Just what I need on my rooftop, a missile launch site

When I checked my post on Friday, I found three items: a credit card mailshot, a stationery catalogue - and a leaflet from the Ministry of Defence.

In two breezy sides of A4, the MoD told me that the development where I live, the Bow Quarter in east London, is likely to be used as a launch site for a high-velocity-missile (HVM) ground-based air-defence system.

It came as something of a shock, given that the Bow Quarter is a leafy - some would say sleepy - gated enclave.

The people who normally dwell in our 700-odd flats are Canary Wharf bankers, creative types and young families.

We seldom see anyone in uniform other than our own security guards (who, yesterday, had the unusual task of fighting off satellite TV crews as the story of our militarisation went global).

The main buildings of the Bow Quarter are converted from what was once the Bryant & May match factory - Annie Besant roused the ground-breaking match-girls' strike here in 1888. But now our tallest landmark - the largely unused Lexington Building Water Tower - has been chosen by the Army as the most likely potential launch site for an HVM system which will, in extremis, be deployed to shoot down airborne threats to the Olympic Games.

Apparently the Lexington tower is the only building both tall enough, and near enough, to the Games, to give unimpeded views of the entire Olympic Park. So from Friday, we will play host to an exercise which will test - using a squad of real soldiers, and real kit, but dummy missiles - the command and control network, and whether the HVM system is capable of detecting the kinds of threats it's designed to combat.

The HVM system best detects "aircraft that are coming head on", Lt Col Brian Fahy, an Army military liaison officer, said when I spoke to him yesterday. "It will be the last opportunity to stop anything getting to the Olympic Park itself."

Traditional radar systems (such as those at Heathrow Airport) are not designed to pick up very low-flying threats, and are not helped by the fact that London is built in a geological "bowl".

This week's test will be part of a nationwide exercise, on which Gen Nick Parker will give further details at a press briefing Monday.

Lt Col Fahy also confirmed that - in a move that will anger some residents here at the Bow Quarter, who see the installation of the HVM system as potentially marking us out as a terrorist target - our estate management company has given permission for the test. Lawyers for the Army and for BQRM Ltd, our estate holding company, have been working on a lease agreement to give the Army permission to use the tower. The estate manager, David Browne, has also been involved in negotiations.

If this week's test is successful, the Army team and equipment may be deployed - with live ammunition - for up to two months this summer.

But Lt Col Fahy said: "The decision on any firing of those missiles sits with the Prime Minister, and a couple of senior ministers. Nobody in the Army has the power to do that."

In the eight years I have lived here, this is certainly the most dramatic - and controversial - thing that has happened. The last leaflet that I received from BQRM was about the installation of new equipment in our on-site gym.

Over the past seven years it has been a remarkable sight, through the arch of Arlington Building, where I live, to see the Olympic Park gradually rise - we can see the Orbit Tower, and (more importantly to me) the big M&S sign on the side of the Westfield Stratford City shopping mall. This latest development, though, brings the sharp reality of London holding the Olympics much closer to home.