News 2020

All the breaking news - fifteen years before events come together

We regret that we cannot be held responsible if the future turns out differently due to inaccuracies in the present

The Ministry of Defence has said it may be impossible ever to establish blame in cases of mistaken firings by the Offshore Homeland Missile Security System. The American defence system was installed in the British Isles over a period of ten years, starting in Yorkshire and now including Lancashire, Cornwall, Scotland, Wales, the Orkneys, the Hebrides, the Channel Islands, the Isle of Man, Belfast and the Falklands. The system is designed to shoot down enemy missiles on their way to targets in the United States, which according to the MoD is an "absolutely vital prerequisite" for the defence of Britain.

Considerable criticism has been levelled against the OHMSS by various presure groups, who claim that several "avoidable errors" have taken place which, if allowed to continue unchecked, may lead to potentially problematical difficulties for the locals.

It is undeniable that the missile system has had its problems. During the past five years, OHMSS has shot down one airliner (Air France Flight 119, in which no Britons were hurt), three cargo flights, two private planes, five RAF training craft, six weather balloons, nine flocks of starlings and a partridge in an apple tree. The MoD denies that these were "avoidable errors" and says that improvements in the tracking and aiming systems are continual and ongoing.

Today's statement is a response to the attempt by the owners of the cargo planes and the families of those shot down in the private aircraft to prosecute the operators of the OHMSS for negligence. The missile system is operated by the US-based contractor Patriotic Fire Inc., which according to the MoD operates strict confidentiality rules for the protection of its personnel. "Patriotic Fire is a deeply committed and caring organisation," says today's statement. "Any company which takes such good care of its employees undoubtedly deserves the loyalty and gratitude of the customers it is hired to protect."

A press release by Patriotic Fire, after every accident in which a fatality occurs, has expressed deep regret and stated that the computer error responsible has been tracked down and eliminated forthwith.

Clarification: It is of course untrue that no Britons were hurt in the destruction of Air France Flight 119. However, all British casualties took place on the ground, where the aeroplane made what is officially termed an "inadequately controlled landing without appropriate structural integrity". Our statement that no Britons were hurt on Flight 119 was therefore accurate, since by the time the Britons were bio-detrimented the aircraft was no longer in flight.