Royal Air Force
The Royal Air Force is the United Kingdom's aerial warfare force. Formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, it is the oldest independent air force in the world. Following victory over the Central Powers in 1918 the RAF emerged as, at the time, the largest air force in the world. Since its formation, the RAF has taken a significant role in British military history. In particular, it played a large part in the Second World War where it fought its most famous campaign, the Battle of Britain; the RAF's mission is to support the objectives of the British Ministry of Defence, which are to "provide the capabilities needed to ensure the security and defence of the United Kingdom and overseas territories, including against terrorism. The RAF describes its mission statement as "... an agile and capable Air Force that, person for person, is second to none, that makes a decisive air power contribution in support of the UK Defence Mission". The mission statement is supported by the RAF's definition of air power.
Air power is defined as "the ability to project power from the air and space to influence the behaviour of people or the course of events". Today the Royal Air Force maintains an operational fleet of various types of aircraft, described by the RAF as being "leading-edge" in terms of technology; this consists of fixed-wing aircraft, including: fighter and strike aircraft, airborne early warning and control aircraft, ISTAR and SIGINT aircraft, aerial refueling aircraft and strategic and tactical transport aircraft. The majority of the RAF's rotary-wing aircraft form part of the tri-service Joint Helicopter Command in support of ground forces. Most of the RAF's aircraft and personnel are based in the UK, with many others serving on operations or at long-established overseas bases. Although the RAF is the principal British air power arm, the Royal Navy's Fleet Air Arm and the British Army's Army Air Corps deliver air power, integrated into the maritime and land environments. While the British were not the first to make use of heavier-than-air military aircraft, the RAF is the world's oldest independent air force: that is, the first air force to become independent of army or navy control.
Following publication of the "Smuts report" prepared by Jan Smuts the RAF was founded on 1 April 1918, with headquarters located in the former Hotel Cecil, during the First World War, by the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and the Royal Naval Air Service. At that time it was the largest air force in the world. After the war, the service was drastically cut and its inter-war years were quiet, with the RAF taking responsibility for the control of Iraq and executing a number of minor actions in other parts of the British Empire; the RAF's naval aviation branch, the Fleet Air Arm, was founded in 1924 but handed over to Admiralty control on 24 May 1939. The RAF developed the doctrine of strategic bombing which led to the construction of long-range bombers and became its main bombing strategy in the Second World War; the RAF underwent rapid expansion prior to and during the Second World War. Under the British Commonwealth Air Training Plan of December 1939, the air forces of British Commonwealth countries trained and formed "Article XV squadrons" for service with RAF formations.
Many individual personnel from these countries, exiles from occupied Europe served with RAF squadrons. By the end of the war the Royal Canadian Air Force had contributed more than 30 squadrons to serve in RAF formations approximately a quarter of Bomber Command's personnel were Canadian. Additionally, the Royal Australian Air Force represented around nine percent of all RAF personnel who served in the European and Mediterranean theatres. In the Battle of Britain in 1940, the RAF defended the skies over Britain against the numerically superior German Luftwaffe. In what is the most prolonged and complicated air campaign in history, the Battle of Britain contributed to the delay and subsequent indefinite postponement of Hitler's plans for an invasion of the United Kingdom. In the House of Commons on 20 August, prompted by the ongoing efforts of the RAF, Prime Minister Winston Churchill eloquently made a speech to the nation, where he said "Never in the field of human conflict was so much owed by so many to so few".
The largest RAF effort during the war was the strategic bombing campaign against Germany by Bomber Command. While RAF bombing of Germany began immediately upon the outbreak of war, under the leadership of Air Chief Marshal Harris, these attacks became devastating from 1942 onward as new technology and greater numbers of superior aircraft became available; the RAF adopted night-time area bombing on German cities such as Hamburg and Dresden, developed precision bombing techniques for specific operations, such as the "Dambusters" raid by No. 617 Squadron, or the Amiens prison raid known as Operation Jericho. Following victory in the Second World War, the RAF underwent significant re-organisation, as technological advances in air warfare saw the arrival of jet fighters and bombers. During the early stages of the Cold War, one of the first major operations undertaken by the Royal Air Force was in 1948 and the Berlin Airlift, codenamed Operation Plainfire. Between 26 June and the lifting of the Russian blockade of the city on 2 May, the RAF provided 17% of the total supplies delivered du
RAF Oakington
Royal Air Force Oakington or more RAF Oakington was a Royal Air Force station located 0.5 miles north of Oakington, England and 5.1 miles north-west of Cambridge. Construction was affected by the outbreak of war; the original plan called for Type C hangars but two type J were erected instead. It was used by No. 2 Group in July 1940 for No. 218 Squadron which had returned from France. In September, Oakington was passed on for the No. 2 Group which stationed the first Short Stirling Squadron No. 7. The newly formed No. 3 Photographic Reconnaissance Unit RAF started to use RAF Oakington to conduct high altitude work for Bomber Command's target. However there were poor surface conditions at RAF Oakington so No. 3 PRU operated from RAF Alconbury. During the 1950s RAF Oakington was an Advanced Flying Training School, No. 5 Flying Training School RAF, which reformed at the airfield on 1 June 1954. Its initial role was to convert trainee pilots to jets using De Havilland Vampire T.5 single seat jets and Vampire T.11 twin-seat jets.
In March 1962 these types were exchanged for the Vickers Varsity T.1 twin piston-engine navigational trainers. 5 FTS was disbanded on 31 December 1974 when the need for training on piston engined aircraft reduced. The airfield was closed, becoming a British Army barracks; the airfield's land area had contracted after the war, much evidence of this former military use is visible in farmland surrounding the current perimeter. The barracks were used in the late 1970s and through the 1980s as a transit camp for units moving between Germany and Northern Ireland, it was a permanent base for 657 squadron Army Air Corps in the 1980s. The barracks were occupied by the Royal Highland Fusiliers from 1989 to 1993 and by the Cheshire Regiment from 1993 to 1996. In 2000 the station domestic area was leased to the Home Office, converted for use as Oakington Immigration Reception Centre until November 2010. Since 2007 plans have been developed to build Northstowe, a new settlement of 9,500 houses on the site.
Demolition of parts of the site commenced in late January 2011 by the contractor Sovereign Plant Ltd. Work started on the first 1500 homes and related facilities in 2014. Sturtivant, Hamlin and Halley, J. J. Royal Air Force Flying Training and Support Units, 1997, Air-Britain Ltd, ISBN 0-85130-252-1 Pictures of RAF aircraft taken at the base
Espionage
Espionage or spying is the act of obtaining secret or confidential information without the permission of the holder of the information. Spies help agencies uncover secret information. Any individual or spy ring, in the service of a government, company or independent operation, can commit espionage; the practice is clandestine, as it is by definition unwelcome and in many cases illegal and punishable by law. Espionage is a method of intelligence gathering which includes information gathering from public sources. Espionage is part of an institutional effort by a government or commercial concern. However, the term tends to be associated with state spying on potential or actual enemies for military purposes. Spying involving corporations is known as industrial espionage. One of the most effective ways to gather data and information about the enemy is by infiltrating the enemy's ranks; this is the job of the spy. Spies can return information concerning the strength of enemy forces, they can find dissidents within the enemy's forces and influence them to defect.
In times of crisis, spies sabotage the enemy in various ways. Counterintelligence is the practice of thwarting enemy intelligence-gathering. All nations have strict laws concerning espionage and the penalty for being caught is severe. However, the benefits gained through espionage are so great that most governments and many large corporations make use of it. Information collection techniques used in the conduct of clandestine human intelligence include operational techniques, asset recruiting, tradecraft. Today, espionage agencies target terrorists as well as state actors. Since 2008, the United States has charged at least 57 defendants for attempting to spy for China. Intelligence services value certain intelligence collection techniques over others; the former Soviet Union, for example, preferred human sources over research in open sources, while the United States has tended to emphasize technological methods such as SIGINT and IMINT. In the Soviet Union, both political and military intelligence officers were judged by the number of agents they recruited.
Espionage agents are trained experts in a targeted field so they can differentiate mundane information from targets of value to their own organizational development. Correct identification of the target at its execution is the sole purpose of the espionage operation. Broad areas of espionage targeting expertise include: Natural resources: strategic production identification and assessment. Agents are found among bureaucrats who administer these resources in their own countries Popular sentiment towards domestic and foreign policies. Agents recruited from field journalistic crews, exchange postgraduate students and sociology researchers Strategic economic strengths. Agents recruited from science and technology academia, commercial enterprises, more from among military technologists Military capability intelligence. Agents are trained by military espionage education facilities, posted to an area of operation with covert identities to minimize prosecution Counterintelligence operations targeting opponents' intelligence services themselves, such as breaching confidentiality of communications, recruiting defectors or moles Although the news media may speak of "spy satellites" and the like, espionage is not a synonym for all intelligence-gathering disciplines.
It is a specific form of human source intelligence. Codebreaking, aircraft or satellite photography, research in open publications are all intelligence gathering disciplines, but none of them is considered espionage. Many HUMINT activities, such as prisoner interrogation, reports from military reconnaissance patrols and from diplomats, etc. are not considered espionage. Espionage is the disclosure of sensitive information to people who are not cleared for that information or access to that sensitive information. Unlike other forms of intelligence collection disciplines, espionage involves accessing the place where the desired information is stored or accessing the people who know the information and will divulge it through some kind of subterfuge. There are exceptions to physical meetings, such as the Oslo Report, or the insistence of Robert Hanssen in never meeting the people who bought his information; the US defines espionage towards itself as "The act of obtaining, transmitting, communicating, or receiving information about the national defense with an intent, or reason to believe, that the information may be used to the injury of the United States or to the advantage of any foreign nation".
Black's Law Dictionary defines espionage as: "... gathering, transmitting, or losing... information related to the national defense". Espionage is a violation of United States law, 18 U. S. C. §§ 792–798 and Article 106a of the Uniform Code of Military Justice". The United States, like most nations, conducts espionage against other nations, under the control of the National Clandestine Service. Britain's espionage activities are controlled by the Secret Intelligence Service. A spy is a person employed to seek out top secret information from a source. Within the United States Intelligence Community, "asset" is a more common usage. A case officer or Special Agent, who may have diplomatic status and directs the human collector. Cutouts are couriers who do not know the case officer but transfer messages. A
Intelligence cycle management
Intelligence cycle management refers to the overall activity of guiding the intelligence cycle, a set of processes used to provide decision-useful information to leaders. The cycle consists of several processes, including planning and direction, collection and exploitation, analysis and production, dissemination and integration; the related field of counterintelligence is tasked with impeding the intelligence efforts of others. Intelligence organizations are not infallible but, when properly managed and tasked, can be among the most valuable tools of management and government; the principles of intelligence have been discussed and developed from the earliest writers on warfare to the most recent writers on technology. Despite the most powerful computers, the human mind remains at the core of intelligence, discerning patterns and extracting meaning from a flood of correct and sometimes deliberately misleading information. One study of analytic culture established the following "consensus" definitions: Intelligence is secret state or group activity to understand or influence foreign or domestic entities.
Intelligence analysis is the application of individual and collective cognitive methods to weigh data and test hypotheses within a secret socio-cultural context. Intelligence errors are factual inaccuracies in analysis resulting from poor or missing data. Intelligence failure is systemic organizational surprise resulting from incorrect, discarded, or inadequate hypotheses. One basic model of the intelligence process is called the "intelligence cycle"; this model can be applied and, like all basic models, it does not reflect the fullness of real-world operations. Intelligence is processed information; the activities of the intelligence cycle obtain and assemble information, convert it into intelligence and make it available to its users. The intelligence cycle comprises five phases: Planning and Direction: Deciding what is to be monitored and analyzed. In intelligence usage, the determination of intelligence requirements, development of appropriate intelligence architecture, preparation of a collection plan, issuance of orders and requests to information collection agencies.
Collection: Obtaining raw information using a variety of collection disciplines such as human intelligence, geospatial intelligence and others. Processing: Refining and analyzing the information Analysis and production: The data, processed is translated into a finished intelligence product, which includes integrating, collating and analyzing all the data. Dissemination: Providing the results of processing to consumers, including the use of intelligence information in net assessment and strategic gaming. A distinct intelligence officer is entrusted with managing each level of the process. In some organisations, such as the UK military, these phases are reduced to four, with the "analysis and production" being incorporated into the "processing" phase; these phases describe the minimum process of intelligence, but several other activities come into play. The output of the intelligence cycle, if accepted, drives operations, which, in turn, produces new material to enter another iteration of the intelligence cycle.
Consumers give the intelligence organization broad directions, the highest level sets budgets. Intelligence and Reconnaissance describes an activity that synchronizes and integrates the planning and operation of sensors and processing, dissemination systems in direct support of current and future operations; this is an integrated intelligence and operations function. Sensors collect data from the operational environment during the collection phase, converted into information during the processing and exploitation phase. During the analysis and production phase, the information is converted into intelligence; the planning and direction phase of the intelligence cycle includes four major steps: Identification and prioritization of intelligence requirements. The U. S. Joint Chiefs of Staff described planning & direction in 2013 as: "...the development of intelligence plans and the continuous management of their execution. Planning and direction activities include, but are not limited to: the identification and prioritization of intelligence requirements.
Leaders with specific objectives communicate their requirements for intelligence inputs to applicable agencies or contacts. An intelligence "consumer" might be an infantry officer who needs to know what is on the other side of the next hill, a head of government who wants to know the probability that a foreign leader will go to war over a certain point, a corporate executive who wants to know what his or her competitors are planning, or any person or organization. "Establishing the intelligence requirements of the policy-makers... is management of the entire intelligence cycle, f
United States
The United States of America known as the United States or America, is a country composed of 50 states, a federal district, five major self-governing territories, various possessions. At 3.8 million square miles, the United States is the world's third or fourth largest country by total area and is smaller than the entire continent of Europe's 3.9 million square miles. With a population of over 327 million people, the U. S. is the third most populous country. The capital is Washington, D. C. and the largest city by population is New York City. Forty-eight states and the capital's federal district are contiguous in North America between Canada and Mexico; the State of Alaska is in the northwest corner of North America, bordered by Canada to the east and across the Bering Strait from Russia to the west. The State of Hawaii is an archipelago in the mid-Pacific Ocean; the U. S. territories are scattered about the Pacific Ocean and the Caribbean Sea, stretching across nine official time zones. The diverse geography and wildlife of the United States make it one of the world's 17 megadiverse countries.
Paleo-Indians migrated from Siberia to the North American mainland at least 12,000 years ago. European colonization began in the 16th century; the United States emerged from the thirteen British colonies established along the East Coast. Numerous disputes between Great Britain and the colonies following the French and Indian War led to the American Revolution, which began in 1775, the subsequent Declaration of Independence in 1776; the war ended in 1783 with the United States becoming the first country to gain independence from a European power. The current constitution was adopted in 1788, with the first ten amendments, collectively named the Bill of Rights, being ratified in 1791 to guarantee many fundamental civil liberties; the United States embarked on a vigorous expansion across North America throughout the 19th century, acquiring new territories, displacing Native American tribes, admitting new states until it spanned the continent by 1848. During the second half of the 19th century, the Civil War led to the abolition of slavery.
By the end of the century, the United States had extended into the Pacific Ocean, its economy, driven in large part by the Industrial Revolution, began to soar. The Spanish–American War and World War I confirmed the country's status as a global military power; the United States emerged from World War II as a global superpower, the first country to develop nuclear weapons, the only country to use them in warfare, a permanent member of the United Nations Security Council. Sweeping civil rights legislation, notably the Civil Rights Act of 1964, the Voting Rights Act of 1965 and the Fair Housing Act of 1968, outlawed discrimination based on race or color. During the Cold War, the United States and the Soviet Union competed in the Space Race, culminating with the 1969 U. S. Moon landing; the end of the Cold War and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 left the United States as the world's sole superpower. The United States is the world's oldest surviving federation, it is a representative democracy.
The United States is a founding member of the United Nations, World Bank, International Monetary Fund, Organization of American States, other international organizations. The United States is a developed country, with the world's largest economy by nominal GDP and second-largest economy by PPP, accounting for a quarter of global GDP; the U. S. economy is post-industrial, characterized by the dominance of services and knowledge-based activities, although the manufacturing sector remains the second-largest in the world. The United States is the world's largest importer and the second largest exporter of goods, by value. Although its population is only 4.3% of the world total, the U. S. holds 31% of the total wealth in the world, the largest share of global wealth concentrated in a single country. Despite wide income and wealth disparities, the United States continues to rank high in measures of socioeconomic performance, including average wage, human development, per capita GDP, worker productivity.
The United States is the foremost military power in the world, making up a third of global military spending, is a leading political and scientific force internationally. In 1507, the German cartographer Martin Waldseemüller produced a world map on which he named the lands of the Western Hemisphere America in honor of the Italian explorer and cartographer Amerigo Vespucci; the first documentary evidence of the phrase "United States of America" is from a letter dated January 2, 1776, written by Stephen Moylan, Esq. to George Washington's aide-de-camp and Muster-Master General of the Continental Army, Lt. Col. Joseph Reed. Moylan expressed his wish to go "with full and ample powers from the United States of America to Spain" to seek assistance in the revolutionary war effort; the first known publication of the phrase "United States of America" was in an anonymous essay in The Virginia Gazette newspaper in Williamsburg, Virginia, on April 6, 1776. The second draft of the Articles of Confederation, prepared by John Dickinson and completed by June 17, 1776, at the latest, declared "The name of this Confederation shall be the'United States of America'".
The final version of the Articles sent to the states for ratification in late 1777 contains the sentence "The Stile of this Confederacy shall be'The United States of America'". In June 1776, Thomas Jefferson wrote the phrase "UNITED STATES OF AMERICA" in all capitalized letters in the headline of his "original Rough draught" of the Declaration of Independence; this draft of the document did not surface unti
Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior
The Lockheed Model 12 Electra Junior, more known as the Lockheed 12 or L-12, is an eight-seat, six-passenger all-metal twin-engine transport aircraft of the late 1930s designed for use by small airlines and wealthy private individuals. A smaller version of the Lockheed Model 10 Electra, the Lockheed 12 was not popular as an airliner but was used as a corporate and government transport. Several were used for testing new aviation technologies. After Lockheed had introduced its 10-passenger Model 10 Electra, the company decided to develop a smaller version which would be better suited as a "feeder airliner" or a corporate executive transport. At the same time, the U. S. Bureau of Air Commerce had sensed the need for a small feeder airliner and announced a design competition for one. In order for a candidate to qualify for the competition, a prototype had to fly by June 30, 1936. Lockheed based its candidate, which it named the Model 12 Electra Junior, around a smaller, improved version of the Electra airframe.
It would carry only six passengers and two pilots but would use the same 450 hp Pratt & Whitney R-985 Wasp Junior SB radial engines as the main Electra version, the 10A. This made it faster than the Electra, with a top speed of 225 mph at 5,000 ft. Like the Electra, the Model 12 had an all-metal structure, trailing-edge wing flaps, low-drag NACA engine cowlings, two-bladed controllable-pitch propellers, it had the Electra's twin tail fins and rudders, which were becoming a Lockheed trademark. The landing gear was a conventional tail-dragger arrangement, with the main wheels retracting backwards into the engine nacelles; as in the Electra and the Boeing 247, the Model 12's main wing spar passed through the passenger cabin. The cabin had a lavatory in the rear. Although the standard cabin layout was for six passengers, Lockheed offered roomier, more luxurious layouts for corporate or private owners; the new transport had its first flight on June 27, 1936, three days before the competition deadline, at 12:12 PM local time, a time deliberately chosen for the Model 12's number.
As it turned out, the other two competition entries, the Beechcraft Model 18 and the Barkley-Grow T8P-1, weren't ready in time for the deadline, so Lockheed won by default. The "Electra Junior" name did not catch on in the way. Most users referred to the aircraft by its model number, as the Lockheed 12; the original Lockheed 12 version, with Wasp Junior engines, was the Model 12A. Every Lockheed 12 built was a 12A or derived from the 12A. There was a Model 12B, using 440 hp Wright R-975-E3 Whirlwind radials, but only two of this model were built. Although Lockheed had announced a Model 12F, powered by Wright R-760 Whirlwind seven-cylinder radials, a Model 12M, powered by 290 hp Menasco six-cylinder inline engines, neither of these versions reached production. Though the Lockheed 12 had won the government's feeder airliner competition, the airlines rejected it, few Lockheed 12s were used as airliners. One notable airline user was the newly renamed Continental Air Lines, which had a fleet of three Lockheed 12s that ran on its route between Denver, Colorado and El Paso, Texas in the late 1930s.
Another was British West Indian Airways Ltd. which flew the Lockheed 12 on Caribbean routes in the Lesser Antilles during the mid-1940s. The Lockheed 12 proved much more popular as a transport for company executives or government officials. Oil and steel companies were among the major users. A number were purchased as military staff transports by the United States Army Air Corps, which designated the type as the C-40, by the United States Navy, which used the designation JO, or in one peculiar case, R3O-2. With the arrival of World War II, many civilian Lockheed 12s were requisitioned by the U. S. Army and Navy, Britain's Royal Air Force, the Royal Canadian Air Force. Two civil Lockheed 12s ordered by British Airways Ltd. were intended for covert military espionage. Sidney Cotton modified these aircraft for aerial photography and, while pretending to conduct ordinary civil flights, used them to overfly and photograph many German and Italian military installations during the months preceding World War II.
The greatest military user of the Lockheed 12 was the Royal Netherlands East Indies Army Air Force, which bought 36. Sixteen of these were the Model 212, a specialized version created by Lockheed for training bomber crews, which had a.303-caliber machine gun in an unpowered retractable gun turret on top of the fuselage, a second.303-caliber machine gun fixed in the nose, bomb racks under the wing center section that could hold eight 100 lb bombs. The other 20 aircraft were transport versions based on the Model 212. Several Lockheed 12s were used as technology testbeds; the U. S. National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics bought two, adding a center vertical fin to each of them to improve their stability. One of the NACA Lockheed 12s was used to test "hot-wing" deicing technology, in which hot exhaust air from the engines was ducted through the wing's leading edge to prevent ice accumulation. Three other Lockheed 12s were used to test tricycle landing gear; these had their normal landing gear replaced by a non-retracting version with a large nosewheel and with the main wheels shifted further back on the engine nacelles.
The gear was non-retractable because there wasn't room within
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