It ain’t half too hot to train, says Army boss

THE military’s green tsar has said climate change is stopping soldiers from exercises because it is increasingly “too hot to train”.

Lt Gen Richard Nugee, who advises the Ministry of Defence on making areas of defence more sustainable, warned that a warm year in the 2000s would become a typical year in the 2040s.

He said this would affect the military’s “ability to train, as we lose more days to being too hot to train”. He added: “In Cyprus, the projection is that all training will be lost in August to heat.”

In a speech at the Defence and Security Equipment International conference, Lt Gen Nugee referred to a study by the UK Met Office, which identified that in temperate climates the number of days lost to training due to increases in temperatures is likely to rise by between 75 and 150 per cent by 2040.

However, Tobias Ellwood, chairman of the Commons defence select committee, said that when he served as a soldier he was sent to Cyprus ahead of a deployment to Kuwait to acclimatise and urged the military to “adapt” to extreme climates, rather than become susceptible to the “too hot to train” message.

He said: “Our adversaries won’t stop for the weather and neither should we.”