UK security services were aware in advance about a group of men arrested in connection to a bomb plot against an RAF base used by the US military, Wes Streeting, the defence secretary has indicated.

Five men were arrested on terrorism charges after armed officers found explosives in three vans parked minutes from RAF Fairford in Gloucestershire, which hosts US air force missions against Iran.

Police were alerted after a local woman driving near the base in the early hours of Sunday saw the vans and men acting unusually, and called 999. Speaking to the BBC on Monday morning the woman said security services had seemingly “really dropped the ball on this”.

Speaking later to BBC Radio 4’s Today programme, Streeting said that while he wanted to thank the woman – who has chosen to remain anonymous – for calling police, “she had a partial picture”.

He praised police and security services for their work, referencing comments by Donald Trump, who claimed that the suspects had been under view for a long time.

Saying the men “were looking to do big damage”, the US president added: “It was fantastic. Working with Britain, it was an amazing job.”

Asked if he was saying Trump had been correct, Streeting did not reject this: “Our security services and our police, they don’t ask for praise, but I think it was a proud moment yesterday to see the president of the United States recognise the extraordinary work that our police and our security and intelligence services do every day throughout the year and throughout the world to keep us safe. That’s all I want to say this morning on that.” Streeting declined to give any details about any prior information about the plot, or the identities of the men arrested.

He said: “There’s a live police investigation, and as a matter of course we don’t comment in detail on operational security matters, because often the more that we might say, the more insight we give to those who would wish us harm and do us harm, given the opportunity.” Images showed shirtless men being handcuffed in a dark country lane after police were called to reports of three suspicious vans travelling towards RAF Fairford.

During the major incident the residents of 85 households in the Cotswolds village of Whelford were rapidly evacuated to Cirencester leisure centre and a 400m cordon was placed around the white vans as robots from the army’s bomb squad examined them.

In comments read out by a member of BBC staff, the local woman who called the police said she had been driving home late from a party but that when she reached her farm she found the driveway and the road blocked by three white vans.

Thinking this was related to security operations at RAF Fairford she turned her car around, but then saw a group of men wearing hoods and masks, who ran away when they saw her. Suspicious, she called Ministry of Defence police and then 999.

She said: “I think it was pure luck that I arrived in the village at a similar time to the vans. I am absolutely staggered that it was left to me, as a member of the public, to see and report this.

“The airbase were operating a roadblock close to the entrance to the base, but not on any of the other roads. But we assumed someone would be monitoring the roads around the base perimeter and taking regular patrols in the village …“I’m just really keen to highlight that it appears someone really dropped the ball on this.”