The UK is planning a major exercise to test its ability to mobilise military veterans as part of wider preparations for a potential conflict.
Armed Forces Minister Louise Sandher-Jones said a cohort from the strategic reserve of about 95,000 retired troops would be called into action “on a scale we haven’t seen for a long time”, Caliber.Az reports, citing British media.
The exercise is planned for next year and will test procedures for calling up veterans, equipping them and deploying them during a crisis.
“The strategic reserve is a real commitment for those that are in it and they will be exercised as part of our exercise programme next year where we will go through measures to call out, use, equip and all the rest of the procedures we’d have to go through to use the strategic reserve properly,” she told the House of Lords’ national resilience committee.
Sandher-Jones said the former troops would have an important role in defending the UK, adding that the reserve had been “a lot less used in my lifetime”.
“When I left the Army and found out I was in the strategic reserve, I just filed it away and never thought about it again. We are definitely no longer in that space,” she said.
The plans come as the UK increases preparations for potential conflict with Russia. Moscow has threatened to attack British factories producing drones for Ukraine, while Western intelligence officials have warned of a Russian sabotage campaign that could lead to conflict with Nato.
Under a new Armed Forces Bill, the age at which veterans can be mobilised will rise from 55 to 65. The threshold for recalling retired troops will also be lowered from “national danger, great emergency or attack in the UK” to “war-like preparations”.
The changes are due to come into force next spring.
The plans follow concerns over the government's ability to track former military personnel. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen previously said defence officials did not “know where most” of the reservists were and called for the government to “round up those who are available and fit and willing”.
The Army currently has about 71,000 fully trained full-time personnel ready to deploy, its smallest number in more than 200 years.
However, the Ministry of Defence said last week that, for the first time since 2021, more people had joined the full-time Armed Forces than had left over an entire year.
The increases were 170 personnel in the Army, 840 in the RAF and 440 in the Navy and Royal Marines.
By Aghakazim Guliyev
