Lord Touhig – 2016 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Lord Touhig on 2016-02-03.

To ask Her Majesty’s Government what estimate they have made of the speed at which reservists will be able to fill front-line combat roles.

Earl Howe

Volunteer Reservists (VR) on the trained strength (26,560 as at 1 December 2015) are required to respond to a mobilisation call-out at 28 days’ notice and may then carry out additional training for an operation. The length of time required for this training will depend on the complexity of the operation, which may require familiarisation training on equipment which they will be required to operate, and procedural training to prepare for the environment they will encounter. Further preparations may be required, such as vaccinations, which depend on the environment of the operation and which will affect the length of time between mobilisation and deployment.

For a medium scale intervention operation we would expect the period between mobilisation and deployment for VR to be around 180 days. However, the use of intelligent mobilisation means that willing and available VR are routinely mobilised in around 90 days for specific tasks and this can be significantly shortened in some circumstances.

No estimate has been made of the number of Reservists who would be able to serve at short notice in the event of a major conflict.