Britain must be ready to fight a war in just over 1,000 days.
That was the warning delivered by Defence Secretary Wes Streeting on 24 October 2026, as he set out the scale of the threat facing the United Kingdom and the urgent need to strengthen Britain’s military capabilities.
Just days earlier, the Government had launched its updated Be Ready campaign, encouraging households across the country to prepare for emergencies by keeping supplies of food, water and other essentials.
The message from ministers could hardly be clearer: Britain faces an increasingly dangerous world, and we must all take responsibility for being better prepared.
Yet less than three weeks later, the same Government has granted planning permission to convert part of a strategically important military estate in Oxfordshire into an asylum accommodation centre.
At MOD Bicester Site A, military training operations are set to be displaced to make way for accommodation for up to 1,256 asylum seekers. How can these two decisions possibly be reconciled?
The Government says time is running out
Writing in October, Defence Secretary Wes Streeting warned that Britain’s adversaries could have the military capability to launch an attack by 2030. He said the country had a little over 1,000 days to prepare to fight alongside its allies. As reported by The Independent, Streeting warned:
To prevent the worst, we have to prepare for it.
This is not a prediction that Britain will inevitably be at war in three years. It is a warning that the country must be sufficiently prepared to deter aggression and respond effectively if conflict occurs.
That distinction is important.
But it also makes the Government’s proposals for MOD Bicester all the more difficult to understand.
Preparing for potential conflict means more than purchasing new weapons or announcing higher defence spending. It means ensuring that our Armed Forces have the facilities, infrastructure, personnel and specialist training necessary to respond to the threats they may face.
Bicester already provides exactly that kind of infrastructure.
The threat to Britain’s military infrastructure is not hypothetical
Recent events have demonstrated just how seriously threats to British military installations must be taken. On 10 November 2026, Reuters reported that US military aircraft had been moved from RAF Mildenhall in Suffolk following a reported Iranian threat.
The report followed an earlier security incident at RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire in September, after which two men were charged, with one accused of assisting Iranian intelligence.
Earlier this year, an Iranian-made drone struck RAF Akrotiri, Britain’s military airbase in Cyprus. These developments are a stark reminder that threats to military installations are not confined to distant battlefields.
In this increasingly challenging security environment, the Government should be carefully protecting the infrastructure that supports Britain’s Armed Forces. It should certainly not be surrendering strategically valuable military land without a compelling explanation of how Britain’s defence capabilities will be safeguarded.
The Government’s own defence strategy highlights the importance of training
The Strategic Defence Review 2025 identifies the need to move Britain towards greater warfighting readiness and strengthen its contribution to NATO. Crucially, the review recognises that military training must be a priority if Britain is to restore and maintain its ability to fight effectively.
At Bicester, the Government already possesses an established military training estate supporting some of the most specialist capabilities within the Armed Forces. The Defence Explosive Ordnance Disposal, Munitions and Search Training Regiment operates from the £100 million facility at St George’s Barracks, delivering specialist explosive ordnance disposal and search training to British and international military personnel.
As we previously reported, the MOD’s own records identify Site A and the surrounding training estate as strategically important defence infrastructure. This is not a capability that can simply be switched off and recreated elsewhere without careful planning, considerable investment and potential disruption.
Yet the Government’s response to recent concerns, reported by The Telegraph, is that military training operations will be relocated away from the proposed asylum accommodation site. The Government maintains that this will not affect the services provided.
But where is the evidence?
Has an alternative training location been secured? Will it provide equivalent facilities? What will the relocation cost? And can the Government guarantee that there will be no reduction in training capacity during the transition?
At a time when the Defence Secretary is warning that Britain has limited time to prepare for possible conflict, these are fundamental questions of national security.
The public is being told to prepare. Is the Government doing the same?
On 22 October 2026, the Government published updated guidance encouraging households to be better prepared for emergencies. Its Be Ready campaign recommends keeping three days’ worth of essential supplies, including bottled water, non-perishable food, torches, batteries, first aid supplies and other items that may be needed if essential services are disrupted.
The guidance covers a range of emergencies, including severe weather, infrastructure failures and other serious disruptions. There is nothing unreasonable about encouraging households to prepare. But the Government must demonstrate the same commitment to preparedness through its own decisions.
It cannot credibly warn the public about the importance of national resilience whilst treating strategically important military infrastructure as an expendable resource. Nor should the pressure to close asylum hotels override the need to safeguard Britain’s long-term military capabilities.
Britain cannot afford to get its priorities wrong
The Government faces difficult decisions about asylum accommodation. Finding suitable alternatives to hotels is a legitimate policy objective. But the need for asylum accommodation does not make every available piece of Government-owned land a suitable location.
The question at MOD Bicester is not simply whether an asylum centre can physically be built there. It is whether repurposing military training land represents the best use of an important national asset at a time of heightened security threats.
There are alternative ways to provide asylum accommodation. Replacing established, specialist military training infrastructure may be considerably more difficult. The Home Office has confirmed that, despite planning permission being granted, a final decision to proceed with the MOD Bicester development has not yet been made.
There is therefore still an opportunity for the Government to reconsider.
If Britain must be ready to defend itself in approximately 1,000 days, surely the starting point should be to protect the defence capabilities we already have.
Wrong Plan Wrong Site believes the Government must urgently reconsider its priorities.
Britain should be strengthening its military infrastructure, not displacing it.
