Target Britain | Cold War | American Military | Nuclear Deterrence | TV eye | 1980

This is a shortened version of the original report
If nuclear war breaks out between America and Russia, where are the missiles likely to fall first?
TV EYE’s investigation comes up with the disturbing answer, Britain
So large and so important is the American Military presence here, that the Russians could feel forced to attack these bases first.
The reporter, Bob Southgate, talks to Francis Pym, Secretary of State for Defense who stresses his opinion that both a British and American nuclear arsenal are vital to the defense of the West - and to stop nuclear war becoming a reality.
First shown: 30/10/1980
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Quote: VT23862

[@NitwitMN]

I was stationed at RAF Lakenheath ‘83 - ‘88. This report introduces the entire epoch magnificently 🎉

[@LaVictoireEstLaVie]

Wow ! So that is how journalism used to be like, critical and more or less objective.

[@AlanTaylorShearer]

This is why boomers are the way they are.

[@TheVidkid67]

@@AlanTaylorShearer Yep, that's exactly why older people are more honest and don't believe in molesting children, because they were brought up to know the difference between right and wrong and to tell the truth. Sadly these days honesty, facts and evidence are hate crimes, whereas lies, fantasy and fairy tales are the new truths.

[@Chilly_Billy]

​@AlanTaylorShearer You mean intelligent?

[@TheVidkid67]

@@Chilly_Billy We are. Gen Z believing men can get pregnant and women have a penis certainly isn't intelligent.

[@KKTR3]

So I spent ages looking for quality programming about nuclear war in the 80s And out of nowhere when I’m not even in the room look what appears brilliant👍

[@grahamfisher5436]

For the golden nugget.... about all this and everything else regarding the UK’S nuclear plans Google - Struggle for survival written by Steve Fox It will explain everything in this programme

[@Highland_Moo]

Machrihanish was used as a staging point for US Navy Seals and other special forces. I know this for a fact because members of Special Boat Unit 20 stayed with us back in the early 90s. Nice guys.

[@frankez99]

I worked nuclear weapons at RAF Lakenheath (WS3)……the amount of world ending firepower at that base was unreal.

[@grahamfisher5436]

And since the Ukraine conflict started It "is" once again

[@danielmarshall4587]

BLOODY HELL, the programs that were on "telly" all those years ago, thank you for posting this.

[@DBIVUK]

From 6:50, one of the first appearances of the intelligence station at RAF Croughton, which became tragically prominent in 2019 when Harry Dunn was killed.

[@SkySpokes]

when news was news

[@leechowning2712]

During the MAD era, news like this were actually used to tell our opponents that we were prepared and even slightly to warn them that we were able to fight back if an attack would happen.

[@grahamstevenson1740]

Mutually Assured Destruction actually WORKED of course. As it was intended to do.

[@mikemines2931]

Still is...

[@shawnakatrendyorca5506]

Loved this

[@janeporter818]

Interesting video

[@john07973]

The good old days 💪

[@larrydavid6852]

Some brutal honesty from the Admiral there.

[@thewatcherofstuff]

Just wish the Admiral could pronounce whatever country he was attempting to talk about 😵‍💫

[@adamfunk4519]

Watching for some form of hope .

[@angelrogo]

Thames TV did an excellent job of military intelligence for the thousands of Soviet spies in the UK in 1980. And I'm sure they are still doing it for Putin. I'm also sure a couple of days later after the program transmission, there was a VHS tape with the recording way road to the Kremlin.

[@indigohammer5732]

All of this, everything was publicly available. It was the Soviets who had "City number 6" or whatever, totally shrouded in secrecy

[@casinodelonge]

well, they must have been thousands of shit spies if they had to watch tv to do their jobs, now off you pop, your mum is calling you for your dinner.

[@dirk6001]

Belgium is a part of the NATO nuclear sharing arrangement. And I support it. Stronger together NATO for peace

[@Poorexampeofhuman]

I thought they probably would have been done scooping film out of the air before 1980 but maybe not

[@casinodelonge]

I did wonder.....

[@scottjoseph9578]

Well, LaRoque was wrong, I guess.

[@WarrenCromartie2]

They would never make an honest documentary about the wests' nuclear strategy these days.

[@seitengewehr98]

Nonsense. Western nuclear weapons doctrine is vastly more open than Russia and information regarding the PRC's nuclear employment doctrine is virtually non-existent. Just start looking up SIOP, OPLAN or NUWEP, or even just check out Sandia National Lab's youtube page for a start. I can tell you that the most significant changes in doctrine between then and now are the reduction in targets (obviously no longer needed in East Germany and elsewhere in the Warsaw Pact), and the employment of conventional means of striking at enemy strategic assets due to technological advancements in accuracy and effectiveness. There has also been added limited strike options for dealing with nations such as North Korea. Furthermore this was a VERY short, fairly one-sided program that hardly even begins to elaborate on the complexities of NATO nuclear weapons doctrine, weapons sharing (which, by the way, is requested by the host nations), and overall nuclear weapons strategy. Nor does it mention the existence of the numerous British nuclear weapons deployed alongside and in addition to US weapons. It paints a highly dubious picture of a UK that is forced to station US nuclear weapons and therefore become a target against its own wishes, which was then and is now very far from the truth. It ascribes limited access given to journalists with regards to sensitive operations as part of some nefarious scheme on behalf of the US as opposed to being part of standard OPSEC implemented by both the UK and the US.

[@seitengewehr98]

And I'm well aware no one is going to read what I just wrote.

[@user-yz4xo7ih6m]

The yanks will make us all play real life fallout save them bottlecaps

[@caezar55]

It's crazy the Brits accepted US nuclear weapons on their soil. Just makes them a target. Surely the ICBM's based in the US would be enough of a deterrent for the Soviets. Suits the Americans though if UK becomes the target instead.

[@magna4100]

So why haven't we been nuked?

[@jonnyjackson6050]

The trade off was access to American spy satellites and part of the NSAs computers etc. Important intelligence equipment and infrastructure that the UK couldn't afford to field.

[@CtrlOptDel]

We have our own nuclear weapons & thus are a likely target in any nuclear war regardless of whether or not there are any American nuclear weapons here. People like that Admiral should be mindful of Britain’s nuclear capabilities, as if America did “trade” London to prevent a Russian or Chinese attack on the US, it’s quite possible that any British missiles launched would be headed towards America, not whatever country attacked us, if we knew it was the US who actively threw us under the proverbial bus.

[@patrickscalia5088]

Well, there is a huge advantage to staging nuclear weapons as close to the potential enemy as possible. Less distance = faster arrival. Less time to prepare, reduced time for any potential countermeasures, etc. People in the USA who generally got used to the idea of a 25-30 minute lag time between warning of Soviet launch and actual arrival and detonation of those weapons might be a little shocked to learn that in the UK it was around 4 minutes _at best_ . In just about every possible way the UK would have suffered far more, proportionately, during a nuclear war than the USA would have. This specific aspect is shown to gut-wrenching chilling effect in the cold-war era BBC masterpiece _Threads_ . Anyone who has seen it will remember that scene when the staff in that underground emergency HQ were chattering back and forth, only to be silenced by the attack warning speaker blaring "attack warning red!" They suffered the concussion of the first detonation just a few short minutes later. Gut-wrenching and devastatingly true to life. Also note that for its given population Great Britain is far more densely populated for its area, both in civilian population as well as likely military targets that would draw a pattern of warheads upon them, than the USA. Any look at predicted target and fallout maps will tell you all you need to know: if you lived in the UK, unless you were in the far north or in the boonies of western Wales, you were far more likely than the average citizen of the USA to be incinerated, crushed to death by shock wave, or die horribly gagging on fallout. It's genuinely hard to see all that and think that the UK would continue to function as a country, or even continue to exist as a nation, should a full-scale war ever have broken out. Don't think that the rank-and-file citizens on Great Britain didn't fully know and loathe that fact during the era. That's as good an explanation as any for the disgruntled tone of many of these excellent UK-produced documentaries from the worst of the cold-war era. I'm not disputing the necessity of NATO and of the UK's necessary inclusion in it, nor the strategy behind it all that proved to be successful. I'm only pointing out that the average person in the UK was far more on the "front line" than any citizen in the USA. It must have been a grim time indeed for them.

[@casinodelonge]

@@patrickscalia5088 Sensible and balanced comment, no place in today's world sadly.

[@Red-Revolution708]

No need for ICBMS. Why can’t we all get along.

[@vasili1207]

We are building new ones ... sorry we need them

[@timg2088]

Because there will never be world peace until the end times. They've been trying to obtain world peace for thousands and thousands of years.

[@WarrenCromartie2]

Most people are c**ts. That's why. The remainder are either religious maniacs, or delusional paranoid, megalomaniacal narcissists.

[@Chilly_Billy]

Humanity has never gotten along. It started when Cain killed his brother, Abel.

[@patrickscalia5088]

Ask Putin you dumb putz.