Quote Originally Posted by greyhound View Post
An awful lot of IT issues for many institutions in the last few weeks.....? I blame global warming,because there's no way that our friends in the east would mess with us,Shirley
RAF Neatishead is just up the road from me which is now an RAF radar museum which houses, amongst other things, a Cold War ops room. Its only open certain days of the week and is run mostly by ex-servicemen who talk you through the exhibits. Obviously the museum attracts former RAF personnel and I was there once when one visitor was an ex-Lightning pilot who told us about the frequency of intercepts made on Soviet "Bear" aircraft during the Cold War and into the 1980s. Such overt actions may not be as regular now but threats to our underwater communications networks and increased cyber attacks are very much on the agenda. Some may view the recent spate of warnings from various European military experts as scare-mongering but, personally, I think we would be stupid not to acknowledge either the threat posed or the erosion of our military capabilities over recent decades.

For those visiting Norfolk who are interested in such things, I thoroughly recommend this small museum. The sheer - and very British!-"Heath Robinson" kind of technology/invention of many things strikes me so we get, in a 1980's ops room, a large display screen in front of banks of computers which plots aircraft (both military and civilian) that looks as if it should be digital but is, in fact, backwards written chinograph and photos of a WW2 era radar dish that is rotated, not mechanically, but by a man on a bicycle riding in a circle around its mounting (donkeys, presumably, not being available). The recreation of a WW2 plotting room and the explanation of how German bombers were tracked and interceptors from Fighter Command sent up is also worthwhile whereas the nuclear explosion observation point is downright scary (simply clamber up the steps from the bunker in your mask, open up the top cover and take a peek!).