces News reporter Sian Grzeszczyk was invited into the secret world of UK defence intelligence. This is what she found.
"It's the jewel in our crown. We call it the newsroom," one defence official proudly told us.
I was among a small group of the UK's defence correspondents and we were taking a closer look at the giant "floor plate" as they call it, a vast open plan windowless office with clusters of intelligence analysts busy at work.
We were in the Pathfinder building at RAF Wyton in Cambridgeshire, a site steeped in history, where the first sorties were flown just 90 minutes after WW2 was declared.
In 2024 it is a tri-service base and the Pathfinder building is the biggest defence intelligence centre in the UK.
After handing over our phones and laptops and agreeing not to name anyone we met to protect their identities, we were escorted through the main entrance, passing through the floor-to-ceiling security tube scanners and directed upstairs to what looked like a boring conference room.
Strangely we were told not to take a seat at the large conference table.
Some did, but they realised very quickly why we had been told to remain standing.
All of a sudden a button was pressed which revealed secret screens that transformed into large windows on a world hardly ever seen by anyone without top secret clearance.
Small red lights had been turned on across a series of pillars and walls down there. We were quick to ask what they were.
It was a warning to everyone hard at work that a bunch of journalists were not only in the building, but were watching them. Standard procedure when any visitors are around, we were told.
There was what looked like a real-time feed of a ship, but it was playing on a loop. The title of the video said the Port of Sudan.
Flags representing each of the single services were displayed, and outside the main building were the flags of the Five Eyes countries: the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand who also work alongside UK defence officials. These countries have shared intelligence since WW2.
We were told that any question on intelligence for defence comes here first. There was a mix of people wearing military uniforms and wearing plain clothes. Some 60% of staff here are military and 40% civilian.
Several hundred people work here. It is the biggest Five Eyes by design floorplate in the alliance.
There are day and night shifts where countries hand over to each other, enabling 24/7, 365 days a year intelligence cover.
Elsewhere we were taken to a hangar and beneath camo nets were shown a Russian Orlan 10 drone and a Shahed 131 Iranian drone used against the Ukrainians.
They revealed these are just two examples of weapons being analysed by defence experts in the UK to ascertain more about how they work. Both had been given to UK intelligence by the Ukrainians.
It is here at RAF Wyton that they collect, process and analyse intelligence.
For obvious reasons they are not an organisation that seeks the limelight, but their profile was elevated when they made the decision to start tweeting about the Russian invasion of Ukraine early in 2022.
The "newsroom" was a hive of activity in the run-up to Russia’s invasion.
For most of what they do success depends on maintaining the secrecy of their operations and capabilities. So why did they let us in?
They said they believe it is important to share what they can about who they are and how they go about their missions. The public, they feel, should have an appropriate understanding of this secret part of defence and what they do to help protect the nation.
They shared real-life examples of how they contribute to the UK’s national security. Many of those we met gave us examples of things they said they were proud of.
We met one operative whose work helped reveal an "arms for horses" deal done between Russia and North Korea which hit the headlines back in November 2022.
Thirty horses, specifically Orlov trotters, were sent via cargo train to North Korea after Pyongyang shipped Moscow artillery shells.
The operative spoke of his pride in working on the investigation and the significance of that intelligence that proved the intent of both nations in striking this deal.
A spotlight was shone on human intelligence, ie talking to people to gather a picture of what is happening and feeding it in to the wider picture after verifying its accuracy.
We met agent handlers who go out into the world to seek out information. One handler spoke of his involvement in stopping IED attacks in Afghanistan after intelligence he'd gathered through human intelligence.
We met experts who showed us their laser scanners and told us how they make 3D models of locations with millimetre precision, using two million lasers a second to collect digital points across coordinates to recreate an area.
They produced things like this in Salisbury after the Novichok attack to ensure that areas of contamination could be avoided, marking out safe routes for personnel working on the response.
Open source intelligence experts delivered a brief revealing how much information they have to analyse. I asked about how complex the verification process now was, given the advancements in technology and the ability to deep fake material.
Defence officials confirmed it is complex when dealing with open source material, but they are "holding their own" they said, when it comes to mainstream intelligence, reminding me that deception has always been par for the course.
Elements of the work we saw are used to help support the police with planning operations, looking into organised crime and investigating murders, a specific example being the assistance they provided in the search for murder victim Libby Squire and the hunt to find her body.
There was an emphasis on the importance of their work in the cyber and electromagnetic spheres, highlighting the significance of understanding these types of threats and enabling countermeasures.
They warned we must start preparing for a large-scale conflict which could be with Russia or others at some point in the future. They told us that the demands on defence intelligence are more complex and more varied in 2024 and that we are living in dangerous times.
China’s aspirations in quantum computing and their hypersonic missile capabilities were highlighted as was the work being undertaken by UK defence intelligence on how to produce things to counter those threats.
The vast majority of resources, they said, are focused on threats emanating from overseas which pose a threat to the UK.
And they recognise that they have their work cut out.
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