I remember the time around 77 that Fylingdales started broadcasting “Live BMEWS Traffic” over the box to 1Gp Ops. They would not answer our calls on the snatch line and Strike could not verify what was going on. Procedures said that we had to get the AOC down to Ops but he was off base and the SASO would not answer the secure speech line. I had to high tail it up to his office to summon him, it turned out that his PA was on an errand and the SASO did not know how to answer the line.
It turned out that Fylingdales had launched into an exercise without warning other agencies and had given the staff the wrong prompt cards to work from.
The best plans of mice and men!