British Military

Army honours soldier who checks on a driver twice Private Dan Montgomery of Catterick, North Yorkshire, earns a commendation for helping a seriously ill woman and staying over two hours until ambulance crews arrive.

The Army Reserve brought 960 UK personnel and 173 vehicles to Denmark for a recent exercise, with arrivals through different airports and ferry ports within 12 hours.

Britain’s former military medical chiefs warn that gaps in casualty evacuation could cost wounded troops their lives. Two former heads of Britain’s military medical services have told MPs that the country lacks the capacity to treat casualties on the scale a major war could produce. Their warning reaches from the place where a soldier is wounded to the NHS hospital that would eventually receive them. Lieutenant General Martin Bricknell and Major General Tim Hodgetts, both retired surgeons general, gave evidence to the Defence Select Committee about preparations for a high-intensity war against another major military power. Bricknell said pressures on the Ministry of Defence over roughly 15 years had hollowed out military medical services. His concern was about the starting point for expansion: cutting a service in peacetime also reduces what is available when the country needs to mobilise. That makes medical capacity part of the force Britain can sustain, alongside the troops and equipment it can send. A wounded soldier needs more than someone capable of treating the injury. The soldier also needs a way to reach that care. The committee heard about a critical shortage of protected medical vehicles and the difficulty of evacuating casualties through airspace where enemy forces can attack. Hodgetts warned that an ineffective evacuation system raises the risk of deaths before patients reach hospital that could otherwise have been prevented. His assessment was specific: Britain could send an effective force on operations, but it lacked the capacity to handle patients at huge scale. That distinction matters because an operation can begin with enough medical support for its expected demands and still face a much larger problem as casualties accumulate. The journey home also connects military medicine directly to civilian healthcare. An NHS bed is part of that journey, as are the staff and services needed after the immediate injury has been treated. Military planners and NHS professionals have already been testing how that would work. A recent three-day wargame brought together more than 100 military experts, clinicians and civil servants, with international partners, to examine the return of casualties from an overseas conflict. The questions went beyond finding hospital space. Participants considered rehabilitation, mental health support and how to maintain healthcare for civilians while treating returning military patients. Those needs continue after a casualty has survived the first emergency. An evacuation therefore moves a patient into another part of the care system; it does not finish the demand on it. Major General Phil Carter, the UK Surgeon General, also described how lessons from Ukraine are changing the planning closer to the battlefield. Enemy drones can make it too dangerous to bring an ambulance as far forward as medics would want. Defence Medical Command is examining uncrewed evacuation vehicles and drones that could carry blood and first-aid supplies to medical teams. These address two connected problems: moving wounded people out and getting treatment supplies in. If evacuation is delayed, the people caring for the casualty need the means to keep treating them while they wait. Defence Medical Command and NHS Blood and Transplant also have an agreement covering blood storage, delivery, research and training, including trials of drone deliveries. That work tackles a practical constraint behind frontline transfusions: blood has to reach the casualty as well as be available somewhere in the system. The proposed technologies still need to become dependable parts of care under the conditions troops would face. A drone delivery cannot supply the protected vehicle, hospital capacity or rehabilitation that the same patient may need next. Taken together, the medical chiefs’ evidence and the joint planning expose a demanding question for defence leaders: how many wounded personnel can the whole system support, from the frontline through to recovery? The wargame tests plans for that journey. Hodgetts’s warning is about whether Britain has enough capacity to carry it out when the numbers grow.

JUST IN: HMS Prince of Wales’ F-35Bs join Norwegian fighters to escort a US B-52 during Exercise Global Thunder. 🇬🇧

That’s some entrance for 148 Battery - arriving by submarine.

Yes, keeping RAF flights going matters more than just moving them.

The “next year” bit doesn't inspire much confidence.

JUST IN: RAF Typhoons are to deploy to Qatar to defend Saudi airspace from Houthi drones and missiles, with Atlas transport and military advisers supporting Saudi forces.

JUST IN: HMS Daring’s anchor was fitted on 26 October ahead of her anticipated return to sea, after more than 3,300 days without sailing.

Army shortlists seven bids to replace Land Rovers and Pinzgauers Contenders including Babcock’s Land Cruiser are due to supply 21 vehicles for trials, with around 3,000 replacements initially planned.

RAF restores battlegroup-scale parachute drops, with troops and equipment travelling together in Atlas aircraft on Exercise Rhino Titan.

Hope they get a proper chance to celebrate together.

HMS Queen Elizabeth calls at Gibraltar during a 12-week training deployment ahead of more complex NATO exercises next year.

Royal Artillery tests new radar in Estonia to help troops find threats.