The UK’s commitment to NATO and its leadership role within the alliance was reiterated at the Munich Security Conference 2025, though no specific discussions were held regarding Britain’s role in the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), according to a response from the Ministry of Defence (MoD).
Responding to questions from James Cartlidge, Conservative MP for South Suffolk, on 6th March 2025, Parliamentary Under-Secretary Luke Pollard confirmed that while the Secretary of State for Defence engaged with international allies during the conference, Britain’s position within the ARRC was not specifically discussed.
The ARRC Headquarters (HQ ARRC), based in Gloucester, serves as NATO’s rapidly deployable, flexible headquarters, capable of acting as a Joint, Land, or Corps HQ for operations and crisis response. The UK is the ‘framework nation’ of the ARRC, with British personnel making up over 60% of its workforce, while 21 NATO and partner nations contribute personnel.
Pollard confirmed that while the Defence Secretary met with allied counterparts at the conference, Britain’s role in the ARRC was not specifically addressed in those discussions.
UK Reaffirms ‘NATO First’ Policy
When asked about broader discussions on Britain’s role in NATO, Pollard confirmed that the Defence Secretary met with his counterparts from Norway, Sweden, and New Zealand, in addition to attending a working breakfast with other allied Defence Ministers.
He also attended the NATO Defence Ministers meeting and Ukraine Defence Contact Group in Brussels earlier in the same week, where he reaffirmed the UK’s ‘NATO First’ policy and the government’s commitment to being NATO’s leading European ally.
Pollard stated:
“The Secretary of State reiterated the Government’s NATO First policy and the UK’s commitment to remaining the leading NATO Ally in Europe.”
While the UK continues to be a key contributor to NATO strategy and rapid response capabilities, the absence of specific ARRC discussions at the conference suggests that its role remains unchanged for now.
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NATO’s other corps HQs all have the same nomenclature eg RDC-Italy, RDC-Türkiye etc. Does this mean that the ARRC havs a different function to these other corps HQs?
The UK needs to be careful with NATO first policies given the current Whitehouse occupant, it needs to remind Trump what the UK gives the US military to keep NATO together these 4 years. The US can field hardware but what they don’t always have is key positions, Gibraltar, Cyprus and Diago Garcia for example and the intelligence picked up particularly Cyprus. Diago Garcia is critical for the US and I hope the guarantees in the folly of giving (no paying) the Mauritians to take it back are sufficient to keep the base – lease is fine but needs to be kept.
I am surprised that Trump has not gone directly to Mauritius and told them he would prefer a direct lease with them.
Wondered the same myself.
Given his musings on Greenland it’s surprising he hasn’t said they are simply taking it over…..
Already the home of 3 Division, 1 Signals Brigade, 104 TS Brigade, 25 Engineer Group, and 7 Air Defence Group. There are reports that 1 Division will be added to it as well to form one of SACEURs Reserve Corps, the other being French.
Lack of edit – plus 101 OS Brigade.
Hi Daniele,
Do you know what role the Spanish and Greek RDCs have been assigned. The Italian RDC has been given the interim role of being the HQ for the developing the ARF.
No idea Bob, sorry.
No idea Bob, sorry.
Thanks
Well after listening to trump this morning outlining his reasons he would NOT honour A5 I would say NATO is dead and the sooner we get our heads around this the better!
No defending any country that hasn’t met 2%
No defending any country that doesn’t benefit the US
Trade and artic route discussions with the Orcs
Bringing them back into the G7
On top off all that his disgusting decisions on Ukraine!
It’s come to the point where we have to call his bluff and say are you in or out,there will be no better time to do this at the moment the Orcs are at their lowest capability in decades,are we have a window here to strengthen ourselves before pootin can recover and threaten the Baltics etc.
If push came to shove i really cannot see the US riding over the hill to our rescue!
This US is unreliable.
We must take the initiative in European NATO command to send the American staff home and lead for the interests of all European people.
There can be no influence for a country that will not uphold Article 5, especially no membership veto for USA.
They said they won’t support Article 5 so European NATO countries will take that duty and decide what security guarantees will be given to Ukraine.
We already started with Joint Expeditionary Force and Advanced Forward Presence.
🇸🇪🇳🇴🇩🇰🇫🇮🇪🇪🇱🇻🇱🇹🇳🇱🇬🇧🇩🇪
Slava Ukraine 🇺🇦
Slava Heroyam 🇺🇦
#WeAreNATO
#vpdfo
Hiya people. Is there any possibility of tangoman throwing a proverbial red button to switch off the F35’s, in part? Yeh, fell into the April…… 🤔😕🕳️Fly Navy.
The coverage on F35 avionics suggests that Israel and UK have some independent control while other F35 FMS customers have a dependence on Lockheed Martin both for Software updates and authorisation to operate their F35s.
I’m sorry that I have no sources to verify that independently so this is at rumour level only.
Given the delays to integrate new weapons onto F35, it seems that Lockheed Martin have tight control of the software making US government control a possibility. There’s a strong rationale for protecting the software that provides advantage to the operating nations.