According to a report in Herald, the ultra top secret documents were supposed be eyes only document and meant for senior military officials involved in the two war games taking place in United Kingdom. Joint Warrior 161 is currently being played out around Scotland, while Griffin Strike 16 is taking place around the southwest coasts of England and Wales. The top secret document which is labeled as “NATO restricted” contained 192 pages of information such as radio frequencies, radio jamming rules, GPS coordinates, military codewords, call signs, aircraft “killbox” target areas, code decryption tables, and authentication protocols. Herald notes that besides military tactics, the document also included names, phone numbers and email ids of all the officials involved in the two war games. According to Herald, the MoD officials sent the document via an email to multiple fishing and ferry operators on March 29. The military details included in the NATO file was attached to the email by accident. The MoD was supposed to send only the time table to the fishermen so they could avoid the seas during the war games. However, a massive bungle at MoD meant that the fishermen received the entire top secret document. The MoD admitted that there had been a “communications issue” but said it had taken “appropriate measures” to deal with it. Critics accused the MoD of an “embarrassing” mishap, and called for an investigation. An MoD spokesman said: “A communications issue around the Joint Warrior and Griffin Strike exercises was identified and appropriate measures have been taken. There is no impact to the public, military personnel or units participating in the exercise.” When pressed, the spokesman said he couldn’t go into the measures that have been implemented “because we don’t want to expose how we do business”. He insisted that arrangements for the exercise had not been changed.
