ISS Boddington is an installation of

Defence Digital The United Kingdom's Strategic Command (StratCom), previously known as Joint Forces Command (JFC), manages allocated joint capabilities from the three armed services. History Background In August 2010 the then Defence Secretary, Liam Fox, a ...

(formerly

Information Systems & Services Information Systems & Services (ISS) was a cluster within Strategic Command Top Level Budget of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence. ISS was replaced by Defence Digital in 2019. History ISS was created from the former Defence Communication ...

), an operating cluster of the

Ministry of Defence {{unsourced, date=February 2021 A ministry of defence or defense (see spelling differences), also known as a department of defence or defense, is an often-used name for the part of a government responsible for matters of defence, found in states ...

. It was formerly RAF Boddington, a non-flying

Royal Air Force station The Royal Air Force (RAF) operates several stations throughout the United Kingdom and overseas. This includes front-line and training air bases, support, administrative and training stations with no flying activity, unmanned airfields used fo ...

located in Boddington,

Gloucestershire Gloucestershire ( abbreviated Glos) is a county in South West England. The county comprises part of the Cotswold Hills, part of the flat fertile valley of the River Severn and the entire Forest of Dean. The county town is the city of Gl ...

England England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Wales to its west and Scotland to its north. The Irish Sea lies northwest and the Celtic Sea to the southwest. It is separated from continental Europe b ...

, and was the former home of No. 9 Signals Unit RAF. Boddington was the first computerised communication centre in the 1950s when it was run by the

British Army The British Army is the principal land warfare force of the United Kingdom, a part of the British Armed Forces along with the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force. , the British Army comprises 79,380 regular full-time personnel, 4,090 Gurk ...

. The tradition of computerised relay communications has continued to the present day.

History

The station was established in 1940 as an army telephone exchange operated by the Auxiliary Territorial Service under the guard of the

Gloucestershire Regiment The Gloucestershire Regiment, commonly referred to as the Glosters, was a line infantry regiment of the British Army from 1881 until 1994. It traced its origins to Colonel Gibson's Regiment of Foot, which was raised in 1694 and later became the ...

. It was later controlled by the

Royal Signal Corps The Royal Corps of Signals (often simply known as the Royal Signals – abbreviated to R SIGNALS or R SIGS) is one of the combat support arms of the British Army. Signals units are among the first into action, providing the battlefield communi ...

before passing to the

Royal Air Force The Royal Air Force (RAF) is the United Kingdom's air and space force. It was formed towards the end of the First World War on 1 April 1918, becoming the first independent air force in the world, by regrouping the Royal Flying Corps (RFC) and ...

. On 1 October 1978 RAF Boddington became No. 9 Signals Unit (No. 9 SU), an independent Unit under the control of

RAF Support Command Support Command was a command of the Royal Air Force between 1973 and 1994. The headquarters was located at RAF Brampton in Cambridgeshire. History It was formed on 31 August 1973 by the renaming of RAF Maintenance Command,

Signals Headquarters (SCSHQ), with functional control of their respective networks by Controller Defence Communications Network (''CDCN'') and Headquarters RAF Strike Command (HQSTC). In 1998 operational command of Boddington transferred to the newly formed

Defence Communication Services Agency The Defence Communication Services Agency (DCSA) was an agency of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence responsible for the procurement and delivery of Communications and Information Services (CIS) to the defence community and related public and ...

(DCSA), with the unit becoming known as DCSA 9 SU Boddington. The unit was subsequently chosen as the Primary Message Agent site for the United Kingdom as part of the Automated Messaging Systems Communications Equipment Replacement Programme (AMSCERP) which provided secure messaging services for the RAF and British Army. The facility was upgraded in 2006 during which time temporary buildings were used to accommodate IT equipment.

Post RAF use

Although the site ceased to be an RAF station in December 2007, it was retained by the Ministry of Defence (MOD) as a communications station. The site is now known as ISS Boddington, having initially been operated by the

(DCSA) then

Information Systems and Services Information Systems & Services (ISS) was a cluster within Strategic Command Top Level Budget of the United Kingdom Ministry of Defence. ISS was replaced by Defence Digital in 2019. History ISS was created from the former Defence Communicati ...

(ISS), and currently

since 2019.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Boddington Information technology organisations based in the United Kingdom Installations of the Ministry of Defence (United Kingdom) Science and technology in Gloucestershire