Address on the opening of hostilities
the podium · Address to the nation, the Oval Office · 16 February 2026, 12:30
My fellow Americans. At twelve minutes past four this morning, United States forces struck military targets in the United Kingdom.
I did not want this. I have said for five weeks that the line stopped at Iceland. It stopped at Iceland until they took our people at Lakenheath and put two ballistic missile submarines to sea, and at that point the question was no longer whether there would be a confrontation but whether we would be standing or sitting when it came.
We struck radar. We struck air defence. We have not struck a city, we will not strike a city, and any person who tells you otherwise in the coming days is not telling you the truth.
I am asked what victory looks like. It looks like our people home, our ships through the gap, and an end to the idea that the United States requires anybody's permission. That is all it has ever been.
To the American people: you will hear numbers this week that are difficult. Some of them will be about ships. I will not hide them from you.
Good night, and God bless our servicemen and women.
closed channel
The opening salvo consumed fourteen percent of the entire American global inventory of standoff cruise missiles in twelve hours. One attack submarine was lost. Neither British deterrent submarine was located. The plan he had authorised assigned that hunt a maximum confidence of 22 percent before it began.
Same day
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@GIUKwatch · osint
16 Feb 2026 04:50
Inbound tracks over the north of Scotland. This is not an exercise and it is not a probe. Cruise missiles are hitting the United Kingdom.
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@DefenceHQ · state
16 Feb 2026 05:30
At 04:12 GMT the United Kingdom came under sustained cruise missile attack by the armed forces of the United States. Air defences are engaging. The public should follow the guidance of local authorities and stay away from military installations.
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@dave_norwich · civilian
16 Feb 2026 05:40
Woke up at ten past four to what I thought was thunder. I am fifty-eight years old and I have just heard a war start over my own house.
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@maya_teaches · civilian
16 Feb 2026 06:30
School is open today. I checked at five in the morning because I did not know if that was still automatic. Thirty children are going to walk into my classroom in two hours and I am going to teach them about the Louisiana Purchase.
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@grandma_wifi · civilian
16 Feb 2026 08:20
I remember the last one. I was three, so I remember my mother's face and not much else. I did not expect to see her face on my own in the mirror this morning. I am so terribly sorry, all of you. I truly thought we had finished with this.
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@HardhatHank · civilian
16 Feb 2026 09:00
My grandfather flew out of Norfolk in 1943. Norfolk, England, not Virginia. He is buried forty minutes from Lakenheath. We are bombing the country that buried him. I do not have a bigger thought than that and I have been trying to have one since four this morn…
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@GIUKwatch · osint
16 Feb 2026 09:40
Reconstructing the first salvo: 148 weapons launched. 84 intercepted — Aster 30 from Type 45s in the Forth and the Humber, Sky Sabre over the Scottish coast, 19 taken by QRA Typhoons with Meteor and ASRAAM. 64 leaked through. Buchan and Benbecula radars destro…
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@Number10 · state
16 Feb 2026 11:00
The Prime Minister has informed the House that a State of War exists between the United Kingdom and the United States of America.