The heavily redacted responses to the ‘drone activity’ in November show the incident was escalated high up the chain of command, including to COBR, the cabinet committee convened to handle matters of national emergency or major disruption. However, the 48th Communications Squadron based at RAF Lakenheath has only given a holding position of ‘unusual circumstances’ in response to the request for information about the events — making reference to the process of searching for and collecting the information. The drone activity followed a ‘similar pattern’ over the three nights, according to the documents marked ‘sensitive’ which have been released by the MoD under the Freedom of Information Act. Peter Layton, a military aviation analyst at the Griffith Asia Institute and former Royal Australian Air Force officer, told Metro the redacted information disclosure raises further questions. Responding to US Air Force (USAF) statements at the time, the UK Defence Minister for the House of Lords said that the MoD Police was the ‘gold command’ for the bases concerned.