RAF Spadeadam (Main Site)

 military, RAF - Royal Air Force, training center

RAF Spadeadam (IATA: N/A, ICAO: EGOM) is a Royal Air Force station in Cumbria, England close to the border with Northumberland. It is the home of the 9000 acre (36 km²) Electronic Warfare Tactics Range, making it the largest (by area) RAF base in the United Kingdom.Its primary purpose is to provide a location for teaching electronic warfare to RAF and other NATO aircrew. Spadeadam was remote and largely uninhabited until 1957 when the Intermediate Range Ballistic Missile Test Centre was built for the Blue Streak Project.

The RAF took it over in 1976 and it became Europe's first Electronic Warfare Tactics Range in 1977. The range contains ground-based electronics warfare equipment to act as a simulated threat to training aircrews. Some of the equipment was manufactured in the Soviet Union; some simulates emissions from potential enemy systems. It also has real and dummy targets such as airfields, a "village" of portable buildings, tanks, aircraft and vehicle convoys.

Spadeadam was chosen as a launch site because of its isolation combined with nearby infrastructure capable of supporting it with such as a plentiful water supply, access to the National Grid and road connections. Spadeadam was probably intended to be one of 60 launch sites along the east coast of England but these were never built and it was only used as a test facility for engine firings and testing electronics and ground installations.

www.raf.mod.uk/rafspadeadam/aboutus/basesupport.cfm