Thin Pinstriped Line

  The Thin Pinstripedline blog has now been running for around 12 ½ years. For the last seven years it has been published on an at least weekly basis, and now hosts 673 published articles, has had over 4.5-million-page hits and has roughly 1.5 million written words of content. That’s an awful lot of time and writing invested in what is, at its heart, my spare time hobby. The blog began back in 2012 as a means of providing objective factual analysis of defence issues, many of which were being covered poorly in the media. It was common to see stereotypical lines blaming Civil Servants or out of touch ‘top brass’ for decisions being taken that, on the face of it looked silly. Often there were very good reasons for these decisions being taken, but the details were overlooked in the rush to get a good headline. The point of the blog was to try to put across a different perspective that explained ‘why’. UK MOD © Crown copyright From the outset this blog has been my hobby and not a camp...

The story of HMS CHALLENGER remains one of the most unusual of all post war Royal Navy vessels. Born in the late Cold War, she was in the eyes of the public a ‘white elephant’ commissioned and never operationally used and sold after just a few years’ service at the end of the Cold War. She was to the few public that had heard of her, ‘the Warship that never was’. But revealing files in the National Archives tell a story of a ship that was designed to fill a range of highly secretive intelligence support functions and clandestine espionage activity that, had she been successful, would have made her perhaps one of the most vital intelligence collection assets in the UK. This article is about the untold story of HMS CHALLENGER and why she deserves far more recognition than enjoyed to date. The background of the CHALLENGER story can be traced to the mid 1970s when the Royal Navy used the, by then positively venerable, warship HMS RECLAIM to conduct diving support work. The RECLAIM, commi...

  The British Government has confirmed that it is expelling the Russian defence attache, reduce the length of diplomatic visa accreditation for diplomats and remove the diplomatic status of certain Russian Government sites in the UK. This is a significant move and one that reflects the deeply challenging state of Anglo-Russian relations. But why is it so significant and does it really matter? All governments who maintain diplomatic links with other nations will usually have a varied range of facilities at their disposal. There will be a main Embassy / High Commission building, potentially some accommodation – perhaps in a diplomatic compound, and potentially some outstations. Larger nations will see a satellite network of consulates designed to provide regional support (e.g. the UK has no less than 8 consulates in the USA in addition to the Washington Embassy). Some nations will consolidate all their activities onto one site, usually the Embassy, which enjoys protected status in ...

  The National Archives in Kew is one of the world’s great repositories of information. Acting as the official archive for the British Government, its vast shelves and, literally miles, of storage containing information that in its day was often classified as TOP SECRET, but today is available for any member of the public to read. Kew is somewhere well worth a visit because it gives a chance to see papers handled by great political and military figures and hold them in your own hands, reading the files that tell the stories of how decisions were reached and policies enacted. It is also a chance too to see ‘behind the curtain’ and compare the official correspondence and ‘lines to take’ with the private and often highly indiscrete thoughts of officials and officers alike. Not all files make it to the archives. Historically the British Government has only chosen to preserve files of historic value, rather than every file, noting that there is finite storage space and capacity to pre...