A British Army brigade remains at readiness in the UK to reinforce forces in Estonia as part of NATO plans for responding to a potential Russian attack on the Alliance’s eastern flank, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed.
Armed Forces Minister Louise Sandher-Jones confirmed the arrangement in a series of written parliamentary answers to Labour MP Mike Tapp, who asked whether NATO has sufficient troops and equipment, whether British forces would move east in the event of an attack, and whether the Alliance has plans to move troops to the region.
Sandher-Jones said: “As part of NATO’s focus on Deterrence and Defence of the Euro-Atlantic Area, NATO manages its Strategic, Operational and Tactical Plans across all domains to assure the Alliance’s ability to respond to any threat that posed by Russia, including on NATO’s eastern flank.”
The UK already maintains a forward-deployed battlegroup in Estonia under NATO’s Forward Land Forces arrangements. The MOD confirmed that this force is backed by a larger formation maintained at readiness in Britain.
Sandher-Jones stated: “The UK has a predefined role in these plans, including the Forward deployment of our battlegroup in Estonia reinforced by a brigade held at readiness in the UK.”
The battlegroup and reinforcing brigade are required to complete both national and NATO Allied Land Command validation exercises before deployment. The minister said: “The Forward Land Forces Battlegroup and Brigade at readiness undertakes sovereign and NATO Allied Land Command validation exercises before it is deployed to ensure it meets NATO operating standards expected to repel an attack from Russia.”
Tapp separately asked whether troops would be moved to NATO’s eastern border in the event of a Russian attack. The MOD gave the same response, pointing to the predefined British role within NATO’s strategic, operational and tactical plans. He also asked whether NATO has a troop mobility plan for responding to such an attack. The department again referred to the Alliance’s existing planning structure across all domains and the British battlegroup and brigade assigned to it.
In the event that a NATO member was attacked and Article 5 of the North Atlantic Treaty invoked, operational responsibility would fall to NATO’s Supreme Allied Commander Europe.
Sandher-Jones said: “In the event of an attack and where Article 5 is invoked, it is SACEUR has the operational permission to implement and execute all military measures necessary to restore and ensure the territorial integrity of the alliance.”
Waste of a battlegroup and reinforcing brigade, when we’d struggle to cobble together a division. Someone’s stupid idea of bravado putting an under-equipped formation at the distant end of the line, when it’d be virtually impossible to get reinforcement to it in time.
But hey, the idiots that made those decisions don’t have their sons and daughters out there.
UK forces should be part of NATO Northern Area defence, GIUK gap and Scandinavia (exc. Denmark). The defence of Central Europe should be in the hands of Germany, France, Poland at others.
The idiots that make these decisions are SACEUR and his staff, who we have to assume have a clearer plan than posters on a web site.
The British ‘Reinforcement Corps’ that we are supposed to provide to NATO will not be going to reinforce Scandinavia, where the natural obstacles to a Russian land attack are considerable, but to the North German Plain and Poland, because that is the most obvious axis of attack by an invader. We can tell this by the fact that we don’t have any army units equipped with skis and over-snow tracked vehicles, just one RM reduced-size Commando.
Simplistic assessments such as we should be concentrating on GIUK and Scandinavia lump together different levels of threat. At sea, we have to provide the naval forces to help secure GIUK and the North Atlantic. On land, we have to reinforce NATO on the North German Plain because, despite general misconceptions to the contrary, NATO is pretty weak there: Germany has just one division in North Germany and some Dutch and German brigades, and Poland, holding the front line, has its forces spread over a wide area.
It eould be great to be able to additionally provide a capable division to sit in Scandinavia but we don’t have the troops to support Poland and Estonia, let alone other fronts.
A British General is also always ( I believe) Deputy SACEUR.
That requires some presence, so although I get the argument for UK forces to be absent and concentrate elsewhere, the political ramifications are important.
“The UK should be on the stage when the curtain falls.”
I can remember when we had 3 Divisions ready! How things have changed!
And 2 Div in the UK as principle reinforcement.
Yep, 1 and 4 forward, 3 in depth.
With 2 coming from the UK.
No need for such a force size now, but the Army certainly needs to be bigger than it is and more CS CSS added.
And what were personnel numbers then?
About 164k regulars I think.
I’d be satisfied if the Army got back to 80k, though really it should never have dropped below 100k.
I remember when we had 4.
😆 lol
Wasn’t the reinforcement exercise last year, deploying part of a brigade to Estonia, carried out by 4 Inf Bde Gp? If that is the brigade the MOD has in mind, it has IIRC 4 regular bns/regts of infantry and light cavalry; the other 5 bn-size CS and CSS units are voluntary reserves, which would need time to mobilise, equip and work up platoon/company/battalion/brigade training exercises.
So not exactly a rapid reaction force. I would hope that one of our 4 regular brigade groups would be deployed, probably 7 Light Mechanised, while 4 Bde fills the gap in our ranks.
Really, the army has been cut down to a desperately small force, we can put very little in the field.
I’ve beaten this drum many times.
Yes, it was. I assume it’s still 4 Bde they refer to now, as 1 UK is tasked to provide a Bde to the FLF.
4 Bde is bereft of regular CS and CSS, one of the big holes HMG would be trying to fill if the grandstanding and words were backed with money and more people.
Healey said once that they want to grow the Army by 3k, zi hope some of that goes to 4 Bde.
I would think 3 thousand would be a negligible number in the Army, it would make a far more substantial difference to the Royal Marines, Royal Navy or RAF though.
I woukd think a sensible size for the Army would be about 115,000, with a 40,000 Army Reserve, alas it will never happen.
Agree, 3k extra for the RAF would be amazing, though it’d take time for the technical trades.
Yes, the big post-Cold Wdr review – was it 1993 or 1997? – set the future army size at 120,000. That was nearly a 25% cut from Cold War numbers. It was about the right size for a peacetime army which no longer faced a major threat on the horizon.
The Brown government cut it to 105,000 + 5,000 Ghurkas, I think as a consequence of the big financial crash in 2008. That should have been a temporary cut, with force levels being restored as soon as affordable. Instead our wise Tory friends went the other way, slashing 30,000 troops from the payroll and leaving the army far too small to meet our NATO commitments.
Of course the threat level is much higher now, with the malignant Orc leader eyeing up chunks of Eastern Europe. We should be looking to get back to that 120,000 army strength, though it would take many years to accomplish.
At the moment, the extra money for defence is all going to rectify the legacy of delayed pay rises, long-neglected infrastructure and replacement of elderly and obsolete equipment, with a relatively small slice going to new technology and unmanned equipments; there is nothing to spare for an increase in se4vice numbers.
That needs to change as defence spending climbs to 3.5% of GDP. Even an additional 5%, 1,500 for the RAF and the same for the RN, would ease the pressure somewhat. The army would need something like 15%, 11,000, to bring our two field divisions up to anything near minimum peacetime strength.
A 40,000 TA sorry Army Reserve would be great. Problem is we’ve just done 14 years cutting the voluntary reserves down and selling off their drill halls, the cost to rebuild and house the units is not going to get a look-in when the budget is being thrashed with £1.6 bn Dreadnought subs, near-£1bn T26 frigates and umpty billions to develop Tempest.
Agree with all.
Was 91 Options for Change.
Then there was Front Line First in 95.
97 was Labour’s first SDSR which was then ignored and not paid for, given the cuts that continued onwards and as you say made worse by the damned Tories.
In my view, there would be a national enquiry on TV with all from Major onwards facing the music.
But there are no consequences and no responsibility from the uni parties, only self interest.
The British military isn’t in any fit state to confront Russia it’s absolutely pure nonsense – the current crop of vile – nasty and traitorous politicians are going to get a lot of military personnel killed for their grandstanding – I’m happy that none of my family members are currently serving and my sympathies to families who members are.
The British military isn’t fit for purpose – the legacy political parties have decimated the Royal Air Force – the Royal Navy and British Army.
Labour are continuing the decimation up to this very day and are outright lying to the British people about funding – investment – their horrendous cuts and the state of the military overall.
Problem with your synopsis Villain is (a) There is actually more real money going into defence, £10 bn committed so far and the missing £5bn due in Healey’s budget, and (b) there is no ‘continued decimation’ going on, a few elderly or superfluous items of equipment are being withdrawn from service, in order to help fund a whole raft of new subs, frigates, armoured vehicles, artillery, aircraft, unmanned wonder weapons and the rest.
But one must never let facts get in the way of a good party-political rant, eh?
Thanks for the laugh 😂
You keep ignoring all the cuts and underfunding – burying your head in the sand is an excellent strategy little one 😉
That should have read £1.6 bn ASTUTES, not Dreadnoughts. The Dreadnought is going to cost up to £8 bn a boat, which.is an enormous and unaffordable buden on the defence budget.
This article says everything and nothing. Which is exactly as it should be. We don’t know, shouldn’t pretend to know, and all the moaning misses the point. There a lot going on we don’t know about. That much us clear, if you carefully read what is actually being said in many many reports. There are interesting shifts in attitude not only in politicians but throughout government… so it’s easy to snipe, but I know I am not being told everything, so I have to watch quietly.
The exhaustive levels of expertise and knowledge that some claim on here is really quite funny. The weirdest trope is that we are spending less on defence, which is plainly not true. Should we spend more? – well of course, but that’s not the same as spending less. The fact that commentators don’t understand simple maths makes me less likely to take their other pronouncements seriously.
As I’ve said before. If we had a hundred thousand soldiers in redcoats and equipped with muskets, there’s a bunch of commentators on here would be very, very happy!
Serious question, would a musket filled with buckshot be a good weapon against a drone at close range?
I think quite a few commentators have an opinion due to the fact when they were in there was pretty much more of everything! And even then there was never enough! Agreed times change as does tech, which can dictate TTPs and effects! Do we need so many platform x when fewer platforms y can do the job, better, faster and more efficient! But as ever there will always be a minimum number of anything which cannot be gone below!
Shits more expensive we are all aware of that, however methinks the biggest gripe for many posters on here is how a number of HMGs have paid lip service to military capabilities while reducing them all. However we are in the most dangerous times since the end of the Cold War, yet all we hear from this Government is spin, nonsense, ignorance and blatant lies and half truths regarding the efforts being put into defence. Politicians all over are grifters and narcissists but the shite these clowns are spouting, both on the domestic and international stage is putting us all at even more risk, all down to their unworkable ideology. Cheers.
👍
People do forget though the vast number of defence projects the money is being spent on currently and the big increses in capability. But some just don’t understand what we need today, or aren’t really interested unless it’s headlines about more fast jets, warships and tanks. Its not 1990 anymore. And we wouldn’t fight like that anymore. People bang on about Russia like they could just steam roll through Europe, but casually forget they have failed to invade a small part of Ukraine at the cost of hundreds of thousands of lives. Lost countless warships to drones, and have achieved zero air superiority. People still act like its our 5 T23s against Russia. And in their minds Russia never has any warships in refit or maintenance or any manning issues and are all ready and available for a scrap 365 days a year and everyone else in NATO will just chillout and watch and do nothing. The world just doesn’t work like that
You cant hide artillery, afv, gbad, etc.
with what? a wing and prayer?
The question is: what is the size and capabilities of the Russian force that they would potentially be facing.