Click here for the UK government's new Strategic Defence and Security Review:

In summary, the SDSR outlines 8% cuts to the British defence budget with

the Royal Navy reduced by around 5,000 personnel, the British Army by 7,000, the RAF by around 5,000 and civilians reduced by around 25,000. Even the Telegraph admits that the MoD got off lightly in this months round of public sector cuts. RAF Kinloss in Scotland will close and Tornado fighters at Lossiemouth will transfer to the UK in a somewhat half-hearted bid to centralise and consolidate the strategic distribution of airbases around the UK. Other RAF bases may be 'repurposed' for use by the other armed services, and the massive MoD training site proposed for St Athan, Wales, is on permanent hold. All of which means that there will be very little difference to the overall size of the defence estate

DDR-Luftraum mit Google Earth

A friend passed me a link to another Google Earth project. This one represents the airspace of the German DDR during the 1980s. It’s very difficult to interpret but it suggests that the divided geographical and social mess of that period also extended into the airspace. Berlin is represented as a confusion of restricted Soviet airspace blocks, Allied zones, military zones, transit corridors, invisible ‘walls’ and other unidentifiable volumes. It is surprising to think that at some level the Allied and Soviet authorities must have had a detailed and ongoing dialogue about airspace design. This project is by the Military Airfield Directory and is definitely a fascinating contribution to the emerging field of airspace ‘histories’.