Members of the Armed Forces’ Strategic Reserve will be tested in 2027 on how quickly they can be called into service, as the Government steps up plans to assess the UK’s resilience in a national crisis.
The mobilisation exercises are intended to examine whether former service personnel can be identified, contacted and deployed effectively if Britain faces a serious emergency or moves towards war.
The Ministry of Defence has said the Strategic Reserve contains valuable experience in areas including cyber, intelligence, medicine and communications. Ministers are seeking to make greater use of those skills as part of a broader effort to strengthen national preparedness.
Measures in the Armed Forces Bill would raise the maximum age for recall from 55 to 65 and allow reservists to be called up for “warlike preparations”, rather than only in circumstances involving national danger, a great emergency or an attack on the UK.
A parliamentary committee said the Ministry of Defence planned to conduct a series of exercises from 2027 to assess the effectiveness of the mobilisation process. The tests are expected to measure how quickly suitable personnel can be found and the availability of people with specialist skills.
Separate Government resilience plans also include the largest UK home-defence exercise in several decades, due to take place in 2027. The exercise will test how military and civilian authorities respond if international hostilities affect the country.
Officials are developing a digital system to track reservists’ military backgrounds alongside their current civilian skills. A parliamentary report said the Ministry of Defence had details of more than 70,000 people liable for recall, but warned that the system would need to identify personnel whose civilian roles were critical to defence production or national infrastructure.
The Government has said the reforms are designed to provide the Armed Forces with a larger and more flexible pool of experienced personnel during a crisis, while supporting wider plans to improve the UK’s ability to withstand disruption and respond to threats.
