The London government has begun updating a 20-year-old secret plan for the scenario of a direct Russian attack on Great Britain. The plan will include scenarios such as conventional or nuclear missile attacks, as well as cyber operations.
The internal defense plan establishes how the British government should act to deal with the consequences of an attack on the United Kingdom by a hostile foreign power.
The strategy will encompass scenarios of conventional or nuclear missile attacks, as well as cyber attacks. For the first time, cyber threats have been included in such a document, writes The Telegraph.
In addition, military strategies will be devised for the use and defense of railway and road networks, maritime transport, the postal system, and telecommunications.
The plan will provide instructions on how the British government should act in times of war and will include provisions for evacuating and sheltering cabinet members and the royal family in secret bunkers. The BBC will broadcast information to the population on how to seek shelter from missiles, and valuable artworks will be sent from London to Scotland.
The current plan is designed following a secret strategy from the Cold War era that provided clear instructions on how the government should respond to a nuclear attack.
British defense officials have requested the development of their own version of the Iron Dome air defense system used by Israel to protect against missile attacks.
The strategy being developed now is classified and is unlikely to be made public for decades, if ever revealed, as reported by the British newspaper.
The decision to update the emergency plan that could put the country on a war footing was made after the Kremlin repeatedly threatened Great Britain with a direct attack due to the support London provided to Ukraine.
In April, the London government officially designated Russia as a threat to national security for the first time, notes the British newspaper.
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Officials in London fear that, in the event of an attack, Great Britain would not only be inferior to Russia and its allies on the battlefield, but would also be poorly defended on its own territory. An assessment published in January indicated that a successful attack by a hostile state "would likely result in civilian casualties," cause severe economic damage, and disrupt the country's vital services.
A senior official from the British military aviation suggested that if the United Kingdom faced an invasion similar to that in Ukraine, Russian missiles would penetrate British defenses and destroy infrastructure from the very first night of the war.
T.D.