Army: Divisional Manoeuvre and Deployment Training

Earl Attlee Excerpts

Tuesday 8th January 2019 Lords Chamber

Asked by

[Earl Attlee]

To ask Her Majesty’s Government when they propose to deploy a largely fully formed and supported division into the field for divisional movement and manoeuvre training.

[The Minister of State, Ministry of Defence (Earl Howe) (Con)]

My Lords, the Army has a substantial and sophisticated exercise programme in place to ensure that it is trained and ready to operate at the divisional level. This includes training with allies and partners. There are currently no plans to deploy an Army division into the field for training.

[Earl Attlee (Con)]

My Lords, I thank my noble friend the Minister for that reply. In the face of a resurgent and irresponsible peer opponent, rather than massively increase military capability and defence expenditure, would it not be far more cost effective to test, demonstrate and perfect our supposed ability to deploy at divisional strength against a peer opponent?

[Earl Howe]

My noble friend makes a very good point. The issue to stress in this context is that if we were to fight at divisional scale, we would likely be doing so as part of a multinational force, probably NATO. The Army therefore regularly exercises with allies and partners, and a good example of that was Exercise Trident Juncture held last November, which involved some 50,000 personnel from 31 allies and partners. That was a really good opportunity to test every element of our war-fighting capability on land.