Military Readiness and European Deployment

As Air Marshal, could we deploy a heavy division to Europe

if the need

arose?

Um, we, um... I mean, we have a number of land capabilities,

and-

Yes or no.

Um, look, I, I think that's subject to, um, where we

are with our current equipment and our new equipment that's coming in.

At the moment, we know that we are shorter where we want to be in

terms of, uh, heavy capabilities.

I'll, I'll take that as a no. How about a heavy brigade?

Um, again, uh, these are in our plans, but we are

in, in the process of investing in the army

modernization in order to do that,

and that's something that we're recovering to over time.

Um, a heavy battle group?

Um, I mean, I'd probably owe you a better answer than

one I can give you off the

top of my head here in terms of the detail of the specific disposition of those

different force elements. I think what I would say is we know

that land

modernization is important. One of our, uh, targets

under the, uh, NATO defense planning process

is for a strategic reserve corps

which, uh, as you know, uh, comprises, uh, uh, divisions and

brigades. And, uh, those targets are,

uh, set at a level where we are not at the moment.