War games in Jordan to test Army’s strength

MORE than 1,600 British troops will head to the Middle East to practise an Iraq invasion-scale operation for the first time in more than a decade.

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.

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

It comes after a senior American general last year warned more defence cuts would mean Britain was no longer able to send a division-strength force of troops to join an allied operation as it did during the Iraq 2003 campaign.

More than 300 military vehicles are being shipped to Jordan, where logistics, medical, intelligence and bombdisposal experts will practise supporting a huge British military expedition.

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

A source said: “This isn’t a counterIsil 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 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 armoured conflict.

The exercise in the south-western desert of Jordan will be the biggest of its kind since 2001, when British troops held a major drill called Saif Sareea in Oman ahead of the Iraq invasion.

Troops will be drawn from 3 UK Division and Force Troops Command and will rehearse “theatre entry tactics” such as landing in a hostile area, setting up a field hospital and dealing with chemical and biological weapons. Soldiers from 1st Bn The Duke of Lancaster’s Regiment will provide security.

Last month more than 80 vehicles including heavily armoured Mastiffs were loaded at the Marchwood military port near Southampton aboard the MV Anvil Point bound for the Jordanian port of Aqaba.

Jordan has been a key contributor to the coalition fighting Isil and last year one of its pilots was shot down and killed in a barbaric public execution.

The UK has a long military connection with Jordan: many of its officers are trained at Sandhurst and a British Army team is attached to the army’s headquarters as instructors.

An Army spokesman said: “The exercise will test key evolving concepts such as the air deployment of a very high-readiness field hospital and the latest explosives ordnance disposal and search capabilities.”