Plans Confirmed For Missiles Over Olympic Site

This afternoon, the journalist Brian Whelan conformed, in a series of updates from his Twitter account, that the army plan to site a ground-to-air missile battery on the roof of the private apartment block in Bow where he lives, close to the Olympic site:

Just got a leaflet through the door saying the army are putting missiles on my roof during Olympics. twitter.com/brianwhelanhac…
— Brian Whelan (@brianwhelanhack) April 28, 2012

Kate Draper has also tweeted that she has received a similar leaflet:

A water tower in my building is being fitted with a GBAD system that can fire MISSILES to protect the Olympics.Military are moving in WTF!
— Katie Draper (@Drapesmonkey) April 28, 2012

The leaflet above (click to enlarge) indicates that the army plans to use Rapier missiles developed by Paris-based MBDA (formerly Matra BAe Dynamics UK) and the Starstreak HVM (High Velocity Missile), which the army says "is designed to counter threats from very high performance, low-flying aircraft and fast 'pop up' strikes by helicopter attacks".

There's a useful outline of Brian's tweets on this discovery and the issues it raises at the Latent Existence blog, which rightly speculates what on earth a missile battery over London would be used for: I have my doubts that prospective terrorists are capable of 'pop up helicopter strikes', so the obvious answer is shooting down a passenger plane in the event of a hijacking. But its also worth remembering that missiles can and do mis-fire - as this one filmed in the Falkland Islands did in early 2009. If something similar happened in east London, it is sobering to think that it's Whelan's neighbours that are under all that high explosive