RAF Fairford update as British national arrested in connection with incident | BBC News

0:00 In the last few minutes, counterterror police say they've arrested another man over the incident at RAF Fairford in Gloustershirt last weekend where three suspicious fans were stopped near an air base, sparking a counterterrorism investigation. Our security correspondent Frank Gardner has the details and joins us this lunchtime. Hi Frank. So another development. What's the latest? Right. So, this is a 22-year-old Londoner uh that they have arrested in the bur of Westminster in central London. Premises nearby being searched. It's significant, I think, that he was uh arrested by counterterrorism police, not by down near Fairford uh in Gstersha by uh Gstersha police. He's been arrested under suspicion of preparation of acts of terrorism uh under the

0:48 section five of the terrorism act of 2006. It's perfectly possible that we don't know. He could be bailed uh like the other six who've been arrested but are still being investigated. Counterterrorism police say that this is a fastmoving and difficult investigation. They are their main motivation is to discover what was behind what was motivating the incidents around Fairford which of course become murkier by the day. And the trouble is that the authorities here on this side of the Atlantic are being pretty tight-lipped. They reveal very very little. Um partly because it's Britain's counterterrorism police that are leading this investigation and they don't want to give away anything that's going to mess that up or stand chances

1:34 of a successful prosecution if they're able to convict uh a case in court. But over in the States, you've had Donald Trump last night saying his bit, JD Vance saying his bit. Um and that of course delivers a whole flurry of new speculation which we then have to try and bottom out or dismiss. >> Yeah. Across the Atlantic, Frank, President Trump saying the United States pulled its bombers as we knew. But using the words some threat, giving that as the reason, what do we think he meant by that? Well, we think that the threat may have been some kind of a copycat uh attack, copying what Ukraine pulled off with extraordinary success and ingenuity. And

2:20 quite terrifying really. What they did in June 2025 was that they smuggled a load of drones deep into Russia, right into Siberia. And then these drones were stored in lorries which then released them like a flock of pigeons and they flew into um a strategic Russian nuclear bomber base. I say nuclear because these were nuclear capable aircraft as our B-52s that were been using Fairford. Um and it destroyed quite a lot of them and that was a big shock to Russia because it thought it was safe there. Well, in the same way, Fairfit is an awful long way from Iran, but one of the uh theories doing the rounds, and at the moment, it is only a theory because

3:08 we've not yet seen any evidence to back this up. In Iran, it's important to say uh I say they are nothing to do with this. The theory is that Iran was planning to copy that. >> Okay, we wait for the next developments. bank. Thank you.