5 men, a farmer & Trump: The RAF Fairford situation explained

On the morning of Sep. 27, five men were spotted acting suspiciously near a small village in Southwest England.

A farmer who spotted the five made a call to the police.

This quick phone call to the police has unfolded into an all-out domestic security incident in the United Kingdom in years, causing the evacuation of the village, a local airbase on alert, and a response from Donald Trump.

But what's happened, and what's the fallout?

What happened?

Around 1am on Sep. 27 (UK time), local police in Gloucestershire were alerted to three suspicious vehicles heading towards RAF Fairford, a military airbase that supports U.S. military air force aircraft, according to the BBC.

Police responding to the call later arrested five men in a village called Whelford, about 3.2km away from the airbase.

They were concerned enough that a police cordon of 400m was set up around a number of vehicles, and a bomb disposal team was deployed to the village.

The 85 occupants of the village were also asked to evacuate their homes, with a community centre set aside to house those who could not turn to family or friends.

The Guardian published a picture of the five men sitting by a road, topless with their arms restrained behind their backs.

Bomb disposal robots were seen operating near the vans.

What is RAF Fairford?

RAF Fairford is a World War II-era British Air Force base in the southwest of England.

At its founding, it supported airborne operations by British and American forces, but after the war was used by the U.S. Air Force 501st Combat Support Wing .

At the present moment, it is predominantly used by USAF heavy bombers such as the B-1B Lancer, the B-2A Spirit, and the B-52H Stratofortress.

The base has supported bombers and air refuelling tankers in both Gulf Wars in 1991 and 2003, and is also know for hosting a major international air show, the Royal International Air Tattoo.

Perhaps most significantly, ever since Mar. 1, the base has been used to support heavy bombers carrying out missions against targets in Iran.

A British Ministry of Defence (MoD) spokesperson said that the U.S. was using British bases for specific defensive operations to prevent Iran firing missiles into the Middle East region, as reported by the BBC.

Aura farming

There is some dispute over whether the five men were known to authorities or not, but there is a straightforward answer in this particular case.

The BBC spoke to a farmer who allegedly first reported the men, apparently foiling whatever plans they had.

The farmer said she was making her way home from a party after 1am when she found the road blocked by three white vans.

She then spotted men wearing hoods and masks lingering near the treeline.

When the men realised she was there, they ran away in two directions, some into a field and some towards a neighbouring village, tipping the farmer off that “something highly unusual was taking place.”

She tried, but failed, to call the Ministry of Defence, resorting to calling the police as a fallback.

The police responded quickly, flooding the village with armed police within 10 minutes.

One of the vans was seen sporting company branding of a fake company "Fuel 2You", although there is a similarly named company called “Fuel2U”, which delivers diesel.

The company, when speaking to BBC Verify, said that the vans bore no relation to the company, with everything from the logo design, to the phone number listed, being different, and all their own vehicles were accounted for.

How have the authorities reacted?

Perhaps the most notable reaction to the incident has come from U.S. President Donald Trump, who said that authorities had the suspects "under view" for “a long time, and we got them.”

“We had them under investigation. They were looking to do big damage to our fort, and working with the British worked out great.”

An analyst working for the BBC said that there seemed to be an inconsistency between what Trump had said and how close the men had gotten to the airbase before the police were alerted by the member of the public.

Added to this was British authorities telling the press that the police operation was not intelligence-led, suggesting that the arrests were made solely due to the tip-off.

Coincidentally, most of the relevant UK ministers are gathered at the Labour Party Conference, being held in Liverpool from Sep. 27 to 30, with several giving speeches to the conference.

British Secretary of State for Defence Wes Streeting spoke rather cryptically to Sky News, on the one hand, thanking the member of the public for acting “quickly and thoughtfully”, then saying that, “with respect, though, she does only have a partial picture.”

Streeting was asked about a connection between the foiled attack and Iran by the BBC, but declined to draw a connection, saying that investigations were ongoing.

However, he did say that "we know that Iran and their proxies wish to do us harm. We know that they hate our democracy.”

British Foreign Secretary Ed Miliband told the party conference that the events at RAF Fairford were “a reminder of the threats our country faces.”

“We will all stand up for our security against those who would do us harm.”

Released on bail

As of Sep. 29 however, the five men have been released on bail.

The Guardian reports that the five are all British, in their 20s, and from London, and that the police believe that it was unlikely that they were close to setting off an attack near the base, as no explosive material had been found in the three vans.

However, the UK's head of counter-terrorism policing said that the investigation into their actions continued, and that the men remain subject to "stringent conditions."

He suggested that that the police continued to consider multiple possible angles, including that the men may have been used as proxies, knowingly or unknowingly working on behalf of a foreign state.

The Guardian also reported that Iran's Revolutionary Guard Corps had threatened the airbase earlier in the year, although Iran's embassy in the UK denied any involvement in the incident.

Trump, for his part, was surprised at the men's release, saying "I would not have released them," while U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio told press that the incident "clearly involves the hands of a foreign actor."