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Concept
Four-minute warning
Summary
The four-minute warning was a public alert system conceived by the British Government during the Cold War and operated between 1953 and 1992. The name derived from the approximate length of time from the point at which a Soviet nuclear missile attack against the United Kingdom could be confirmed and the impact of those missiles on their targets. The population was to be notified by means of air raid sirens, television and radio, and urged to seek cover immediately. In practice, the warning would have been more likely three minutes or less.
The warning would be initiated by the detection of inbound missiles and aircraft targeted at the United Kingdom. Early in the Cold War, Jodrell Bank was used to detect and track incoming missiles, while continuing to be used for astronomical research.
Throughout the Cold War, there was a conflict between the Royal Air Force and the Home Office about who was in charge of the warning system. This was not for any practical or technical reason but more to do with who would be blamed if a false alarm were given or if an attack occurred without warning. By the 1980s, the warning was to be given on the orders of a Warning Officer from the Home Office's Warning and Monitoring Organisation stationed at RAF Booker near High Wycombe.
From the early 1960s, initial detection of attack would be provided primarily by the RAF BMEWS station at Fylingdales in North Yorkshire. There, powerful radars would track the inbound missiles and allow confirmation of targets. In later years the first indication of any imminent attack would be expected to come from infrared detectors aboard the United States Defense Support Program (DSP) satellites. BMEWS would still play an important role in tracking and confirming the destination of any launches.
The British government was not the main beneficiary of BMEWS, given that it would only receive what Solly Zuckerman described in 1960 as "no more than 5 minutes warning time" of an attack.
Official source
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