The military-pastoral complex : contemporary representations of militarism in the landscape

Chapter 6. The Military Spatial Complex: Interpreting the Emerging Spaces of British Militarism Matthew Flintham On the edge of the Lincolnshire Wash, past low tidal marshes and fenlands, the sea defences at Gedney Drove provide an abrupt end to an intensely cultivated, ‘reclaimed’ landscape. Beyond this are the almost corporeal, brain‐like tributaries and mudflats that lead inevitably into The Wash itself. From here it is easy to picture Stanislaw Lem’s sentient world, Solaris with its oceans of mutable matter churning into half‐ recognised forms and structures. The salt marshes and mud flats stretch all the way from Boston to King’s Lynn across the square jaw of the Wash; a transitionary medium between solid and fluid, wet and dry, cultivation and chaos. The living communities, both human and non‐human, that survive and thrive on its periphery are innumerable. One such community is represented, at first, by tall red flags that echo the swaying poppies in the fields and hedgerows nearby (see Figure 6.1). There are also unusual observation towers and warning signs along the sea wall, and out across the marshes an assemblage of scuttled barges, stranded scaffold structures and painted targets all scattered it seems, by a master bricoleur in the mannered surrealism of Tanguy or Ernst. The thing that links them together with a connected function suddenly appears in the sky as if from nowhere (which is the point, I suppose). The Harrier ground attack jet makes a low pass, (maybe 150 feet), and drops something over the targets. A delayed engine‐roar quickly follows and a thin white plume of smoke is suddenly visible in the distance. The jet makes several more passes, each slightly different from N6J* O/-/2&%?*9&%,/,$*P&$*&2*!"1,"?*Q%#;"*M,1F*G/,4#-,(8/%"6 Photograph: Matthew Flintham. 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 the last but tracing a basic racetrack pattern above the salt marshes – an invisible form that connects the land to the air with the passage of a supersonic projectile. The jet disappears just as suddenly leaving only a thunderous doppler‐distorted wake – not so much a sound as an amorphous force folding through space. If these sorties were a real air strike it would be both terrifying and life threatening but here it is simply incongruous. This bombing range, known as RAF Holbeach, is one of several around the coasts of the United Kingdom that are used for target practice by the Royal Air Force (RAF) and jets from other NATO countries. Such patterns of simulated warfare, repeated day in day out at RAF stations, army training sites and naval ports, exemplify what could be considered as a parallel form of spatial activity – a disruptive form of production which is, by necessity, segregated from civil space. There is certainly a case for addressing the incremental preparation for war across the United Kingdom, since the transformation of the landscape after the nineteenth century has far more to do with military training and passive defence than is readily accepted. Why, for example, is it necessary H2('.6&'M+'.2'6"#&'"'.("$1$14'&-.".&'1&"(/,'.G$<&'.6&'-$U&'2H' d("1<&S-'Q"'<2)1.(,'(2)46/,'%2)@/&'.6&'-$U&'2H'.6&'M+h*1 and why does the UK need over 60 active air force bases and a low‐ H/,'U21&' H2(' H$46.&(' T&.-'.6".' $1</)%&-'.6&' M+' $1' $.-'&1.$(&.,' (excluding over large conurbations). Indeed, is it really necessary for the armed services to maintain approximately 4,000 facilities across the UK and abroad (of which 571 are categorised as major)?2 These questions relate most directly to government policy (or, critics might say, the lack thereof) but they also demonstrate that defence is fundamentally a productive process which alters and shapes urban and rural environments in ways not dissimilar to industrialisation, urbanisation and intensive agricultural cultivation. However, it is a form of production determined, in part, by political and economic imperatives but most importantly for this study, by a ‘violence sometimes latent, or preparing to explode’.3 This essay shares Henri Lefebvre’s contention that warfare not only reorders space through violence but also creates complex institutional and cross‐national frameworks, remodels whole cities and national borders, and maintains an entire warrior class linked to a culture of state‐specific militarism. The evidence of this ‘productive’ process is commonplace – from ancient hill forts, castles and statues, to barracks, naval shipyards and an increasingly dispersed manufacturing industry. This essay attempts to reengage with such spatialities in an era of accelerated ‘military globalisation’,4 but can also be considered as a step towards reading the geographies and ‘cartographic identity’ of the military institution itself.5 The residual effect of warfare throughout the 20th and 21st centuries has created a permanently militarised training &1#$(210&1.*' "' H("40&1.&%' @).' -$U"@/&' (&-2)(<&' 2H' /"1%*' buildings and holdings scattered across the UK, known today as the Defence Estate. For many, military land is something experienced only in passing, on the way to somewhere else perhaps, but in fact nearly 1.5 per cent of the surface area of the UK is either owned or used by the armed services. However, this chapter will demonstrate that land is only part of the story. It will describe a military presence that, despite its long association with specific places and regions in the British Isles, has only recently set firm roots into the British landscape. It will propose that land use is only one component in a much more expansive use of space which includes infrastructural connections between sites, vast volumes of restricted airspaces towering into the troposphere "1%' "1,' 1)0@&(' 2H' 6"U"(%2)-' &#&1.-' "1%' 9(2<&--&-' .6".' remain largely concealed from public scrutiny – in short, those spaces which are defined by the ‘embedded material practices’ of humans operating in the defence environment.6 The challenge for this essay is to find new ways of visualising the emerging invisible geographies of training and defence, the hidden imbrications that connect the disparate sites of the military landscape. fC op y 2 Pr oo 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 38 56 Emerging Landscapes 1 DETACHMENT AND TRANSFORMATION 2 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 57 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 The Military Spatial Complex 31 1 Chapter 6 27 Of the 4,000 or more designated military sites in the UK, the majority were acquired or established during the nineteenth and twentieth centuries, an incremental process accelerated by a withdrawal from the colonies and the mass mobilisation of the two World Wars. Prior to this the distribution of barracks around the British Isles reflected not only the need to house increasing troop numbers for national defence but also the requirement to deploy the state’s coercive force against agricultural, industrial and regional disputes. The function of the barrack was at once a way of containing and bringing order to the British Army but equally a way of removing soldiers from the seditious, even revolutionary influence of machine breakers or local dissenters.8 The barrack effectively reinforced the notion of a separate ‘warrior class’, detaching the soldier and the military itself from civil society, and creating a spatial and cultural differentiation between what is military and what is civil. However, during the nineteenth century, a burgeoning regional police force effectively released the army and volunteer forces from the obligation of civil enforcement. From this point the military ceased to exercise violent control over the British population but curiously, began instead to acquire vast tracts of land on which to train.9 The military control of the population ended but control of land began in earnest with mass acquisition and appropriation at the end of the nineteenth century and continuing throughout the next. Substantial areas of heath and farmland were acquired around a number of counties in England and Wales, as well as areas of the highlands of Scotland.10 The increasing range of rifled artillery was the expedient for using larger tracts of land, and the introduction of mechanised mobile weapons ensured a firm hold on British land. The possibilities of aerial warfare would also irrevocably transform parts of the rural landscape almost beyond recognition. In 1927, the newly formed Royal Air Force presided over just 27 airfields but by the final year fC op y 4 Pr oo 3 7 of the Second World War that figure had risen to 720 with many more support landing strips in operation.11 Airfields, firing ranges, vast training areas for tanks and mechanised units, barracks and storage depots, defensive lines, and thousands of pill boxes all contributed to ‘the anti‐invasion landscape of England’, a phenomenon based on a 20 per cent requisition of the British landmass for training and defence.12 b($."$1'&HH&<.$#&/,'@&<"0&'"'G"('U21&'%)($14'.6$-'9&($2%'"1%' as such the distinction between civil and military aspects 2H' -2<$&.,' G"-' /&--' 9(212)1<&%F' 8&(."$1/,*' .6&' 6"U"(%-' 2H' military activities were a part of everyday life in a way that galvanised a population against a clearly defined adversary. After the war much of the requisitioned land was returned to its original owners leaving the landscape littered with the relics of military production and destruction, many of which are still visible today. However, a much higher proportion of land was retained by the military after the Second World War than after the First. The Cold War saw the British landscape become evermore claustrophobic. Military sites in the UK were defined by their acute difference and their detachment from civil space; they were highly secure, wilfully secretive, and in many cases controlled by a foreign power (USA). The presence of nuclear weapons invested many of these spaces with an apocalyptic charge: the triple‐fenced perimeters, the ‘sterile’ U21&-'"(2)1%'.6&'6"(%&1&%'@)17&(-'"//'-927&'2H'%$HH&(&1<&*' exclusion and ultimately, the absence of life on earth. Military space was a place of retreat or exile for the soldier contaminated by his association with the ultimate weapon. Smelling death perhaps, the commercial sector (that would figure so significantly at British and US military sites in later years) was nowhere to be seen. These hermetic spaces with their incumbent national framework of early warning systems, their partial invisibility and cult‐like detachment, could undoubtedly be considered parallel to civil society and, in fact, parallel to life itself. These are spaces which, to borrow from Sebald, ‘cast the shadow of their own destruction before them’.13 Any serious study of the Cold War military landscape 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 laws and a sophisticated regulating infrastructure.18 Within this register, however, militarised airspaces are segregated "1%' -.&($/$U&%' 2H' <$#$/$"1' .("HH$<' @&<")-&' 2H' .6&' 6"U"(%2)-' activities enacted within them. The extensive use of such airspaces across the UK, like the use of land described above, is testament to a sky defined, in part, by a persistently assertive and internationally competitive militarism. The following section will examine a number of militarised airspaces and suggest that this phenomenon is not simply a new ‘air grab’ (similar to the extensive military land grabs of the 19th and 20th centuries), but represents an increasingly integrated use of space – an articulation of land, sea and air as highly regulated spatial formations. fC op y 2 (including those immense underground bunkers that prefigured the spectacle of mass premature burial) would be one not of war but an exercise in eschatology (Plate 33).14 In recent years the military geographies of the UK (as an expression of Britain’s immense defence capability) have &HH&<.$#&/,'(&0"$1&%'H(2U&1'$1'"'82/%'Z"('92-.)(&'%&-9$.&'.6&' 12.$<&"@/&'"@-&1<&'2H'.6(&".'H(20'"1,'-$U"@/&'-.".&'2('"44(&--2(' with designs on attrition warfare. Britain continues to buy in vast quantities ‘the wrong equipment at the wrong price for the wrong wars’,15 and even in times of severe economic uncertainty, retains vast amounts of land on which to train. The history and transformation of the defence estate is one that continues to shape the fabric of the landscape. However, the increasing use of land for military training and defence must also be measured against a somewhat more complex use of airspace.16 Powered flight added a new dimension to warfare in the twentieth century, and redefined the notion of sovereign territory in vertical, volumetric and spatial terms. If aviation introduced industry and commerce to the skies, it simultaneously ushered in the spectre of death from above. To protect the land, the skies would become regulated, systematised and defended in a way never imagined before – indeed, air itself would become reconceptualised by the military and industry alike as airspace. Unlike the gaseous and material qualities of the air around us or the mercurial and tangible presence of weather, airspaces are entirely immaterial and therefore resist visual or speculative interpretation. They exist as nothing more than computer code or lines and coordinates on a chart as a representation of space, yet as a form of invisible architecture these ‘real virtualities’ are ‘constantly in a state of becoming, produced through individual performance and technological interaction.’17 Essential for preserving the safe passage of aircraft across increasingly crowded sovereign skies, airspaces can be understood, according to Alison J. Williams, as geopolitical projections of power, volumes of air whose delimitations are brought into being through the implementation of agreed international air Pr oo 1 58 Emerging Landscapes POLY-SPATIAL FORMS The island of Foulness (otherwise known as MoD Shoeburyness) at the mouth of the river Thames, is a research and development site with numerous weapons testing facilities and a history of atomic weapons development. This (&-.($<.&%' "1%' )1$o)&/,' 6"U"(%2)-' 9/"<&*' G6$<6' 6"-' @&&1' used for military activities since 1847, also happens to be home to a dwindling civilian community of some 200 people, gathered in the isolated village of Churchend at the heart of the island.19 While it resembles a traditional Essex village in many respects, Churchend is at the centre of a complex spatial framework: an elaborate system of barrier controls and surveillance restricts access to certain areas of the island for specific periods while ballistics testing and weapons disposal is underway.20 Farmers work around the schedules imposed on them by QinetiQ, a private sector research and development company which manages activities on the island on behalf of the Ministry of Defence (MoD). The island, however, also has an invisible carapace – a framework of airspace coordinates which is designed to cover Foulness in its entirety, parts of the mainland and several kilometres of tidal sands in order to limit access to airspace over the region.21 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 10 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 12 13 14 15 6.2 The island of Foulness. Area owned or 16 controlled by the Ministry of Defence. Map 17 by Matthew Flintham. 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 32 33 34 35 36 6.3 The island of Foulness and surround‐ ing Danger Areas. Google Earth images with 33 34 additional graphic modelling by Lloyd Bailey 35 36 and Matthew Flintham. 37 37 38 38 59 The Military Spatial Complex 31 Chapter 6 27 11 Pr oo 11 fC op y 9 1 1 2 2 3 3 4 4 5 5 6 6 7 7 8 8 9 10 10 fC op y 9 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 6.4 Salisbury Plain, internal military subdivisions. Google Maps with additional data by Matthew Flintham based on current military maps of the region. 20 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 MoD Shoeburyness shows in the starkest terms how an assemblage of militarised spaces is constructed from the ground up, how the island of Foulness acts almost as a tabula rasa for military activity. First the island is acquired for military activities, then a skeletal network of roads, infrastructures and facilities spreads across the island and incorporates the existing civilian community. Military bylaws are imposed and Foulness is transformed into a proving ground and a thriving military/scientific community. Its relative isolation makes it perfect for clandestine activities such as atomic weapons development and experimental ballistics trials. Artillery firing out to sea makes it necessary to impose shipping restrictions around the north and east of the island. Lateral and vertical dimensions for restricted ‘Danger Areas’ were imposed as sovereign airspaces became rationalised after the Second World War. Today, all these elements are in place for the duration of the working week and can be imposed whenever the need arises. Enter at your peril.22 It is almost Pr oo 21 60 Emerging Landscapes impossible to gauge the scale of the Danger Areas from the ground. However, if one feeds coordinates supplied by the Civil Aviation Authority (CAA) into a geographic information system such as Google Earth, it is possible to visualise the military/scientific presence in volumetric terms, as a block of space subtracted from the civil realm. The collision of rural life and intense military activity is common in many areas of the UK, but nowhere more so than Salisbury Plain Training Area (SPTA) in Wiltshire (Plate NPhF'c1<&'"4"$1*'"'#"-.'"((",'2H'6"U"(%2)-'"<.$#$.$&-'$-'/"(4&/,' contained within a set of highly regulated and systematised environments. Being the largest military training area in the UK, SPTA has a uniquely complex arrangement of airspaces, &"<6' 2H' G6$<6' %$HH&(' $1' -$U&' "1%' "/.$.)%&F23 Their unusual facetted volumes are determined by the activities that take place within them such as live artillery and armoured vehicle trials, small arms training, vertical missile launching and major cross‐service exercises. These five Danger Areas 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 61 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 The Military Spatial Complex 31 similar proposal to segregate an area of airspace for drone activity over Aberporth (Ceredigion) and connect it with the Sennybridge army training area (Powys).26 However benign the packaging (in this case job opportunities for the defence sector and the creation of a ‘centre of excellence’ for Wales) this migration of military surveillance technology H(20'.6&'<20@".'U21&-'.2'%20&-.$<'"$(-9"<&'"/02-.'<&(."$1/,' foregrounds a more extensive use of drone technology by the British security services in the UK.27 It would appear that the domestic military landscape, far from shrinking in the twenty‐first century, is actually transforming into highly regulated, three‐dimensional composites of land, airspace, infrastructure, architecture and process. These composites, framed here as poly‐spatial forms,28 are built piece by piece over the course of the .G&1.$&.6' <&1.)(,*' "1%' %&-$41&%' .2' <21."$1' .6&' 6"U"(%2)-' effects of the military order as it unfolds across the domestic landscape, as it passes between humans, vehicles and weapons systems. Equally, these forms are required to resist unauthorised intrusions and restrict the flow of privileged information (indirectly preserving a sense of secrecy and tacit authority). Just as cartography developed as a science of navigation and territorial control so airspace itself has become a technology (rather than simply a territorial possession) of military control. As an example of coded, representational space, the National Air Traffic Services (NATS) airspace chart (Figure 6.5) resembles nothing less than a mechanism, a military technology of national proportions. Invisible mechanistic structures sit side by side against organic landforms, nominally built around coastal contours and fully integrated, at times, into civil airspace structures. Restricted "1%' 6"U"(%2)-' "(&"-' -)<6' "-' .6&-&' 29&1' "1%' <2//"9-&' ".' predetermined intervals suggesting a realm of precisely defined voids. Just as the examples of Foulness, Salisbury Plain and Aberporth revealed a system of spatial structures that both protect and control civilian movement across the /"1%*'-2'G&'H$1%'6&(&'"'-$0$/"('-,-.&0'@).'21&'2H'b,U"1.$1&' Chapter 6 27 partially overlap two additional Military Aerodrome Traffic Zones (MATZ) above two airbases in the region, allowing free transit of helicopters and other aircraft into the main training U21&F' d"-.' T&.-' H(20' @"-&-' "<(2--' M+' "1%' `;Bc' <2)1.($&-' also take part in coordinated land and air exercises at SPTA. A cursory glance at recent satellite images of SPTA would seem to confirm MoD’s conviction that its three primary areas (east, central and west) have largely been spared the transformations of the modern era. The plain appears to be an almost unadulterated oasis in an increasingly manufactured landscape, a beleaguered wilderness in an age of monoculture and nebulous conurbations. Closer inspection, however, reveals a blasted landscape crisscrossed with vehicle tracks, pock‐marked with impact craters and studded with unusual buildings and facilities. Cross‐referencing these images with current military maps shows a terrain divided into twenty‐ five major areas with many other smaller subdivisions.24 Figure 6.3 shows the overall configuration of these boundaries which are determined both by the topography of the landscape and a designated training function. England’s largest unploughed, arable‐free downland is in fact a highly regulated environment, subdivided as a bookable resource for hire by any military unit in the UK. To return to airspace: the MoD collaborates with the CAA to design and implement Danger Areas and Special M-&' ;$(-9"<&' Q5M;h' 2#&(' 6"U"(%2)-' 0$/$."($-&%' /"1%-<"9&-' – a process which, though lengthy and potentially involving many stakeholder groups, is relatively transparent. There is, however, increasing evidence to suggest that the use of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) will significantly alter the design of sovereign airspace and fundamentally change our use and perception of the British skies.25 At SPTA, for example, the requirement to integrate Watchkeeper UAVs into military training exercises while keeping them segregated from other air users has recently resulted in the creation of a vast new volume of restricted airspace over civilian land exclusively for use by military drones (Figure 6.4). The logistical shift in remote vision continues with a fC op y 2 Pr oo 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 complexity that structures and limits travel around sovereign British airspace. The scale and proliferation of militarised airspace across the British Isles is a startling feature of a nation that is apparently reducing physical control of its military estate. This chapter could not possibly describe all the features and formations present in the map below, but it does offer a glimpse into a vast invisible realm of military spatial territorialisation. (Plate 36) If this essay paints a picture of the British military capability as a spatial phenomenon, as a vast complex of static and flexible forms animated by flows of humans, vehicles and weapon systems, it does so in recognition that such a complex is one of many. Each nation state has its own variant, more or less equipped and technologically enabled, and more or less connected to others by proximity, agreement and rigorous planning. These are the landscapes where the military imagination conceptualises the spaces of battle and redraws the air and the land on those terms. War, however, is the condition where those plans, so carefully laid, unravel. 20 21 CONCLUSIONS Pr oo 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 While each spatial assemblage described above is unique in its dimensions and in its relation to the geography it inhabits, a pattern of a gradual, incremental construction is repeated at many militarised sites across the UK and around the coastal waters. They are designed to contain specific activities but are no longer protected by crown immunity, nor are they impervious to the concerns of civil pressure groups or the broader requirements of public accountability.29 More than ever, the British armed services find themselves constrained by the very landscape they inhabit, and with pressure to release parts of the Defence Estate back to civil use, the MoD has a vested interest in perpetuating an image of the British landscape in which they have a historic and continuing role. As such, the Ministry is increasingly presenting itself as the environmental custodian of heritage sites, uncultivated 62 Emerging Landscapes landscapes and certain endangered species that are viewed as characteristically ‘British’ or ‘English’.30 For these reasons the militarised spaces they create are becoming adaptive systems which are able to accommodate all manner of external influences; areas of national parks can be regularly opened to walkers and to the farming community, restricted airspaces can be shared with civil user groups, military‐ controlled waters can be open to leisure and commercial shipping, and conservation is managed in a way that is more transparent to external bodies. In this sense, military and civil spaces continue to exist in material proximity to one another – in parallel to one another but also in what can be described as, to paraphrase Massey, ‘contemporaneous plurality’ where ‘distinct trajectories coexist’.31 Here space can be simultaneously military and civil, an ambiguous hybrid whose complexity evades interpretation. As it becomes integrated into commercial and civil structures there is a sense in which militarised space is becoming much harder to see, define or measure: many spaces now have the ability to ‘switch’ on and off in accordance with public and private sector needs; there are regular flows of personnel and vehicles between sites across the UK, and even the British atomic weapons industry is now managed predominantly by US companies. In short, military activity is slowly dissolving into the domestic landscape, into the fabric of civilian and commercial life. It may be overstating the matter to suggest that this is, to borrow from Virilio, ‘the sign of a rupture effectuated between human territory and the continuum of violence’.32 Rather, this process of n%&0".&($"/$U".$21S33 appears to be evidence of the ongoing preparation for war which has changed during the modern era ‘from being a strategic, military principle – the fare of martial experts – to becoming part of the inmost fabric of civil society’, where it is now ‘wired into the filigree of peace’’.34 What began in the UK at the end of the nineteenth century as a large scale acquisition of land, an internal colonisation, is today transforming into a commercial and bureaucratic procedure: military space as a negotiated entity, woven into fC op y 1 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 the fabric of the landscape and blooming invisibly in the skies above. The complex, connected landscape of military activity, so distinct during the Cold War, can no longer be relied on to make explicit the distinctions between war and peace, death and life. For this reason alone, the discourses surrounding military geographies must engage with its %&0".&($"/$U".$21*' $.-' $1#$-$@/&*' #&(.$<"/' %$0&1-$21-' "1%' $.-' growing economic exigency. Our ability to apprehend the spaces of military training and defence in all their changing forms is diminishing. It is essential, therefore, to preserve the critical distinction between what is military and what is not, "1%'.2'"<o)$(&'.6&'.22/-'.2'#$-)"/$U&'"1%'.2'$1.&(9(&.'.6&'1&G' spaces of military power. Towards a Critical Geography (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University 1 Press, 2001), 209. 2 6 Doreen Massey, For Space (London: Sage, 2005), 9. 3 7 The Defence Estate, Ministry of Defence, see webpage, 4 http://w w w.mod.uk/DefenceInternet/AboutDefence/ 5 WhatWeDo/DefenceEstateandEnvironment/TheDefenceEstate. 6 htm (Accessed on 9 November 2010). 7 Trevor May, Military Barracks, (Princes Risborough: Shire, 8 2002), 8–11. 9 8 9 The widespread compulsory purchase and ‘enclosure’ of land 10 fC op y 1 for military activity is perhaps not so surprising in a country 11 with such a contentious history of subtracting land from 12 n<20021S' )-&F' D2G&#&(*' $1' "' @)(4&21$14' &("' 2H' 0&<6"1$U&%' 13 warfare the systematic use of land for training was almost 14 14 <&(."$1/,'"'(&L&<.$21'2H'@(2"%&('.(&1%-'$1'$1%)-.($"/'02%&(1$.,' 15 15 16 Notes 17 1 .2'-,-.&0".$U&'%$-<$9/$1&*'&%)<".$21*'6&"/.6'"1%'0"1)H"<.)($14' 16 Rachel Woodward, Military Geographies (London: Wiley‐ 17 processes across society. (Hampshire), 18 18 Blackwell, 2004), 13. Woodward states that the French training 19 estate is in the region of 110,932 ha – less than half that of the Curragh (County Kildare), Shoeburyness (Essex), Otterburn 19 20 UK’s at 240,000 ha. (Northumberland), 2 B6&' D3Kc' K&#$&GJ' D"(1&--$14' 3g<$&1<$&-*' K&.6$17$14' 22 Outcomes, The Future of the Defence Estate, An Independent 23 Report by The Centre for Defence Studies, King’s College London, 24 25 April 2011. 3 26 Henri Lefebvre, The Production of Space (Oxford: Blackwell, 1991), 277. Plain (Wiltshire), Dartmoor Aldershot (Devon), Castlemartin 20 (Pembrokeshire) and later at Stanford (Norfolk), Sennybridge 21 22 (Powys), Purbeck (Dorset). 11 John Childs, The Military Use of Land: A History of the Defence 23 24 Estate (Bern: Peter Lang, 1998), 148. 12 For a comprehensive archaeological survey of Second World 25 War defensive sites in the UK see, ‘Defence of Britain Project’, 26 Council for British Archaeology, http://www.britarch.ac.uk/cba/ 27 Aljazeera' projects/dob/, (Accessed on 20 May 2010). 29 opinion/2011/06/2011610134756341516.html, (Accessed 10 July 30 2011). While Barkawi addresses the role of private security in 31 supporting global trade, he also reminds us that military troops 14 In the event of a nuclear confrontation, the continuity of 31 32 have been circulating the globe for centuries, often in support of the British government would, in principle, be maintained 32 33 long‐term economic trade strategies. from large central command bunkers (the 240‐acre Central 33 This follows David Harvey’s call for ‘careful studies of how Government War Headquarters in London, and in the 35‐acre 34 35 geography as a mode of understanding is formulated, used ‘Burlington’ facility in Corsham, Wiltshire), and 11 regional 35 36 "1%' "99/$&%' $1' %$W&(&1.' $1-.$.).$21"/' -&..$14-' QH2(' &f"09/&*' command sites around the UK. Many cities and towns had their 36 37 the military, Greenpeace, the state apparatus, multinational own civil defence bunkers for key workers and members of the 37 38 corporations, and so on)’. David Harvey, Spaces of Capital: Civil Defence Corps. In addition, the Royal Observer Corps 38 34 4 5 G&@-$.&*' 6..9Jss&14/$-6F"/T"U&&("F1&.s$1%&9.6s 28 13 W.G. Sebald, Austerlitz, trans. Anthea Bell (London: Penguin, 29 30 2002), 24. 63 The Military Spatial Complex Tarak Barkawi, ‘Military Globalisation is Nothing New’, 28 27 Chapter 6 Pr oo 21 10 Salisbury 1 maintained approximately 40 sub‐surface Group Headquarters Pearson, and Peter Coates, eds., Militarized Landscapes: From 1 2 and over 1,500 smaller underground nuclear fallout monitoring Gettysburg to Salisbury Plain (London: Continuum, 2010). 2 3 stations arranged into strategic clusters around the UK. For 23 The Civil Aviation Authority designation for each SPTA danger 3 4 further details see Subterranea Britannica website at, http:// area is as follows: Imber: EG D123, Larkhill: EG D125, Everleigh: 4 5 www.subbrit.org.uk/category/nuclear‐monitoring‐posts EG D128, Bulford: EG D126, Lavington: EG D124, Porton: EG 5 6 (Accessed on 24 January 2012). D127. Although not strictly within the boundary of SPTA, Porton 6 remains integral to military training operation in the area. See, 7 ‘ENR 5.1 — Prohibited, Restricted and Danger Areas’, National 8 7 15 Julian Glover, ‘Our defence policy is caught between pride and 8 guilt’, Guardian, 22 March, 2009, 30. +/%* 7%&R4* B"%;/4"(, http://www.ead.eurocontrol.int/eadbasic/ 9 10 end of the Cold War, the purchase of short term rights and licence pamslight‐67C3C5A7BF20D113D8D96ABF6CB5E85C/7FE5 10 11 to use land for military training has increased from 103,400 ha in QZZF3FXUS/EN/AIP/ENR/EG_ENR_5_1_en_2012‐12‐13.pdf 11 12 =>>O'.2'=NN*OOO'6"'$1'EOO>'G6$<6'0"(7-'"'-)@./&'@).'-$41$A<"1.' (Accessed on 19 December 2012). 12 13 change in land acquisition strategies. It also calls into question 24 This augmented GoogleMap is based on, ‘United Kingdom 13 14 the logic of permanent freehold ownership, particularly in a Training Areas map 1:25,000, Salisbury Plain (West) and 14 15 time when the nature of military operations remains uncertain. Salisbury Plain (Centre and East)’, Ordnance Survey (produced 15 16 See Defence Analytical Service Agency statistics at: http://www. )1%&('.6&'%$(&<.$21'2H'!&H&1<&'[&24("96$<'8&1.(&'"1%'&W&<.$#&' 16 17 dasa.mod.uk/modintranet/UKDS/UKDS2009/c6/table602. from January 2008). 17 18 html (Accessed on 9 June 2010). fC op y 16 While ownership of land has remained relatively static since the 9 25 The apparently inevitable and widespread application of UAVs 18 17 Martin Dodge and Rob Kitchin, ‘Flying through Code/Space: for civil and military use is taken for granted in many aviation 19 20 The Real Virtuality of Air Travel’, cited in Alison J. Williams, <$(</&-*' "' H"<.' G6$<6' G"-' <21A(0&%' $1' "' <21#&(-".$21' G$.6' "1' 20 21 ‘Reconceptualising Spaces of the Air: Performing the Multiple RAF base Commander at the Salisbury Plain Airspace Change 21 22 Spatialities of UK Military Airspaces’, Transactions of the public consultation session at the Bowman Centre, Amesbury 22 23 Institute of British Geographers 36, no. 2 (2011): 253–67. 21'B6)(-%",'=='l)1&*'EOO>F'nm2)'6&"(%'$.'6&(&'A(-.F'B6&'-7$&-'G$//' 23 Pr oo 19 24 18 Williams, ‘Reconceptualising Spaces of the Air’, 258. be full of these things [UAVs] in a few years’, the Commander 24 25 19 J. R. Smith, Foulness: A History of an Essex Island Parish was heard to say. 25 26 Proposals for new military airspaces are initiated by the MoD 26 20 B6$-'$1H2(0".$21'$-'@"-&%'21'A&/%G2(7')1%&(."7&1'21'd2)/1&--' in collaboration with the national regulator, the Civil Aviation 27 by the author during 2008 and interviews conducted with Authority in consultation with other civil, commercial and 28 members of the village and farming community. military stakeholders. New airspace designs pass through a 29 26 Q86&/0-H2(%J'3--&f'K&<2(%'cg<&':)@/$<".$21-*'=>\Oh*'N>pPOF 27 28 29 MOD -."7&62/%&(' <21-)/.".$21' 9(2<&--' @).' .6&' A1"/' "99(2#"/' (&-.-' 30 31 Shoeburyness are known as D136, D138, D138a and D138b (Figure with the CAA. For more on this process see, ‘Consultation on 31 32 5.3). These four connected volumes of space currently extend An Airspace Change to Establish Segregated Airspace for The 32 33 3,658 metres up (and potentially as far as 18,288) and encompass Wales Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Environment’, Welsh 33 34 MOD Shoeburyness in its entirety, stretching nearly 28 miles Assembly Government, 2009, http://wales.gov.uk/docs/det/co 34 (45 km) over the island and surrounding tidal sands. nsultation/090507aberporthconsen.pdf, (Accessed on 8 June 35 2009). 36 30 21 The 35 four designated air Danger Areas around 36 22 For more on Foulness island and MoD Shouburyness see, 37 Matthew Flintham, ‘The Shoeburyness Complex: Military 27 The Guardian points out that ‘At least four police forces – Essex, 37 38 Space and the Problem of the Civilian Body’, in Tim Cole, Chris I&(-&,-$%&*' 5."W2(%-6$(&' "1%' .6&' b($.$-6' B("1-92(.' 92/$<&' p' 38 64 Emerging Landscapes 1 have bought or used microdrones. Last summer the Serious DEF2EFAE0D93/0/sanctuary_37.pdf, (Accessed on 25 January 1 2 Organised Crime Agency published a tender notice requesting 2012). 2 3 information on “a fully serviced, airborne, surveillance‐ready 31 Massey, For Space, 9. 3 4 platform for covert observation” provided by either drones or 32 Paul 4 5 manned aircraft’, Owen Bowcott and Paul Lewis, ‘Attack of the 6 Drones’, Guardian (G2 supplement), 17 January 2011, 10. Virilio, Bunker Archeology (New York: Princeton 5 Architectural Press, 2006), 20. 33 Paul Virilio, War and Cinema: The Logistics of Perception 6 28 This term can be understood as a way of conceptualising (London: Verso, 1989). While Virilio makes explicit the apparent 7 8 assemblages or complexes of related spaces with solid n%&0".&($"/$U".$21S'2H'G"(H"(&'p'9(&<$9$.".&%'@,'.6&'"<<&/&(".$14' 8 9 geographical, infrastructural and architectural element but transmission of images and information – the term can be 9 10 $1<2(92(".$14'$1#$-$@/&*'#&(.$<"/'"1%'L&f$@/&'%$0&1-$21-F' )1%&(-.22%'$1'.6$-'.&f.'QG6$<6'%&"/-'G$.6'.6&'"/.24&.6&('%$W&(&1.' 10 fC op y 7 11 29 d2(' -9&<$A<' %&."$/-' 21' .6&-&' $--)&-' -&&*' I"($"11"' !)%/&,, An spaces of training and defence) as a response to ever more 11 12 Environmental History of the UK Defence Estate, 1945 to the stringent civil regulatory conditions, ecological requirements, 12 Present (London: Continuum, 2012). and the outsourcing of military services and building projects. 13 13 14 30 B6&' I2!' 0"4"U$1&*' Sanctuary, describes numerous wildlife This is as much an ideological shift in our expectations of 14 15 and archaeological conservation projects underway across the military behaviour as it is a technologically enabled response to 15 16 defence estate including, most notably, the successful scheme 17 to reintroduce the Great Bustard to Salisbury Plain. For further 18 details on this and other projects see, Sanctuary, no. 37 (2008) at 19 http://www.mod.uk/NR/rdonlyres/53BCBF1A‐A440‐483E‐B32E‐ 21 22 23 24 25 26 28 29 30 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 32 33 33 34 34 35 35 36 36 37 37 38 38 65 The Military Spatial Complex 31 Chapter 6 27 18 and Critical Theory (London: Routledge, 2000), 102. Pr oo 20 16 the limitations of land in the UK. 34 Beatrice Hanssen, Critique of Violence: Between Poststructuralism 17