The UK Allocates £ 9 Million To Build A United States-style 'Situation Room'

JAKARTA - The British government has revealed a plan to build a bunker like the 'Situation Room' in the White House, United States (US) under Whitehall with a budget of 9 million pounds.

Cited from The Independent, British Prime Minister Boris Johnson appreciated this plan. The room, which will be called The Situation Center (SitCen), will be used during emergencies such as terrorist attacks and crises, including pandemics.

It is planned to open this summer, the room will be adjacent to the Cobra Meeting Room which is under the basement of the Cabinet Office, which has been used for emergency meetings.

Supported by high-tech regulations, the British Prime Minister can watch and track events in real-time, see drone attacks to military involvement on an interactive screen display.

The SitCen project is part of a government review of defense, security, and foreign policy that will be inaugurated on March 16. Later, the room will reportedly be managed around the clock by staff from the National Security Secretariat.

Conference tables for the prime minister and intelligence chiefs will be positioned in the center of the room, used to brief government officials and monitor risks for the next six months. Information will be provided by the Joint Intelligence Committee, the Joint Terrorism Assessment Center, and other Whitehall experts.

“It will have high-tech stuff - heat maps, geostationary visualizations, interactive dashboards. At crucial moments we still get analog government without maps and PowerPoint presentations", an official told The Sunday Times.

“The coronavirus pandemic has shown that we need this. This will support a higher speed of decision making", he added.

By emphasizing science, technology, and data, the time it takes to compile data, brief ministers, understand the situation, and act on it will be cut from weeks to minutes.

"We will focus on investing in new technologies that will revolutionize warfare, artificial intelligence, drones, targeted energy weapons, and others", said Boris Johnson at a security conference in Munich, Germany some time ago.

To illustrate, the President of the United States uses the White House Situation Room to coordinate emergency response and deal with security threats. Barack Obama used the command room when US special forces ambushed Osama bin Laden in 2011.