The United Kingdom will keep armoured forces in Estonia for the foreseeable future, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed, with Permanent Secretary Jeremy Pocklington telling the Defence Committee that the Forward Land Forces deployment will continue as the UK and Estonia work together to deter and defeat threats drawing on lessons learned from the war in Ukraine.
The confirmation was given in a letter dated 10 April responding to questions raised during a Defence Committee evidence session in March, with Pocklington stating that “the UK will keep armour in Estonia for the foreseeable future” and that the UK and Estonia “continue to work together to ensure the FLF can deter and defeat threats posed to Estonia through optimisation and lessons learned in Ukraine, whilst forming a credible part of NATO’s Eastern Flank Deterrence Initiative.”
The Forward Land Forces is the contribution to NATO’s enhanced Forward Presence in Estonia, comprising an armoured battlegroup built around Challenger 2 tanks and Ajax armoured reconnaissance vehicles, and representing one of the UK’s most visible and politically significant NATO commitments given Estonia’s position on the alliance’s eastern flank and the direct land border it shares with Russia.
The letter also confirmed that the MoD manages all force commitments through a single centrally governed force-generation system at the Military Strategic Headquarters, differentiating between assigned forces, allocated forces and notional planning assumptions, and noting that in a small number of cases “we make conditional offers that forces could be made available to an ally or operation if certain circumstances arise”, with the FLF in Estonia among the forces solely assigned to that commitment rather than being subject to those conditional arrangements.
Recently on You-Tube I watched a retired senior British tank commander take the new CH3 on a test run around the Telford plant. In his opinion, the CH3 is a worthy replacement for CH2, which is encouraging. I don’t believe he is the type of chap to commend anything if it’s not up to the job.
I don’t doubt it, once we got over our 1930s dalliance with questionable design and doctrine choices everything since then has been a very sound design. I just hope we get more than the paltry number of active protection kits than is currently planned, it’s beyond belief with what ukraine had taught us that anyone would send any expensive and scarce armoured vehicles into the front line without them!
I wonder if the Top Gear Toyota Hilux would survive a drone strike?
LOL.
We are getting a whole fleet of “Toyboata’s” soon.
Need a Captain Sensible to take command.
NM,
Excellent question re Trophy system availability from Elbit (Industries?) for the CR3 upgrade programme. Will the contract be honored? Geopolitics are muddled, at last report UK recognized a Palestinian state, and Israel threatened retaliation in some manner. Threat fulfilled?
I think it will go ahead. Leonardo teamed up with Rafael to improve the magazine reloading. But in Europe there is now EuroTrophy GmbH, this is a collaboration with Rafael General Dynamics Land Systems And KNDS to manufacture and market Trophy. So technically they are a separate company without the political connections to Israel.
Sadly we have an ex-human rights lawyer as the PM, who has always sided with the victim, even if the victim was the problem.
“Even if the victim was the problem”
That’s some sentence.
How can it be built around C2 and Ajax vehicles if they not yet fixed, *please one of the clever people on here explain that to me, what tube Arty have they got and do they have MLRS, if so its MLRS that can not fire Guided Rockets as we gave all of them to Ukraine and the only 2 up graded A2 MLRS are at the RSA.
We still have around 50 A1 models
That means nothing to me I thought they were all too noisy to use and restricted in what they xan do. So things are thst bad with the Army we are using un certified vehicles because thsf all we have left after retiring the CVRTs. What a farce
Nope we have 43 M270A1 in service. upgrade to A2 is moving along slowly (9 committed to so far)
No we do nor, 4/6 we up graded to B1 and used in Afghan, they were all gifted to Ukraine, 2 have been up graded to A2 or by now may be more we never had the A1 in service.the A1 has a different FCS and Fcp and GPS rather relying on an met data and vehicle SRP/PDS abd it has a more powerful engine 600hp rather than 500hp. Not sure where get you info from
Ok, so the model we have as our standard vehicle maybe be B1 or what ever number we used , but we have 43 MLRS
We had 64, once. its the very basic model no major up date since the first Gulf war, just software and bowman improved IEU and thats about it.
Tube arty wise, I believe some of the Archers from 19 Regt RA are in Estonia. I can’t tell you how many though, as some must still be in the UK for training.
no more than 12 max two are at the RSA
I believe a Battery of 19 RA on Archer and a Battery of 26RA on MLRS form part of the Cabrit Battlegroup.
9 or just 6 MLRS, ok none up graded from what I know, but that may have changed depending on A2 conversion rate. And a 6 or 8 Archers, good fire power for a battle group. Any thing bigger and then bit a under gunned.
I do see occasional photos of new MLRS after refurb. We also have ex Norwegian ones.
The fleet is expanding, albeit slowly, like all else.
BBC reports “Tiny, high defence-spending EU and Nato member Estonia, which neighbours and fears Russia, experienced a slap in the face by the US this week regarding defence capabilities. Because of its own needs in the war with Iran, the Pentagon told Estonia it would have to delay delivery of six units of a high-tech weapons system (the High Mobility Artillery Rocket System) that Estonia had contracted to buy from the US government. ”
Does this effect any further MLRS for the UK and might it explain the recent announcement?
BAOR returns….well sort of 🙂
Rather BAOV. The Valgejõgi River is near the Tapa military base in Estonia I believe.
Considering the size of our Army these days, it’s deployment forward to Germany or Poland really adds little, but deployment to the Baltic States gives much greater ‘effect’ to NATO.
Its a gap we can actually plug.
Paul, I had to chuckle. The Op Cabrit BG in manpower terms amounts to about 1.5% of BAOR + Berlin Inf Bde….and not all the Op Cabrit troops are Brits!
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I am surprised that Ajax is in Estonia as I thought the programme had been frozen for fixes to be done and also that no troops were currently allowed to operate them?
I note that the Perm. Sec. did not mention that the BG was also built around Warrior. Perhaps he did not want to pompt questions about what really is replacing Warrior.
Agreed. Might be wrong, but I don’t think Ajax is deployed.
Warrior for Recc, as has happened with some Sqns of the Armoured Cavalry Regiments as stopgap as CVRT os gone, and Warrior as we know the core of the AI Companies in the BG.
Perhaps a few have been deployed as part of its service trials Graham, that would make sense.