Member of the public who contacted police after seeing ‘group of hooded and masked men’ near RAF base says she thinks ‘someone dropped the ball’ over incident

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Speaking at the Labour party conference in Liverpool, the defence secretary, Wes Streeting, said he could not give further details about the RAF Fairford incident because there is a live police investigation.

However, he used his speech to stress that the UK-US relationship is “the closest alliance” of any two countries in the world, adding the two nations will always “stand together” against those who wish to cause harm.