THE MILK RUN

I read somewhere recently that the nuclear Hot Line between the West and the Kremlin had been re-connected, and noticed on TV that missiles were back in Russia's big military parade. Both of which sound faintly familar to an old National Serviceman, because up to thirty and more years' ago this was routine, daily stuff. Which reminds me, there have also been recent news stories of Russian (ie, non-Nato) aircraft flying over the English Channel, and generally sniffing around.
This certainly brought home to me the day I spent at RAF Neatishead, the early warning radar station, during a time when it was fully operational and deadly serious in its daily intent, when red (or non-Nato) markers - looking like wriggling tadpoles - could be seen all over the radar screens and British fighters were on full intercept alert at several bases.
With the Cold War at its chilly height, and arguments about Cruise missiles rumbling around outside, I recall asking the military Press officer, who was showing me around, what would happen if the balloon suddenly went up and the screens indicated an incoming nuclear attack.
'Well, he said, 'we would have about four minutes.' Four minutes to do what? 'Four minutes to alert everyone - including the intercept fighters - before we were annihilated.' The expectation at the time, of course, was that Neatishead, like Lakenheath and Mildenhall, would on a high priority hit list.
I was also shown the 'current position' screens, which prompted another question: where exactly did the Soviet aircraft go? Because even I could see on the screens that a majority of planes in the air at the time (it was said to be a quiet day, incidentally) were green (meaning Nato), but with a significant sprinkling of red.
It was explained, first of all, that included among the many reds were Soviet civilian aircraft flying regular scheduled flights into and out of Heathrow. Then there was what the screen operators called the daily 'milk run' through the Faroes Gap north of Scotland, usually freighter aircraft flying from Russia to Cuba. And there were 'probing' flights, seemingly designed to test the timings of the UK intercept aircraft (how long to get airbourne, and so on). And lastly, I was told, there were the occasional flights the Soviets sent over the North Sea and the Channel to stooge around generally and to 'take a look at the oil rigs.'
It was all very unnerving. Pin-pricks designed, no doubt, to let 'the opposition' know they were around, and to keep them on their toes. Whether we were involved in similar pinpricks in and around Soviet airspace I do not know, and did not ask. They would not have told me, anyway. But I dare say there was a tit-for-tat element about it all. 
Is it starting all over again, the whole Cold War business? Hopefully not. But there is, for sure, a great deal of tension in the world at the moment.
Closer home, RAF Neatishead is now a museum, its original work being done elsewhere; and there is also a slight feeling that, militarily at least, some countries are winding down rather than up. But Russia has been a mischief-maker for a long time. So I won't be the only one casting an anxious eye on those occasional Channel and North Sea incursions.