A National Resilience Campaign
Project Sentinel is a campaign to rebuild the Royal Observer Corps for the modern age, a national network of trained, vetted volunteers who watch the skies, report what they see, and help their communities when drones, floods or attack overwhelm the systems we depend on.
The Emergency
The danger to Britain is no longer distant or theoretical. The head of the Armed Forces has warned the risks are the gravest since the Cold War, and the front line now runs through ordinary places: the airfield down the road, the flooded high street, the prison on the edge of town.
Small, low, slow aircraft, some made of cardboard, most costing less than a laptop, fly under radar built for fast jets. They loiter over prisons, airfields, ports and power stations. Our high-end defences were never designed to see them.
Storms and flooding now arrive harder and more often. When roads close and the lights go out, the first need is simple: someone local who can see what is happening and report it to the people who can help.
Cables are cut, networks jammed, infrastructure probed. When the technical picture goes dark, decisions still have to be made. Trained eyes on the ground are the backup that cannot be switched off.
Today the Armed Forces are Britain’s civil-emergency backstop of last resort. If they are committed elsewhere, there is a gap, and the head of the Armed Forces has warned the risks are the gravest since the Cold War.
“The first useful question in any crisis is the simplest: what is actually happening, exactly where, and what help is needed now?”
What It Is
It is a modern, dual-use volunteer corps: trained people, in known local places, reporting through known channels, ready to serve defence and civil emergencies alike. It does not replace radar, the RAF, or the blue-light services. It is the human layer underneath them, watching the ground they cannot.
Trained, vetted volunteers in fixed local places, the people who already know the roads, hills, estates, flood points and skylines of their patch.
Disciplined, structured reporting through recognised channels, turning a sighting into ground truth the RAF and emergency services can act on.
Practical help where it lands: welfare and rest centres, logistics, first aid and casualty support, alongside Britain’s blue-light responders.
The Precedent
The oldest idea in air defence, made modern. From 1925, Britain ran a national network of volunteer watchers, uniformed, disciplined, rooted in every county. They tracked raiders in the Battle of Britain when radar could not see inland, and reported nuclear bursts through the Cold War.
It was a quiet success story for seventy years. Then, in 1995, it was stood down, and nothing replaced it. Project Sentinel is the case for building that capability again, for the threats we actually face today.
1925
The Observer Corps is founded to watch Britain’s skies.
1940
Tracks incoming raiders in the Battle of Britain, radar’s inland eyes.
1955–91
Re-roled for the Cold War: nuclear burst and fallout reporting.
1995
Stood down. Three decades on, the gap is still open.
The Case in Brief
It has the people, the precedent and the structures. What it lacks is the decision.
Britain needs trained people in local places who can observe, report, assist and endure when national systems are under pressure. That is the whole idea, and the country has built it before.
Project Sentinel is a low-risk, high-value plan to restore a nationally distributed volunteer observation and resilience capability, directly modelled on the Royal Observer Corps (ROC) and the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation (UKWMO) that served Britain so well through the Cold War.
It is deliberately dual-use. It provides ground-truth reporting and support to military operations while strengthening the civil response to emergencies. It needs no new bureaucracy: it modernises and reactivates a proven framework under clear command, the RAF for military tasks, civil resilience structures for emergencies.
Modern uses include support to floods and major incidents, cueing when communications are degraded, spotting and tracking drone activity around prisons and borders, logistics and rest-centre help, and advanced first aid and casualty evacuation.
The precedent is real and recent. Former Observer Corps volunteers built Nightingale hospital wards and decontaminated ambulances during COVID, proof the ethos endures decades after stand-down. And Sweden, Denmark, Norway and Finland still deliver exactly this dual military-civil effect today. Britain can do the same, quickly and at modest cost.
It Already Works
This is not an experiment. Allied nations run volunteer observation and home-guard forces today, and Britain’s own veterans showed, during COVID, that the will to serve never left.
A standing volunteer force woven into national defence and civil crisis response. Tens of thousands strong, and growing.
A volunteer air-observation corps kept exactly for the low, local watching that radar cannot do alone.
Ordinary people reporting low, cheap drones in real time have repeatedly proven the value of persistent ground-level observation.
Former Observer Corps volunteers built Nightingale hospital wards and decontaminated ambulances, 25 years after the Corps stood down.
The Ask
Project Sentinel needs no new department, no new headquarters, no blank cheque. It needs a minister to say yes to a pilot. Add your name, send it to someone who can move it forward, and help force the decision while there is still time.
The price of freedom is eternal vigilance
The Full Case
From the history that proves it, to the warning that demands it, to the plan that delivers it.
Background
The Royal Observer Corps and UKWMO, the proven national volunteer network that Project Sentinel would modernise.
ReadThe Warning
Why the bluntest warnings from Britain’s defence leadership in a generation point straight at a national observer capability.
ReadThe Case
The changing threat and resilience landscape, and why a volunteer observation network is the missing layer.
ReadThe Role
The practical, everyday tasks Sentinel units would carry out for defence and for civil resilience.
ReadCommand & Control
How Sentinel would be commanded, tasked, mobilised and integrated, without building a new bureaucracy.
ReadThe Civil Role
The civil-contingency side of Project Sentinel, practical help for emergencies, alongside the people who already respond.
ReadPilot & Rollout
The phased, low-risk route from a ministerial yes to a working pilot and, if it proves itself, national rollout.
ReadMinisterial Brief
The formal case for reactivating the Royal Observer Corps as a modern mobile human-sensor layer and dual-use resilience capability.
Read