RAF Benbecula began as an airfield. During the Cold War it gained a control and reporting centre as part of the UK Air Surveillance And Control System, which linked back to RAF Buchan in Aberdeenshire. In the late 1990s, as the threat picture shifted and the cost picture mattered more, the station was downgraded to a remote radar head and the manned RAF presence at the airfield was wound down. The civilian operation took over the runway. The radar role moved to its current hilltop site on North Uist, but the historical name, Benbecula, came with the equipment. From September 2004, the site has been commanded from RAF Boulmer in Northumberland, far down the eastern coast.

From the 1980s into the 2010s the radar in use was the Type 92, known outside RAF service as the Lockheed Martin AN/FPS-117, a long-range air-surveillance set. In 2015 it was replaced by the Lockheed Martin AN/TPS-77. The reason was unexpected. Wind farm developers, whose turbines were known to confuse the older radar by appearing as moving targets, funded the new system, which was better at filtering out turbine signatures. The Outer Hebrides have become a centre for renewables: the wind that batters Balivanich also turns blades, and the radar that watches for incoming aircraft now coexists with the kind of clean-energy infrastructure that needed it upgraded in the first place.

The radar feeds into the UK Air Surveillance And Control System, based at RAF Boulmer. Information from Benbecula combines with feeds from other remote radar heads to build the recognised air picture for the United Kingdom, the situational map that controllers use to identify and track every aircraft in the country's airspace. The site also accommodates several types of VHF and UHF ground-to-air transmitters, which RAF and NATO aircraft use for routine communications. Operational maintenance is handled by Radar Flight North of the ASACS Engineering and Logistics Squadron at Boulmer. The site is uncrewed for routine operation. Cables and microwave links carry the data away.

RRH Benbecula faces the Atlantic, the same ocean across which Soviet bombers might once have come, and over which Russian Tupolev Tu-95 long-range patrols still occasionally fly, escorted by Typhoons launched from RAF Lossiemouth on the mainland. The MOD Hebrides missile range to the south is part of the same defence ecosystem, and the British Army's Deep Sea Range on South Uist was eventually handed to QinetiQ, the operator that also runs the Benbecula radar work. RRH Benbecula, RRH Buchan, RAF Boulmer: an electronic perimeter around the United Kingdom, with a small grey dome on a North Uist hill among its forward eyes.