Boris Johnson is building a White House-style situation room beneath Whitehall for tackling national security crises.
The Premier has ordered the construction of a £9million “situation centre” – dubbed SitCen – where top ministers, senior spooks, leading officials and invited experts can monitor developing disasters, be briefed on terror outrages and watch RAF drone strikes live.
The secret bunker, which looks set to take over from Cobra as the main meeting point for dealing with such emergencies, is being developed beneath 70 Whitehall.
It will be connected to Downing Street through an existing labyrinth of subterranean tunnels.
No10 sources aid the coronavirus crisis showed that ministers needed more real-time information and data.
It will have hi-tech stuff – heat maps, geostationary visualisations, interactive dashboards,” a source told the Sunday Times.
“At key moments we still get analogue government with no maps and PowerPoint presentations.
“Coronavirus has shown that we need this. It will support a greater speed of decision-making."
A senior official who regularly attended Cobra briefings once told the Mirror it was “just a room with some TV screens and a big table”.
However they added: “It is f****** cool, though.”
US Presidents use the White House “situation room” for coordinating emergency responses and tackling major security threats.
The setting is often shown on Hollywood blockbusters, with uniformed top generals briefing leaders on grisly details from foreign battlefields.
Barack Obama and then Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were pictured in the situation room watching intently as live footage of elite servicemen from Navy Seal Team Six was beamed into the bunker as Special Forces troops tracked down and killed al-Qaeda terror chief Osama bin Laden in Abbottabad, Pakistan, in May 2011.
