Google Earth Uncovers Secret UK Nuke Base

thefickler writes "Gone are the days when governments could easily hide top secret bases. These days it's a weekend pastime to see who can find top secret facilities using Google Earth. Now it's the UK government's turn to be outraged after a secret facility was revealed by a British tabloid. The facility is said to be located in Faslane on the River Clyde in Scotland. This nuclear base was previously blurred out by the request of the British Government. However, with the latest update provided via Google Earth, many of the blurred out locations were accidentally revealed." Update: 3/08 at 14:24 by SS: Multiple readers have pointed out that the issue here is not the location of the base — it's simply that details of buildings and objects within the base (such as the location of a pair of nuclear submarines) are accidentally visible after the UK government specifically requested they be blurred out.

Comments

"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[EWAdams]

Oooh... like that huge bottle-green and cream building with all the satellite dishes on top was invisible to the tens of thousands of commuters who pass by it on the railroad every day.

Everybody knows where these things are anyway. The newspapers are just having a slow day, so let's take another whack at technology/Google/the Internet.

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[Z00L00K]

And who in their right mind thinks that a foreign nation doesn't already know the existence, location and layout of various bases around the world?

Some bribes or joint ventures later and information exceeding the information available at Google Earth is widespread.

Blurring a satellite or air photo today is just a giveaway since two different distributions never have the same blurring and that tells others that this is a site of interest.

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[tomhudson]

What the gov't is pissed off about is that you can see 2 nuclear subs docked ... scroll up to the top of the bay, zoom in.

Sure, foreign governments probably already have assets on the ground keeping watch of the ebb and flow of traffic, but it's nice to have visible confirmation (you can confirm the date of the pictures by using shadows - every day, the shadows will be slightly different as the sun appears to trace a slightly different arc in the sky).

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[Baron of Blue]

Come on, at least give the boys at the Kremlin the chance to earn their wages. Scroll up to the top indeed!

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[timeOday]

The only adversaries targeted or threatened by nuclear subs have their own satellite imagery.

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[1u3hr]

Sure, foreign governments probably already have assets on the ground keeping watch of the ebb and flow of traffic

Any foreign government with an interest in this information HAS IT'S OWN SURVEILLANCE SATELLITES. They are not going to use Google, which can be months out of date, when they can get real time images. Even Iran has the capacity to launch these now. And anyone else can just pay a small fee to one of several commercial satellite surveillance services, not all of which are beholden to the UK government.

Of course, TFA talks about "terrorists" targeting the subs with rockets. Right. Could terrorists get that kind of weapon into the UK and close to a nuclear weapons installation? I find it hard to believe. But there is an infinite number of soft targets they could hit with greater hope of doing damage and less risk.

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[tomhudson]

Afghanistan is currently in no danger of a strategic nuclear attack, which is obviously the main reason countries which have them go to some lengths to make sure their nuclear sub fleet is concealed

Wrong. The day you have to actually launch a strategic nuclear attack is the day that your nuclear submarine fleets' actual purpose - which is to be enough of a threat to retaliate in the event of such an attack (see Mutually Assured Destruction) - is over. The submarine fleet will have failed in its' primary goal, which is to be a credible enough threat to PREVENT a nuclear attack.

The nuclear submarine fleet's second purpose is to protect the rest of the naval fleet, allies, and shipping, both by being the "joker in the hole" against other forces, and against other subs.

The third purpose is, as I've mentioned elsewhere, to do stand-off attacks via cruise missiles, which they (UK submarines) HAVE launched against targets in Afghanistan.

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[1u3hr]

The point is, nuclear subs are not a terror target. They're protected by the world's strongest security. An attack would probably fail to do any damage. If you had that firepower, and wanted to make a statement, you'd blow up the Houses of Parliament, or Buckingham Palace; not a military base out in the wilds of Scotland where news coverage will be restricted.

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[tomhudson]

It doesn't matter if the data is months behind - its usefulness in this case is to confirm what ground-based assets have already told you. If they told you that, at that date, 2 subs were there, and you now know there were 4, you have some housecleaning to do. If, on the other hand, they were accurate with their intel, you have one more data point in terms of their reliability.

In this game, NO information is useless in the right hands.

here are plenty of surface ships much more capable of supporting a conventional attack.

And as I pointed out (with links elsewhere in this thread), the UK has already used their nuclear subs to launch cruise missle attacks against targets in Afghanistan. Please don't confuse "primary purpose" with "only purpose." Subs make a better launch platform than surface ships - you can move them into the area without alerting your target, you have to send a sub in to support the surface fleet anyway, and your target hopefully won't be able to positively identify just who is launching the attack, so they don't know who to attack in return. You could even do false flag attacks, allowing some "duds" to fall into their hands implicating a 3rd party, since they have no surface sightings to put the lie to it ...

Re:"Also revealed are MI6's London offices"

[SnowZero]

It doesn't matter if the data is months behind - its usefulness in this case is to confirm what ground-based assets have already told you. If they told you that, at that date,

Except that you often don't know the date, since the maps are a patchwork of satellite imagery. If you check the maps (or other people's comments), you'll see that these subs are visible from public roads. If you can get pictures of something on the ground, old satellite imagery doesn't really add much information.

And as I pointed out (with links elsewhere in this thread), the UK has already used their nuclear subs to launch cruise missle attacks against targets in Afghanistan. Please don't confuse "primary purpose" with "only purpose." ... Subs make a better launch platform than surface ships - you can move them into the area without alerting your target,

This is really grasping for straws. Afghanistan is 400 miles from the nearest ocean, and US planes can already fly around that country, so you could just drop a bomb on something. Cruise missiles also aren't that helpful against recent Taliban/etc activity; They now know they need to be completely hidden or always moving. Static bases outside of cities went away in 2001.

You could even do false flag attacks, allowing some "duds" to fall into their hands implicating a 3rd party, since they have no surface sightings to put the lie to it

Wasn't that a James Bond movie plot? NATO cruise missiles are pretty distinctive, and the launch systems are very incompatible. If you were going to modify something to shoot Chinese or Russian missiles, it'd be a hell of a lot easier to do it with a surface ship, where much of the stuff is bolted on in a modular style. Subs by necessity are highly compact, integrated, and relatively inflexible as a result.

Now, before you come up with a new claim, please answer this: If the UK government cared about hostile people seeing these subs, why didn't they build a roof over the dock, or put up walls blocking the view from publicly accessible roads? If you aren't afraid of nations that can afford satellites, buy imagery, or from nations that can get a spy to drive down a public road, then clearly you don't value protecting something all that much.

Blurred out by request

[Baron_Yam]

Doesn't that just mean that a whole chain of people at Google now know the location is sensitive and could turn around and pass on that information?

If they ask to have it Photoshopped into non-existence then you know you've got really hot property!

Re:Blurred out by request

[impaledsunset]

I guess it wasn't that secret after all... Anyone with access to the original pictures could discover the base, and as you mention the people at Google were given at least a huge hint that it is lying there.

I wouldn't call anything secret is a whole bunch of people with no connection to the base in question that have the information to find it. Sure, with more eyes looking something hidden might become easily uncovered, I guess that's part of the reason they requested the blurring, but once they made that hint, the millions of eyes are no longer necessary.

This means that the location wasn't hidden well enough from people that must not know where it is, Google just 'uncovered' it to the rest of us. Not a big deal.

Under cover.

[Bazman]

Ooh, like the Russians never knew there was a submarine base at Faslane before...

Since Sputnik went up, governments have known that secret locations wouldn't be secret for long. And if the Russians can photograph it, they can sell the photos to terrorists. Google will get them sometime after.

If governments want to do stuff in secret they know they have to do it undercover. There's a big covered dock right next to the two obvious submarines on the Faslane google maps imagery. That's where the secret stuff happens. Until we get Google Thermal Imagery Earth, of course.

Anyone know what the circular mounds are to the north of the base?

OK, where to begin.

[Samschnooks]

Some of the other locations revealed are MI6â(TM)s London offices, Britainâ(TM)s nuclear crisis HQ and the SAS training facility. Apparently the UK Government is worried that terrorists could potentially launch missile attacks to those target areas with the exact coordinates readily available on the Internet.

So, the UK Government is actually saying, "Oops! You got us! That's exactly what they are! As matter of act, those buildings are exactly what you think they are and then some! What what! Cheers!"

Could these buildings be not very important and the UK gov is making them seem more important to distract everyone from the real targets? I don't see anything that makes that facility ultra secure like you'd expect for someplace that is that sensitive. Look how close it is to the highway (A814)? Here in the States, there'd be a HUGE driveway or access road so that someone couldn't just park at the side and lob a mortar shell over or what have you.

A tabloid said this? A PRINTED tabloid that will do anything to increase circulation; especially in this economy?!?

I could go on but I'm sick of typing.

Re:Public secrets

[Anonymous Coward]

Hmm yeah, that's some good secret-keeping going on there buddy

Well since big brother can be watching us...

[3seas]

.....so can us little brothers be watching big brother... No double standards here.

Of the 6 plus billion people on this planet, it is some fraction of 1% that messes things up for the rest of us.
Its about time we start watching them..

If you seriously need to "blur" a hidden place

[Anonymous Coward]

Then you seriously fail at making a hidden place.

A hidden place, a truly hidden place, would be so hidden it is in the public eye and nobody would even realize it.

Or, of course, underground.

Submarines move occasionally.....

[LVSlushdat]

Geez.. if you look at the imagery date in GE, it's March 13, 2003!!! Last time I heard, submarines move around a bit.. especially over 6 flippin' years!!