UK To Participate in STEADFAST DEFENDER 24
The UK Defence Secretary Grant Shapps has announced that all 3 services of the United Kingdom’s armed forces are to take part in Exercise STEADFAST DEFENDER 24. The announcement comes as much of Western Europe reexamines its defense spending in light of the ongoing war in Ukraine and after the U.S. and UK began striking targets against the Houthi in the Yemen earlier this month. Shapps remarking on the west entering a new era of tension in his first speech as Defence Secretary: “We find ourselves at the dawn of this new era – the Berlin Wall a distant memory – and we’ve come full circle, moving from a post-war to pre-war world.”
STEADFAST DEFENDER 24 will include 31 NATO member nations and Sweden. With the UK committing 20,000 service personnel to the exercise. Which will be undertaken in the NATO alliance’s 75th year anniversary. Shapps adding:
“Today our adversaries are busily rebuilding their barriers. Old enemies are reanimated. Battle lines are being redrawn. The tanks are literally on Ukraine’s lawn. And the foundations of the world order are being shaken to their core. We stand at a crossroads.”
16,000 troops from the British Army will take part and will be deployed across eastern Europe from February to June 2024. Taking part in live fire manoeuvres, parachute jumps and part of a joint Army and Navy helicopter force will be deployed.
2,000 Royal Navy servicemen and women will also be joining STEADFAST DEFENDER, with 8 warships, a Carrier Strike Group led by a Queen Elizabeth class aircraft carrier and 4,000 Royal Marines Commandos are to be deployed to the Artic Circle as part of an allied amphibious task group. Finally, the Royal Air Force will utilise F-35B attack aircraft and Poseidon P8 Surveillance aircraft during the exercise adding air cover for British forces for the duration.
STEADFAST DEFENDER 24 is to be one of the biggest NATO led exercises since the end of the Cold War. Echoing the large scale exercises of the 1980s such as Exercise Lionheart in 1984 and the UK-based home defence exercise Brave Defender in 1985.