The Locations and Ranges of London's Olympic Missiles

The United Kingdom's Ministry of Defense is not messing around when it comes to security for the upcoming 2012 Summer Olympic Games in London. The most demonstrative example of military preparedness for the games has been the controversial decision to set up a series of ground-to-air missile bases in various spots around Olympic Park, including two sites located on residential buildings. Locals are upset, but that's not stopping the MoD.

The government announced six specific locations for these urban missile bases, as the BBC reported this morning:

The missiles - including rapier and high-velocity systems - will be in place from mid-July, the MoD confirmed.

We've gone ahead and mapped out the locations of these future military installments, which you can see below. The red circles indicate the roughly 6,800-meter range of the kind of missiles the U.K. is willing to fire off to prevent any violent disruptions during its big show.

View Olympic Missile Sites in a larger map

Top image: A soldier stands next to a Rapier missile defense battery deployed at Blackheath Common in London. Credit: Stefan Wermuth / Reuters