There are army trucks on the Brandon road going up to the base. Lots of them. Somebody at the shop said they have closed the gates from the outside.
My kids went to school with their kids. This is not a place where this happens.
Moment · 11 February 2026, 10:30
Lakenheath, and the combined command
British sappers cut the barrier interlocks at Gate 2 and 1,150 American airmen are interned in their own base housing. Paris activates Article 42.7. A second Vanguard leaves Faslane in the dark.
Breaking: British forces have requisitioned RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Fairford. Around 1,150 US personnel have been disarmed and confined to base housing. Seventeen US aircraft seized.
The word being used is "internment," and it is the correct one. These are the armed forces of a state now in armed conflict with the host state, on the host state's territory.
Eleven days ago they were allies with base passes. The law changed the moment the missiles hit Keflavik, not this morning.
BB
BBC Breaking News
@BBCBreaking
·11 Feb 2026 · 08:20
Breaking: British forces have requisitioned RAF Lakenheath, Mildenhall and Fairford. Around 1,150 US personnel have been disarmed and confined to base housing. Seventeen US aircraft seized.
They have shut the gates from the outside.
Twenty-two years those lads have been in my pub. There is a bloke called Marcus who taught my daughter to throw a football on the green out the back. He is behind a fence this morning and my army put him there.
I have not got a flag to wave. I am just going to open at eleven like always.
Everyone in this thread has an opinion about international law and I have an opinion about Marcus, who is 24, from Ohio, and who fixed my generator for free in the storm two winters ago.
He is behind a fence this morning. That is all the law I have got in me today.
The Prime Minister to the House of Commons:
"American arms have shed British and French blood in an unprovoked, illegal act of war on sovereign allied territory. The alliance that stood for eighty years has been torn apart from Washington. We will defend this realm, our people, and our European partners with the entire, unyielding force of our national power."
He is fine. He rang for ninety seconds on a landline and said he is fine and they are being correct with everyone.
Our neighbour Sue brought a lasagne round at half seven this morning. She did not say anything about any of it. She just handed me the dish and said "the kids like it, there's no onion in it."
I do not know what any government is doing. I know Sue made a lasagne with no onion in it. That is the whole of what I have got today.
Le Président active l'article 42.7 du traité sur l'Union européenne. Les intérêts vitaux de la France sont indissociables de l'intégrité du sol européen.
President Macron activates Article 42.7 TEU. France's vital interests are inseparable from the integrity of European soil.
This morning the British Army entered three American airbases, cut the gates, disarmed United States airmen and locked one thousand one hundred and fifty of them inside their own housing.
— Written statement, the White House
what was actually happening
Three days later he was handed Operation Albion Anvil: 184 pages, a deterrent hunt at 18 to 22 percent confidence, 40,000 to 60,000 projected American casualties, and a Strategic Command annex putting nuclear retaliation at 95 percent certainty.
Two independent European nuclear deterrents have just been placed under a single combined wartime command for the first time in their history.
A second Vanguard has sailed from Faslane. The French have dispersed nuclear-armed Rafales to secondary runways at fifteen minutes' notice.
I have written about extended deterrence for twenty years and I have no framework for tonight.
1,150 Americans. Held. By Britain.
I have listened to six weeks of lectures about norms from people who are now holding American kids in a fenced housing block. Every single one of you owes this country an apology and none of you will give one.
"There is no war."
There has been an armed attack by the forces of one state on the forces of two others, on the sovereign territory of a fourth, with fatalities. The legal threshold was crossed at 02:40 on 9 February and it does not depend on anybody using the word.
The internment at Lakenheath is lawful precisely because there is a war. You cannot have the first half of that sentence without the second.
TP
The President of the United States
@POTUS
·11 Feb 2026 · 13:00
This morning the British Army entered three American airbases, cut the gates, disarmed United States airmen and locked one thousand one hundred and fifty of them inside their own housing. — Written statement, the White H…
Eleven hundred and fifty Americans interned by Britain.
I want everyone posting "they had it coming" to sit with that number for one minute. Those are 1,150 people who did not vote on any of this, who were sent there, who have kids in Suffolk schools.
You can hate the policy. They are not the policy.
Two days ago American forces killed nine French servicemen and captured 154 British and French soldiers on the territory of a third ally.
I am genuinely not trying to score a point, because I think you are right that those 1,150 people are innocent. But "held" and "captured" are the same word and one of them happened first.
Half of Cork spent tonight explaining to the other half that Ireland is not in NATO and never was.
The other half's answer, universally: "and what good is that to us if it kicks off in the Irish Sea?"
Nobody had a reply. Least of all me.
My husband is one of the 1,150.
You are both right and it does not help me. He is innocent AND it happened second AND he is still behind that fence AND nine French families are burying people.
There is no arrangement of those facts that lets anybody win this argument. I wish you would all stop trying to. I am so tired.
I will say this once and then I am muting the replies.
Do not post guesses about where the boats are. Do not post fishing fleet reports, do not post "my mate at Faslane," do not post sonar hobbyist charts.
The entire value of the deterrent is that nobody knows. Including you.