Inverness Cold War Comms Centre Sold
Part of the UNITER SSIN (Secure Survivable Integrated Network) created for the RAF by GPT (later Marconi) in the late 1970s, a nuclear hardened building which would have held part of the network at Fort George, Inverness, has been sold to a local company operating self-storage for people and business looking for somewhere safe to store valuable and documents.
The building has lain empty since the demise of the Cold War, when its 2 ft thick concrete walls, self-contained facilities such as water, heating, air-conditioning, and secure construction with no windows and steel entrance would have been expected to protect the communication facilities at its core secure for up to three months in the event of an attack.
The Inverness UNITER building can be seen in this aerial view.
Two further UNITER buildings are known in Scotland, one in Dunfermline, next to Knockill Racing Circuit, and the other in Prestwick, next to the airport.
UNITER is not an acronym, but a name chosen to reflect the original project’s aim of replacing disparate comms systems used throughout the RAF, which caused compatibility and continuity problems, and providing a united system which would have been robust if war had broken out.
