UK to practice troops redeployment in case of Russia-NATO conflict

PanARMENIAN.Net - More than British 1,600 troops will head to the Middle East to practice an Iraq invasion-scale operation for the first time in more than a decade, Telegraph reports.

Exercise Shamal Storm could be a dry run for one day having to send a large armoured force of British troops to Eastern Europe if there was ever a Russian confrontation with NATO, sources said.

The logistics war game in Jordan aims to ensure the Army can still deploy a 30,000-strong force of tanks and troops to a crisis zone anywhere in the world, despite sharp defence cuts in the past five years.

More than 300 military vehicles are being shipped to the Jordan, where logistics, medical, intelligence and bomb disposal experts will practice supporting a massive British military expedition.

Army sources said despite being held in Jordan, bordering Syria, the desert exercise was not a dress rehearsal for sending British troops against Islamic State in Iraq and Levant (Isil) militants, Telegraph says.

A source said: “This isn’t a counter-Isil exercise. If anything, this is much more about us being prepared to join the US in Ukraine than it is in Syria.

“This is not the sort of kind of force you expect to roll into Aleppo to take on a bunch of jihadists.”

After more than a decade of fighting a long-running counter insurgency campaign in Afghanistan, where no more than 10,000 troops were deployed at any one time, the Army is trying to relearn skills for larger scale armored conflict.