British veterans are set to run a drill replicating a scenario where they are mobilised for war.
Members of the Armed Forces strategic reserve will be tested next year on being called into action as part of Government plans to test the nation’s resilience.
It is currently unclear how many of the 95,000 retired Armed Forces members will take part.
This comes amid fears Britain could be dragged into a wider conflict by 2030, and a week after Germany confirmed Russia had launched a drone attack on Leipzig airport.
Despite mounting threats, Britain only has around 71,000 full-time, fully trained troops to deploy to the front line, while its Army has shrunk to its smallest size in more than 200 years.
Announcing the plans yesterday, Armed Forces minister Louise Sandher-Jones said: ‘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.’
Speaking at the House of Lords’ national resilience committee, Ms Sandher-Jones, a veteran herself, said that former Armed Forces members have been ‘a lot less used’ in her lifetime.
She added: ‘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.’
Britain’s Armed Forces Minister Louise Sandher-Jones meets British troops during a visit to Estonia
Under current laws, the Ministry of Defence must maintain contact with former military personnel for six years after they leave full-time service.
However, strategic defence review author Lord Robertson of Port Ellen claimed in April that defence officials had ‘lost track of veterans on recall list’ and called on the Government to ’round up those who are available and fit and willing’.
The call-up for British Army veterans came as Andy Burnham faces criticism over Labour’s military spending as Chancellor of the Exchequer, John Healey, will not commit to 3 per cent of GDP on defence by the end of the decade.
Cost-cutting measures employed by Mr Burnham’s government have already seen training and military drill cancellations for professional troops.
