A Meaningful Discussion on Tornado ZG710
In this WAW.com investigation, we take a deeper look at the 2003 loss of Tornado GR4 ZG710 in the Gulf, and the long-standing allegations that a combination of systemic failures, technical misjudgement, and institutional arrogance contributed to a tragedy that should never have happened. Two British servicemen died in an avoidable blue-on-blue incident, later written off as “fog of war.” But as new testimony emerges, that explanation feels increasingly hollow.
This article forms part of a wider inquiry in which WAW.com is working directly with a former aircraft technician who personally handled ZG710 prior to its deployment. Their evidence — and the documents that accompany it — suggest that parts of the UK Ministry of Defence (MOD), and certain engineering staff within the chain of command, may have been involved in obscuring critical information about a still-unresolved fault in ZG710’s Identification Friend or Foe (IFF) system.
What follows is a reconstruction of events leading up to the crash, based on that testimony and corroborated materials.
The Pressure Builds – RAF Restructuring and the Run-Up to War
Our story begins in September 2002, months before the first bombs fell. The RAF was already under enormous strain. A sweeping round of redundancies, structural changes, and technical reshuffles had left entire engineering departments stretched thin. Many trades were manned by inexperienced staff with gaps in training — through no fault of their own, but through institutional decisions far above their heads.
Into this environment arrived a recently promoted avionics technician — whom we will call Airman M for this investigation. By this point, Airman M had served four years in the RAF and had already worked at depth maintenance level on NATO avionics systems down to component level. He had specialist training across all core avionics disciplines: communications, radar, flight systems, and digital flight systems.
He was not, as some within his new unit assumed, a fresh trainee.
Their posting was to Tornado Aircraft Servicing Flight (TASF) at RAF Marham, the hub where frontline Tornado GR4s were pushed through fast-turnaround servicing to prepare them for deployment. With the UK government quietly preparing for war in early 2003, the Tornado force had been ordered to generate 55 deployable aircraft — a staggering request given the depleted workforce and the condition of many airframes. Of the roughly 300 Tornados the RAF held on paper, far fewer were airworthy once servicing cycles, major overhauls, and parts cannibalisation were factored in the RAF was lucky if it was going to make the 55 airframe target.
A Fractured Team – Leadership Nowhere to Be Seen
Within TASF, two corporals — whom we will call Airman B and Airman O — supervised alternating shifts. Between them, they wielded significant influence over day-to-day activities, despite one being relatively inexperienced and the other developing a reputation for arrogance.
They were supported by Airman C, who, according to testimony, had neither conducted a welcome interview nor reviewed Airman M’s personnel file. Had he done so, he might have recognised the skillset being brought into the unit.
Instead, Airman M was treated as though he had just arrived fresh from training. A corporal was assigned to shadow him everywhere, and he was prohibited from touching any aircraft system without explicit permission. This continued for weeks, during a period when BAE Systems engineers were working urgently on computer and electrical upgrades to improve the Tornado’s defensive aids suite.
The team needed expertise. They simply didn’t know they already had it.
The TACAN Incident – and Cracks Begin to Show
Everything changed one afternoon when Airman B was troubleshooting a fault on a Tornado’s Tactical Air Navigation System (TACAN). The aircraft was failing to lock onto a range signal, Airman B was unable to diagnose the issue. The mistake a very basic one, involved the failure of an Line Replaceable Unit (LRU) card or an improperly tightened aerial connection.
When Airman M calmly suggested it might be the card or the aerial interconnection, Airman B reacted angrily. He dismissed Airman M outright, shouting that he was “fresh out of training” and therefore incapable of understanding the system.
Frustrated but remaining professional, Airman M left the platform, located the faulty LRU, discovered the loose aerial connection, re-secured it, and returned. Moments later, the HSI (Horizontal Situation Indicator) locked on correctly.
Rather than acknowledge the fix, Airman B escalated his anger — demanding to know why Airman M had dared to move or touch anything without permission.
This outburst was the breaking point. In front of the team, Airman M finally stated clearly that he had been in the RAF since 1998, had years of experience at depth-level avionics repair, and no longer intended to be treated like an untrained recruit.
It was the first moment his colleagues realised he was not who they had assumed — and the first moment cracks in the department’s competence truly showed.
What happened next set off an even sharper reaction from Airman B. The moment the questions were raised, he sprang down from the aircraft—dragging Airman M behind him—leaving the power still screaming through the jet, warnings blaring across the cockpit. He stormed all the way back into the office, incandescent, shouting at Airman M to “sit the fuck down at the table.”
Airman B slammed a stack of GR4 specialist notes in front of Airman M and barked at them to point out—right there and then—where the equivalent card to a Range Gate sat in the system, and how the faults Airman M had identified could be compared to anything he supposedly understood. Then he disappeared into the back office with the Chief and Airman C, venting fury at them as though they had staged some conspiracy simply because he’d been challenged in front of a jet.
His rage made it obvious: he hated being called out on an aircraft he believed he controlled. And yet he knew full well there was a Range Gate in the system—because without it, how exactly was the data being computed to produce range information to the HSI?
This was the difference between Airman M and Airman B in stark form. Airman M had spent years on Avionic systems, working analogue and digital equipment right down to component level. Airman B, until about eighteen months before this, had been a 1st line — meaning his entire diagnostic approach was limited to: the box doesn’t do what it should → swap it → if the new box doesn’t fix it, pass it to depth. That was their entire engineering worldview.
When the three of them eventually re-emerged from the office, Airman M calmly pointed to the system and walked Airman O, the oncoming shift lead through the exact point where the range data was being generated and passed to the HSI. Before he even finished, he was dragged back into the office for yet another shouting match from Airman B, with both men glaring through the window like they were conducting an interrogation.
Where Airman B played the “good cop,” Airman O always played the “bad cop”—the supposed muscle of the office—puffing his chest out while Airman C, usually failed, to keep them grounded. The Chief was simply counting down the days to retirement.
More heated conversations unfolded behind the office door. Then Airman O and Airman B returned to Airman M, performing their little routine again — first aggression, then false humility, while picking his brain for answers they clearly didn’t have. Meanwhile, Airman C and the chief had gone marching up to the hangar Flight Sergeant and Warrant Officer’s office to ask the very question everyone else had been ignoring:
“Who the hell is this lad, and why didn’t anyone tell us what he actually knows?”
Airman’s M view was simple: if they didn’t ask, why should he tell them? He had arrived at the unit quietly, gone through an induction with the safety rep, and been dumped in the office like a trainee straight out of Halton. From the moment he walked in, the assumption was that he was one of the “new breed” — under-trained, deskilled, and barely worth a posting interview. He wasn’t even worth an introduction from the Chief or the Sergeant. Just a curt:
“Here’s your corporal – get on with it.”
The confusion upstairs was quickly cleared up once Officer G intervened. She explained exactly who Airman M was, and that this was a game he played from time to time. He wanted to know who he was working alongside, whether they were worth their salt, or whether they were all bluff and bravado. Right now, from what he had seen, it was bravado—with Airman B trying to save face behind Airman O’s aggression, laying down the law to Airman M in full view of both shifts, furious that a junior technician had diagnosed and corrected faults on a system he had mastered years before they ever touched it.
This context matters because of one thing:
The TASF department had become a textbook case following the Air Accident of ZG710 of the systemic failures described in the MIT paper supported by Nancy Leveson.
The article dissected the dysfunctional hierarchical culture—where competence was punished, incompetence rewarded, and the safety-critical engineering structure was completely out of alignment with RAF requirements. And those failures, left unchecked, contributed directly to the chain of events that caused the loss of Tornado ZG710.
Instead of addressing that structural failure, the Board of Inquiry fell back on the oldest, laziest excuse in the book.
“A poor workman blames his tools.”
where two people died.
The culture that enabled it was never fixed.
And those complicit in what amounts to corporate manslaughter walked away untouched, some of them still working in the industry today.
Worse still, as you’ll read later, Airman B and Airman O went to extraordinary lengths to bury the truth—supported, it appears, by a network of senior figures across the UK MOD, US DOD, and Ministerial Level If that is accurate, then serious questions need answering. Some individuals may well belong behind bars.
The official BOI Report which the government stands by in its assumption of what happened in the run up and the shooting down of ZG710 it has to be noted as you will read further on considering there was the starting of a serious crimes investigation Airman M was never interviewed or requested to attend any part of the Board of Inquiry investigation in to the downing of ZG710 as what you may read further on could be disturbing from Airman M’s account of a dysfunctional hierarchy it could have also resolved some very important issues where the aircraft and two of the RAF’s officers could have been coming home safe and well:
Later that week, the Flight Sergeant gave Airman M his “welcome interview,” opening with the words:
“We appear to have underestimated you.”
He wasn’t wrong. Airman M was one of only few promoted under a scheme rolled out by the RAF to fast track the trades people that originally joined the RAF as Mechanical stream he had earned it not only working against the odd’s against many who had university degrees and coming through his trance he had to work harder than anyone to be given the opportunity to go through a condensed training regime as his contemporaries where he had done the same course as the Technical stream minus one subject but had completed the course in eight months instead of the eighteen months which his degree trained brethren were working through the technical stream for his efforts as he had already completed the initial Mechanical trade training already he was awarded an NVQ in aeronautical engineering he was offered the opportunity to complete the eighteen month course on paper, only for Airman M to find out at the end of his career that this was an offer on the table if he had turned down the new course opportunity and he had managed to do all this in less than being at his previous unit for just shy of two years as there were other duties which Airman M was privy to which had protected the Nation / placed a sticking plaster on World War Three which if had come to light would have brought the scenes which we are seeing in Europe with Russian aggression being ever more at the for front as we see today in 2025.
Airman M understood the tempo. He understood the stakes. He understood that TASF was operating at full burn. RAF Marham was on a relentless two-shift rotation — 12 hours on, 12 hours off, seven days a week—through the entire run-up to the Iraq War Late September 2002 Every seven days the shift flipped from day to night, and nobody had a second to breathe.
RAF Lossiemouth, meanwhile, was on a brutal 24-on / 24-off cycle that collapsed under its own weight. They couldn’t deliver aircraft for training or deployment. In the final weeks before the invasion, they effectively declared burnout and began ferrying their remaining jets to Marham for rectification, doubling the load on a team already stretched to their limits.
Under strain like that, discipline starts to slip. Corners get cut. Tempers crack. The first signs of trouble appeared on Tornado ZG710 during the aircraft rebuild.
The aircraft had been stripped to the frame, undergone a full computer modification by BAE Systems, and rebuilt. Forty-eight hours remained before it was due to fly. Avionics rebuild complete. Auto stabs done. Systems check normal. On paper it was ready for air test.
But when ZG710 lined up at the runway and passed the Rapier missile battery as every Tornado did in the run up to the war the tower reported a catastrophic problem:
No IFF response.
Back to the hangar, New crypto loaded, Another test, Initial signs looked good.
But when the system was switched from Mode 4A to 4B, everything detonated.
The unit shorted out immediately but the lighting circuit on the system was still active and was saying to the technicians and the pilots that the box was still being powered.
The Tornado GR4 carried two variants of IFF: a 5-volt system and a 12-volt system.
Mode 4A appeared to be wired correctly for 5V.
Mode 4B, however, appeared to be incorrectly wired for 12V. Meaning this:
Every time the switch was made, they were blowing up a 5V IFF unit by feeding it 12V.
Three units should have been the absolute limit before someone stopped and investigated the interconnections.
But Airman O, on night one in the run up to the Air Test, destroyed seven IFF units.
Airman O then tried to force a 12V system through a 5V line and couldn’t understand why nothing powered.
By 3am, Airman O resorted to beating the final IFF box with his fist — genuinely believing he could “beat it into life” using the same aggressive swagger he used on people who worked for them.
Airman M had to intervene, when Airman O began demanding that every IFF unit from every Tornado in the hangar be stripped and tested on ZG710 meaning Airman O was willing to destroy every IFF available in the hanger rather than test the IFF on another aircraft where power was available to assess if there was something no working with there mythology in testing the system, this was at some come back to Airman M in the response from Airman O. If Airman O had succeeded in their demands, he could have grounded several of the frontline fleet in the run up to the eve of war.
The following day, Airman B repeated the pattern and blew the rest of the IFF units available to the tornado fleet in the hanger! It was never known if this was off his own choice or if there was another failure in the Hierarchy and leader ship of the team but it caused a delay in gaining aircraft ready for front line operations as between the two of them they had blown up every available IFF unit to the RAF at that time.
At this point, it was clear the fault was bigger — likely a mis-wired modification.
Airman S a newly promoted but highly regarded corporal who would go on through his career to become one of RAF Marham’s Engineering Warrant Officers quietly approached the electrical engineers for help while trying not to step on the toes of Airman B, and Airman O being the non-senior corporal on the team. But politics intervened. Most of the electrical team were at the end of their careers, many with 22+ years’ service, and none of them wanted to jeopardise their resettlement with no official Transition to War confirmed management could not force them to assist.
In the end, only one electrical engineer supported TASF for most of the run up to the war and he could only help one shift at a time. He did what he could. But his experience level was nowhere near what the situation demanded.
That is where everything began to unravel.
With no assistance from the Electrical Department, with both Airman B and Airman O’s blinkered vision between them and Airman C, it was decided they would fit a fresh system when they arrived back from depth maintenance repaired, test it, not switching the system to Mode B, and see if they could progress the system through the air test. If the air test did not switch between modes, it would, by all intents and purposes, be registered as operational, and they could get the aircraft off the books.
Airman M was not having it. Drawing on their experience, they discussed the situation well above all those in the office, making it clear the test was being fudged. He stuck firmly with the theory that no matter what was done, the system would fail if a sortie progressed over. If the codes had to be changed during the sortie — switching the aircraft between Mode 4A and Mode 4B — it would be game over. The risk was too great. There could be no guarantee.
The problem grew more complex: the lighting for the IFF Module worked off a separate voltage supplied to the box. By all intents and purposes, anyone assessing the box and seeing it lit up would assume the system was working — but it was not.
It was hard for Airman M to play tattletale on members of his team, but potential lives were at risk. Then, the goalposts moved. Officer G, the senior officer in charge who had worked with Airman M at a previous unit initially backed him 100%. Their shared history meant Officer G knew Airman M would not put his head above the pit without reason. This was not about heads rolling or careers being destroyed; it was about preventing a near miss in a high-stakes environment and giving two team members a better chance of coming home safely, better than fifty-fifty and ensuring their own side could identify them on the battlefield.
Officer G called in Airman B and Airman O to explain in detail what they had done to rectify the issue, with Airman C there as support. Politics now governed the room. Officer G lacked time on the unit and the backing of her seniors; Airman B, Airman O, and Airman C had it. Their top cover was Officer G’s boss. The order was simple: change the language on the paperwork following a further test managed by Airman C, then sign it off so the aircraft could be recovered to the squadron and travel to Ali Al Salem Airbase for in theatre use. It is believed this decision went to ministerial review, based on evidence relayed by Airman B, Airman O, and Airman C at the meeting where Airman M was excluded from making their case.
This is where problems escalated. Following the intense meeting, all three returned to the office to confront Airman M, specialist course paperwork in hand. Airman B and Airman O played good cop/bad cop, attempting to “re-educate” Airman M on the Tornado GR4 IFF system. Airman C rewrote the paperwork, so its language met the approval of the upper echelons, while Officer G followed orders to keep her masters satisfied. The goal: ensure the maintenance paperwork met requirements, and the system appeared operational.
Airman M rebuffed them. Using the course notes, he pointed out they had talked complete bollocks for an hour. He identified exactly where the issue lay — down to the scenario that later caused ZG710 to be lost. If the aircraft flew a mission requiring the backup mode, the system would short, dumping all its cryptographic algorithms. The lights, meanwhile, would remain lit, masking the fault.
Airman M challenged Airman C on what had been done to involve BAE Systems in reviewing ZG710’s modifications. The fault had appeared post-modification. The Electrical Department had only recently assessed some interconnections due to limited staffing and outdated schematics, still awaiting the modded schematics for the Main Computer upgrade. The engineer noted a probable interconnection short or cross-feed: requesting a mode could dump cryptographic information intended for aircraft identification.
At that moment, Airman C was illuminated. A verbal request from Airman M, Airman S, and an engineer from a separate department made it clear: three engineers with political sway in the department were wrong. Others in the office stayed quiet, assuming Airman M was committing career suicide as they had mortgages to consider, opposing not just seniors but the entire establishment. Airman G had an epiphany in seeing what both Airman M and Airman S and the Aircraft Electrical Department were now saying. He pulled Airman B and Airman O into the office — recognizing Airman M’s point, aware of his own ambition to become Chief Tech being able to stay in the RAF for another five years and qualifying for a mortgage, conscious that failure to act could end his career.
The meeting began quietly. Then Airman C went apoplectic at both Airman B and Airman O:
“I am not the one going back down there to speak to Officer G saying, ‘forget everything I told you in the office with these two arseholes,’ but it appears we have made a fucking colossal error. You have until the plane is signed off to fix it. It better not end up on my lap, or Airman O and Airman B will be paying for the rest of their careers.”
Airman B and Airman O had to own up. The plane was being handed over to the squadron. Airman C now doubted the fix and wanted no part of the issue. Officer G followed moved goalposts. Airman M, now fragmented from his team, saw the person he trusted in the department now simply taking orders.
The paperwork was hastily rewritten by Airman O and Airman B they felt they could not return to Officer G or her superiors; they doctored it to try and force Airman M to undersign. Forty job sheets of intensive maintenance, initially involving multiple engineers, were condensed to three: By Airman O, and Airman B, with a caveat note from Airman C added. If the two had lied and cheated to reach this point, they now ensured that, if they went down, others went with them.
Airman M was handed the paperwork by Airman B, who asked Airman A (another engineer) to leave the room. Airman A refused. Airman M reviewed the paperwork, his name written in every undersign box, pen thrust in front of him. The good cop had turned bad cop. Airman O and Airman B tried to intimidate Airman M into claiming the work himself, insisting it had been witnessed and completed. In any investigation, they believed, Airman M would appear competent and experienced.
Airman M had already played the board of inquiry in his head. He put the pen down and told Airman B and Airman O to go fuck themselves. He refused to sign paperwork for ZG710. They threatened insubordination; he reminded them it would not stick and he would push for tech charges against Airman B and Airman O. They suggested desertion against Airman M; Airman M stood firm and still refused to sign.
While on standby for forward deployment in his warfighting role — specialist interrogator, COLPRO specialist, Citadel team member — he wished them luck chasing him to the Gulf to issue charges. He told Airman B and Airman O senior in rank to him to get a grip on reality: sending an aircraft with a serious fault, sending it not fit for theatre was a to much of a risk to all involved, The safest place for ZG710 was in the hangar for proper assessment and repair.
Airman O flipped. He picked Airman M up like a rag doll, threw him out the back of the office, beating him in the small alcove between Avionics and electrical offices, Airman M blacking out. Airman O stormed from the hangar. No one knew fully what was said to him by Officer G that morning. The pair could have gone back, admitted the lie, kept Tornado ZG710 in the hangar for BAE Systems to review, but instead, they continued fudging maintenance to falsify paperwork.
Airman M came to, tidied himself with Airman A’s support, sticking to his guns. The office was divided: anyone with knowledge knew the aircraft was unfit, but many were locked out of the loop between Airman B, Airman O, and Airman C. Airman M passed through two armoured doors via an airlock to the main hangar. Airman O continued beating him, smashing him against the doors until he passed out again. Then, Airman O and Airman B stormed back into the office, picked up the rewritten paperwork, went to Officer G to have her Order Airman M undersign it for ZG710’s release.
Something had shifted. Officer G now openly endorsed that the other two could have Airman M undersign documentation for all tests carried out by Airman O and Airman B, assuring Airman O she would manage it — as long as Airman O ceased the physical assault on Airman M, She advised Airman O of Airman M’s training from their previous unit as a specialist interrogator, his immediate placement on the Marham Citadel team, and his secondary duties, which meant he had not been home for three weeks, with items which he was dealing with in the back ground reporting on Iraqi immigrants, now turned Iraqi intelligence officers working on extended families of Military members in and around the country Officer G said with the interrogator training Airman O could beat him for the rest of his life and he would not cave to his way of thinking.
The stage was set. The aircraft, the team, and the politics of the RAF — all converging on a single, critical moment in ZG710’s story.
Officer G called Airman M into the office, attempting to appeal to his better nature, citing the greater good, the need to avoid appearing inferior in front of allies, and the fact that the release of Tornado ZG710 was well beyond his pay grade — now a minister-level decision on the risks associated with the aircraft. Which minister was certifying its release? That information was not passed to Airman M. It did not sway him.
Airman M made it clear, there and then, exactly how ZG710 would meet its end in theatre. Only he and Officer G knew the extent of his certainty. For context, Airman M had made similar claims in the months running up to 9/11, claims which had led to his referral to the lead hypnotist at King’s College for intelligence-gathering assessments and regression sessions, to document the visions he was having. Between 1999 and 2001, these sessions had informed his selection for other duties associated with King’s College.
Officer G considered sending him for another assessment. But if Airman M was that certain that aircraft, that outcome, then the possibility of ZG710 being shot down, unidentifiable in the critical seconds during checks and tests, was very real. Officer G recognized the dilemma: escalate the issue up the chain and risk Airman M looking “like a fruit loop in the hanger” or he accept that his orders aligned with her own assessment. In the end, it was agreed: Airman M would not sign the paperwork, and further tests would be ordered before ZG710’s release.
Airman M was kept away from the subsequent tests. Airman O, Airman B, and Airman C carried them out: twenty minutes at the aircraft, back inside, and signed off the aircraft as serviceable — on a separate two-page work order, separate from the forty-plus pages of prior investigation and the re-written three pages which were not signed, stored in an unknown location.
Airman M still did not sign any documentation for ZG710 to enter theatre. Yet the aircraft was released the following morning. Officer G, accompanied by another TASF member, visited the Rapier missile team at the end of RAF Marham’s runway with coffee, cakes, and biscuits, informing them that ZG710 might not give an IFF response. She requested they alert her directly rather than follow the proper chain. The aircraft, undergoing checks and tests, would remain in circuit, returned to base, Tornado ZG710 was dispatched to theatre that morning. Rapier confirmed, with Officer G witness on site of the Rapier Battery, no IFF response from Tornado ZG710. With the aircraft signed off for operational use, the race was on to deploy someone without raising alarm.
That morning, Airman M was prepping and being issued equipment for deployment with the US Army front line in the role of COLPRO specialist. The British support role was still under question, given the changing intelligence threat.
He was also trained in interrogation and other Citadel methodologies, responsible for monitoring the local threat and preparing for potential local deployment on top of his primary duties with in TASF. Officer G is believed to have requested that Airman O and Airman B deploy from TASF to the front line to intercept ZG710 in an “front line offer of depth support” with a caveat to verify Tornado ZG710 and its IFF functionality, which, hours earlier, had failed with the Rapier battery, and guarantee would not respond to Patriot either. The implications would become clear later.
Airman B realized the gravity of the situation and prepared his equipment, ready by the end of the morning. and was going to be on the first available plane out of the UK. Airman O, in contrast, said he was going home, packing comfort items ready for his hotel stay in his rather unsavoury tone
Airman M pointed out that the deployment would be 12 x 12 living, green deployment. Airman O suddenly realized a problem: he did not have sufficient issued kit. Only one set of fatigues and boots — the rest had been sold to cover debts. He attempted to smooth the issue by gifting the storeman an expensive bottle to receive replacement kit, with stores empty already issuing all available equipment, Airman O then claimed his wife was having pregnancy complications, preventing his deployment. Investigations later revealed the claim to be over exaggerated. This should have placed Airman O on the soft list, documented in the BBC Gulf War documentary, for personnel refusing deployment. By policy, individuals on that list were banned from promotion or could be removed from service.
Airman O’s career, however, prospered post-ZG710. And Airman B’s did too. Anyone who spoke out about ZG710 before deployment saw their career, and their wings, clipped permanently apart from the odd balls.
This left Airman B being sent overseas to “catch up” with ZG710 alone. There were urgent, discreet attempts to communicate with the CO overseeing the deployment in to theatre of aircraft to prevent operational deployment until TASF could inspect it. Unfortunately, these efforts failed.
On Sunday, 23 March 2003, Airman M had a rare rest day before moving into local Citadel operations at RAF Marham, the deployment frontline with the Americans cancelled due to America making an emergency purchase of chemical warfare equipment followed by the changing threat assessment. Guarding the local threat and the remains of the UK’s Tornado fleet, mostly grounded at 2 Squadron. His war operations would follow twelve-hour evening shifts, Citadel by night, TASF by day, for the foreseeable future grabbing a thirty-minute kip where possible through the night.
That afternoon, Airman M was in Kent. A friend, glued to the TV since the start of operations, ran out exclaiming: one of ours had been shot down. Airman M and, Airman K — recently retired RAF Engineer and fully briefed on ZG710 — watched the live news feed.
The images were unmistakable. Airman K turned to Airman M:
“Fucking hell — you called it.”
Airman M knew immediately it was ZG710. The news channels had not yet identified the aircraft or the pilot. The blow was personal. Over the previous year, Airman M had been Getting back in to training in distance running — 6.2 miles from door to door on the station ring road — with one of the crew from ZG710 assisting in his efforts. Now, as Airman M and Airman K looked at each other, they knew urgent questions would follow. They needed to return to the unit as the paperwork would be locked down.
Rather than Airman M, being questioned which he had made himself available for he had been placed on initial amber alert guard as soon as he returned, following bona fide intelligence after the first deaths, at Lakenheath, Protesters were making headlines, and the intelligence suggested they would attempt to infiltrate RAF Marham. Someone had leaked that most of the Tornado fleet — most of it unserviceable — was stored there on the 2 Squadron site The intelligence proved accurate: spares, aircraft awaiting parts, all were there.
It was not the first time in Airman M’s career that he had been given an independent fire order, but for several nights the threat assessment was clear: protesters were already inside the wire, heading toward 2 Squadron’s site, situated between the station’s bomb bump and the squadron compound. The field was open. Under Transition to War (TTW) protocols, Airman M’s orders were explicit: anyone found on the unit — armed or unarmed — was considered an enemy combatant and could be shot on sight. No warnings, no exceptions.
During that night, and on subsequent nights, the protesters attempted to provoke Airman M and his team into opening fire despite their orders something was just not adding up with the order. One night, on the 2 Squadron compound, the security lighting was fully on — a measure to obscure enemy outlines and hinder approach. About 50 – 100 meters out, Airman M spotted two protesters in the long grass. He issued a clear warning: retreat the way you came. Over doggy radio, he notified the guard commander, who could intercept them if possible.
Suddenly, a twig snapped behind them. Not a normal environmental sound — a foot hitting it squarely. Instinctively, Airman M and his partner disengaged safeties. The sound had come from the inner area of the squadron, toward the stored aircraft. Fog had thickened, visibility near zero. They relied solely on hand signals as they moved into the woods.
Airman M’s extensive training kicked in: one-on-one interrogator courses, clearance for field interrogator training beyond Geneva Convention norms, exclusive UK Police weapons familiarisation under MACA (Military Assistance to Civil Authorities), Strike Command Leadership Certification — (Special Forces field management techniques) All of it told Airman M there was someone in the woods, and his partner agreed. Both remained silent, noting subtle changes in movement, gradually driving the intruder toward the open.
The fog obscured everything. Only when the intruder bolted ten meters ahead, into a clearing, did they make visual contact. They heard a female shriek, followed by a splash and a clanging metal drain — likely the water pool for jet cooling around the hanger. Shining torches down the drain revealed nothing: the depth and darkness made it impossible to confirm a hiding place. With TTW rules, they were covered. Contact was called off and radioed to the guard commander, though the message was not received. Debrief later confirmed: no physical sighting, only movement and noise.
For weeks, Airman M rotated between enhanced night guard and twelve-hour shifts at TASF, ensuring aircraft were ready to deploy while the rest of the squadron returned to maintenance. Fatigue was constant: cold showers in the TASF hangar, laundry in snippets, minimal rest. When reprimanded for taking thirty minutes’ sleep in a van between patrols which was the only sleep Airman M was getting for weeks at this point, Airman M had told his new guard commander at this point, who would sleep after their shift, that he would happily shoot him where he stood as it was TTW. Unsurprisingly, that did not go over well, but it was the reality of continuous operations to the level he was working the Guard commander either had to put up or shut up luckily for the Guard Commander on this occasion he shut up after gaining an understanding what Airman M and his team had been experiencing and the mobile guard commander took note that he should just disappear in to the either and leave his team to sleep when they wanted to sleep and patrol when they wanted to patrol the system was broken but, now the swing against an incompetent hierarchical structure on the unit was starting to go the right way.
Weeks later, after the main ground invasion concluded and hostilities were officially over, Airman M was contacted by a friend in Serious and Organised Crime. The meeting was unusual, remote, away from usual haunts, and conducted under precaution: his communications might be compromised. The topic was ZG710.
Airman M asked whether the conversation was on or off the record. It was off. The officer wanted to know what he knew about ZG710. SOCA had been asked by a solicitor representing the Patriot Missile Battery’s operating officer, about flaws in ZG710’s IFF system. If operational, the accident could have been avoided. Civil proceedings were being considered against Airman C, Airman B, Airman O, and Officer G from releasing ZG710. Airman M’s name appeared alongside several within the TASF Avionics Department Including, Airman A, Airman Z, Airman S, Airman X, Suspiciously, one SAC’s name was missing, raising questions at the meeting if they had supplied the names of the individuals who could possibly weigh in on what crimes Airman O, B, and C may have committed.
Career outcomes followed swiftly:
- Airman W: first promoted and posted out.
- Airman A: promoted and posted.
- Airman Z: offered immediate posting out of RAF Marham on an opportunity request
- Airman S: Steady promotion to warrant officer at RAF Marham
- Airman X: Retired as Corporal
- Airman B: promoted to Sergeant, placed in engineering documentation control safeguarding ZG710 paperwork, and any attempts of scrutiny and further investigation (Apologises to Airman M for his actions in 2013 as he nears RAF retirement) current career and where abouts unknown, but the question has to be asked what actions
- Airman D: Promoted to Sergeant within unit current career situation unknown
- Officer G: Promoted and reassigned keeps appearing when Officer M returns home to visit family
Airman M faced complications: a promotion intercepted by Officer G, rejected under two grounds (common sense and tact). His next posting offered no promotion but like the others in the department he was posted with in an opportunity posting environment. Even when later considered for promotion and a posting into Boscombe Down via RAF Cosford, his squadron leader at his then unit— a friend of Officer G — rejected him on the same grounds. When challenged, key MOD personnel linked to Boscombe Down deployments were caught off guard, disrupting plans for potential Military nano-engineering expansion. Airman M’s white paper on nano-engineering was withheld across key engineering and university institutions and the UK MOD.
Airman M’s corporal immediately washed his hands of the situation, stating he wanted no part in what had happened. However, he gave Airman M carte blanche to investigate further. When Airman M approached his sergeant with the same claim, the responses were mixed. The sergeant, alarmed, reported the matter to the Squadron Leader that he was making investigations.
Airman M was then called into the Squadron Leader’s office for a frank, candid discussion. She made it clear that by refusing his promotion for a second time, she had effectively decided to kill his career. Airman M was informed that he would never advance beyond his current stage, no matter his service or performance. Behind her, a change in the office photographs sent a subtle yet unmistakable message: the main canvas displayed a picture of her at a ball with two other women. Airman M knew Them all on one personal level or another, the second was Officer G, and the third a UN contact from previous deployments involving the Kursk Submarine (Another Blog Maybe). The statement was unmistakable: challenging her decision would mean the end of his career, not just a freeze in promotion.
Over the following years, many flight sergeants and warrant officers across various RAF squadrons submitted claims advocating for Airman M’s promotion and career progression. Each time, these claims were rejected. Year after year, Airman M was pre-boarded for promotion, only to find himself at the bottom of the promotion board, often below personnel who were not even eligible to be pre-boarded.
After leaving the Squadron Leader’s office that afternoon, Airman M was approached by the Unit Engineering Warrant Officer, who had refused to condone the Squadron Leader’s actions. The Warrant Officer presented Airman M with a draft Air Accident Report for Tornado ZG710, scheduled for release in the coming weeks.
The Warrant Officer expressed reservations about the report, noting discrepancies between what was written and what he had heard through informal channels. It was implied that the Squadron Leader had been spreading selective information, possibly influenced by Officer G. Airman M reviewed the report and agreed that the accident could have been completely avoided, but not for the reasons stipulated in the official documentation. He explained the true sequence of events and the cover-up that had ensued.
The Engineering Warrant Officer, a thirty-five-year veteran who had even worked on TSR2 was unsurprised. With his extensive experience and knowledge of suppressed secrets, he recognized that the complete mismanagement of engineering operations, combined with deliberate subversion by the MOD, had led to the deaths of the pilot and navigator. Moreover, efforts to silence whistle blowers and impede the SOCA investigation only compounded the tragedy.
WAW.com is committed to ensuring justice for those affected by this accident. We call upon the UK Ministry of Defence, the UK Government, and Serious Crimes authorities, and the US Department of Defence to reopen investigations into this matter and hold accountable all parties involved in the cover-up.
If you are a member of the Patriot Missile Team which was part of this incident we would like to hear from you to further deepen the WAW.COM investigation into the incident of Tornado ZG710.