The UK says high-readiness British forces could be deployed under NATO defence plans if Belarus and Kaliningrad attempted to close the Suwalki Gap, the narrow land corridor linking Poland with the Baltic states.
The position was set out in a written parliamentary answer to Labour MP Mike Tapp, who asked whether Britain had the capability to respond swiftly to an attempt to close the route. Defence Minister Louise Sandher-Jones framed the response through NATO’s collective defence arrangements rather than as a purely national UK operation.
She said: “NATO has the capability and commitment to defend every inch of Alliance territory.”
The Suwalki Gap is the stretch of territory between Belarus and the Russian exclave of Kaliningrad which provides the land connection between Poland and Lithuania, and by extension the rest of the Baltic states. Its position has long made it an important part of NATO defence planning in north-eastern Europe, particularly because any attempt to sever the corridor would directly affect the Alliance’s ability to reinforce Lithuania, Latvia and Estonia by land.
Sandher-Jones said Britain had committed the overwhelming majority of its military to NATO planning, including forces held at higher readiness. She said: “The UK remains staunchly committed to NATO’s collective defence obligation, offering almost all of our Armed Forces to NATO including high-readiness forces, which can be deployed as part of NATO’s collective defence plans if necessary.”
Ok what are these fotrce? worn out Warrior, short of ammo C2, 14 older model Archers? no counter UAV guns, whats doing recce? as Ajax is still brioken and CVR Ts were retired before Ajax replaced it. A story about bluffing and saying we have the kit when we don’t but no one is allowed to say that so it spin, lie, distract. If its light forces we have loads of them, thats about all we have.
16 AA doesn’t use warriors or archers they would deploy alongside NATO with jackal 2s and ocelots. They are the high readiness force so why would you expect them driving to Poland in 80s kit?
As I said light unit. That’s all we have to offer, what do they do if come against heavy armour? Or proper Artllery where the 1970 light gun is out range always assuming they can get ig in action in time. We have heavy deplorable units so it has to be light or nothing. Light means under gunned and cheaper that’s,why we have so much light crap
The bigger question is what could the Russians put up. A bunch of NKoreans, Africans, Indians and whoever else they could pressgang into what would be their lastest 3 day special op. Laughable.
As for Warriors, CH2, Ajax, Archers, Apache they would be Rolls-Royce in comparison.
Oh agreed for now they are in a worst state than our under gunned under funded Army, Fact is the Russians do not want to invade the West, yes they play thier game, test things, see how fair they can go, thats them being Russian. Its a distraction of how waek they really for now, are but also a reminder they still here and want to be seen as a world power and a threat. .
Going along with that is a reminder of what NATO has resident in the Suwalki gap. Two Polish Divisions (16th and 18th Mechanised with the 18th slowly being replaced by 1st Legion Infantry as it stands up), a NATO Multinational Division (Multinational Division North East consisting of a German Armoured Brigade and a Polish Mechanised brigade) and a Lithuanian Division (consisting of a mechanised and a light brigade in the process of becoming a three brigade division, one Armoured, one Mechanised and a reserve Light Brigade). Plus two Lithuanian NDVF Districts and two Polish TDF brigades.
Add in 3 UK Div, probably reinforced by 7 Brigade, plus a German Division and the rest of the Polish Army moving up and it’s a very formidable force.
So that’s a no, then
The well equipped, large and modern Polish army would do that job.
the Suwalki is huge, no way would Russia attempt to close it without getting obliterated by Poland
Suwalki gap.is only 40-50 miles wide, not exactly huge!
The Army will mend and make do, superbly, as always, while politicians talk a good game of, essentially, utter s****, as
the Ministers reply offered nothing and just stated the obvious, we are part of NATO, we will hide behind NATO, but reap maximum grandstanding points for being involved and acting the big boy when in reality you’d have Poland annihilate any Russian adventure there.
As Poland takes Defence seriously, we don’t, the PM admitted as such in Parliament the other week.
But, a Brit is Deputy SACEUR. That means something, so the politics takes over and the British Army of course would take part.
Under the future structure, the Forward Land Force, which the UK contributes to with the FLF BG in Estonia, is meant to be reinforced I believe by a Brigade from 1 UK Division, do either 4 Bde or 7 Bde.
Not 3 UK Division with Tanks, as in the photo. That is meant to be part of SACEUR Reserve and like the bulk of the Field Army is in the ARRC. Would that deploy? No idea, I don’t see the ARRC as being a “high readiness” force.
Elements of 1 UK are and 16 Bde are.
4 Bde, as mentioned often here, lacks a full set of enablers from CS CSS which it would have to steal from elsewhere.
A situation entirely the fault of HMG which can only be rectified by increasing the size of the Army or re roling existing assets elsewhere, which then knocks capability in other areas.
There are always other elements, from the Spearhead Infantry Battalion ( if it’s still a thing ) the VHR MR Medical Regiment, elements of 30 Signals Regiment, bits of 16 AA Bde, and so on, ready to deploy.
So yes the Army has forces it can contribute, just don’t expect full Armoured Brigades, I’d guess the units allocated would be lighter.
And in the background, beyond the words, the reality.
14 SPG only. A ludicrous situation.
Boxer 2 years late and still only with a MG, for a vehicle that’s already in service elsewhere, some going.
Armoured Recc almost non existent, with Ajax late, Warriors in use in some Squadrons of the 3 Armoured Recc Regiments.
Warrior itself gone in 2027, no like for like replacement.
Challenger III, delayed, numbers will be below even the minimum needed.
GBAD so threadbare and lacking in money that Stormer HVM replacement is delayed and Pollard admitted last week that there’s no money currently as it’s being spent elsewhere.
ISTAR is king, yet the Army still has but one non Drone ISTAR Regiment, 5 RA, which has to be in 20 places at once.
CSS, so lacking in depth a Bde HMG band about with flashing lights on as deployable has none beyond it’s reservists. ( 4 Bde mentioned above.)
At least Starmer isn’t babbling on about sending assets to Ukraine as well…..we’re like a moth to a candle, HMG must be seen to be there, bang drums about it, while cutting and sending as much money to the MIC as possible.
Rant over.🙄
TLDR, and in a more positive light, it’s going to take years to sort the Army out into a more cohesive force, groundwork has been laid, and a lot of new kit is talked about and planned. In the meantime, look at all these Drones we are buying.
As admitted in another thread, the Army aren’t lacking potential recruits, there’s just no places for them. If both the CS and CSS was brought up to strength to support what we already have, would the Army’s number be closer to 80,000? This wouldn’t include expanding the RA to meet GBAD, drone and supporting the 72 RCH155s. So I wonder what the real head count should be?
Yes, I think so, around that. Divisional CSS for 1 UK Division is paper thin as well.
For me, the Army should never have dropped below 100k.
I’d love to see the Army’s regular strength at 100k. One can only dream.
I looked at what a 15% increase in army strength, 11,000 additional troops, might achieve
15% being probably the absolute afforded by a supportive government.
It would add some 18 battalion/regiment and -size units. There are obviously a lot if options as to how and where you would deploy them. We could bring our warfighting brigade groups up to something approaching their necessary strength, or.make good some of the glaring gaps in our combat support and combat service support ORBAT – but not both.
Were we to do the former, I1,000 would enable the raising of a third combat manoeuvre brigade group to bring 3 Division up to strength (9 battalions) and convert 4 Bde Grp to an all-regular formation (5 additional regular bns). Leaving just 4 bns to strengthen 1 and 3 divisional troops, including especially air and drone defence units, of which the army is grievously short.
So even getting the number of combat manoeuvre from the current 4.5 to the 6 we are supposed to provide to NATO would leave a lot of gaps in CS and CSS support at divisional level. And would do nothing to strengthen our almost non-existent UK Home Forces or extremely slender out-of’-area capabilities.
The real total needed is at minimum the 120,00 set in the 1993 defence review, and that was the figure for the post-Cold War peacetime army facing no real peer threat.
My hypothetical increase from 73,000 strength to 84,000 would at least be going in the right direction and beginning to reverse the 47,000 troops axed since 2009. It would still be a very small and inadequate force to field in any serious peer engagement.
47,000 troops axed since 1997, not 2009.
.
Gives an idea of the mess the Tories left.
I appropriate blame jointly to the uni party, though.
Labour shelved so many conventional equipment programs while fighting needless wars up to 2010, the Tories at least ordered stuff.
Pollard was prancing about at DVD yesterday grandstanding the governments achievements.
We’re replacing Swingfire. Great, it was Labour that shelved it.
And of all the main equipment programs of the Army at this time, what have they actually ordered to the point of signing a contract?
RCH155. The rest were inherited from previous government already underway.
Long list of programs still awaiting money.
I make no real distinction between either, Labour’s cuts were as long as your arm before 2010 as well.
Jointly responsible.
The priority would have to be Divisional enablers, and Corps enablers. I’m not too bothered about 3uk Div being a DSRB and two Armoured Brigades, there are plenty of NATO brigades that could form a third manuever element should it be required. (Same for 1 UK div).
What can’t be provided is a proper Corps foundation for other nations to slot into. Germany is working on creating units specifically to do this, and it’s an idea we should probably follow if we get an uplift in troops.
I’ve always thought it was a bit strange that the 4,500 Gurkhas are not included in the Army’s total strength.
Me too, takes the numbers up considerably.
Davey, you wondered what the head count of the British Army should be. Many will be bored with hearing my POV. The army was reduced from 160k regulars to 120k under the Options for Change SDR of summer 1990 which carefully considered the role and likely tasks of the post-Cold War army, The TA was reduced to 50k. Careful though this staffwork was it did not predict the deployment of an armoured division (-) to the Gulf just 6 months later. A non-NATO task. A divisional deployment reoccurred little over a decade later, known then as Gulf War 2.
So my answer is 120k regulars, 50k volunteer Army Reserve.
The cuts from the 1990 Review were based on the expectation of the evaporation of Russia as a nation hostile to a democratic Europe. The cuts since then have had no underpinning rationale…they have purely been to switch more money into other areas of Government spending.
I don’t believe a single word out of Labour’s propaganda mouthpiece and I certainly don’t take them seriously either – they constantly lie and spin.
The British military will continue it’s atrophy and ever increasing decline while the parasitic Labour Party remain in power – the sooner a general election is held the better for the Royal Navy – Royal Air Force – British Army and the country as a whole.
It was the Conservative governments of the last 14 years that slashed the army establishment from 105 000 troops to 73,000. We lost 32,000 troops kicked out and then found there was no money to replace the ageing and elderly equipment inventory.
This Labour government has inherited a right mess and procurement shambles from the last lot in power, which is going to take many years and mega expenditure to even begin to.restore some kind of limited land force capability.
The politics of Poland, Germany, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, are uncertain. As we have seen from Moldova, Putin floods money into countries in order to buy elections. That will not always fail.
Contingency planning dictates that Britain and France cannot rely on Eastern and Central European countries for their security.
Yet that appears to be exactly what our Westminster/Whitehall warriors are doing.
Hang on! Didn’t that happen once before?
‘I don’t want Slovakia to be part of an armed conflict because of some Article 5,” Slovakia Prime Minister Fico said 18 September 2026
He added that Slovakia remains committed to NATO but said his government would work to prevent the country from being pulled into an armed conflict.
“Yes, we are in NATO; we value that, and cooperation and commitments matter to us, but as the head of government, I will do everything I can to prevent Slovakia from being dragged into an armed conflict,” he said.”
Yeah, Fico won’t be there forever, he’ll follow Orban in being kicked out by the voters sooner or later. The main thing that NATO and the West need to do is rein-in and counter the massive Russian agitprop and funding going to hoodwinking the electors and boosting these far-right parties, who promptly start singing from the Russian songbook.
We could start by having a good look at Reform in the UK, following revelations about their Welsh leader being on Moscow’s payroll and Farage’s eager involvement in Trump-Putin-Musk-type circles.
‘Germany’s far-right AfD leadership and Russian President Vladimir Putin’s top economic envoy have begun preparations to meet next year to discuss restarting gas supplies to Europe’s biggest economy, a report said Friday.
The discussions for a meeting as early as March underline the close relations between Moscow and the AfD, which, although blocked from power by a coalition of its rivals, is Germany’s most popular party with voters.’
This is all talk and bluff we really have nothing to send but light troops with next to no GBAD, no long range Anti Tank strike, no long range Gun Arty, may be MLRS but they not light. No armoured recce and at most the Light gun, its a paper force made to make us look good. How ever if Russians managed to push past Poland and i doubt they can, what our weak under gunned light foeces will do is beyond me. We have no heavy units as every thing ether awaiting new kit, being run down or just gaped.
Its the Government and MOD talk crap up so hide reality, We will not have and Heavy forces to send for 2/5 years , pleanty of light kit as its cheap and looks good on paaer. Hardy a force to be pround of no matter how fast it can gets to fight its not much good once there.
God some people portray the army as doom and gloom don’t they?
We still have three armoured regiments, we still have mechanised infantry on warrior until Boxer comes in, we still have armoured recce, also on Warrior and increasingly ajax. We have Archer and light gun and apache. But apparently according to the UKDJ comments section that wants to rubbish us at every single possible opportunity none of that exists and we can only send dismounted infantry into the fray.
Give me a break.
What you call “regiments” others call battalions… of obsolescent tanks, if they work since an unknown number must being prepared for their upgrade.