Toby Perkins – 2015 Parliamentary Question to the Ministry of Defence

The below Parliamentary question was asked by Toby Perkins on 2015-10-22.

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, which pieces of equipment included in his Department’s Defence in Numbers publication of August 2015 are used only for training or ceremonial use.

Mr Philip Dunne

The Defence in Numbers booklet is a snap shot of the UK’s Defence capability and how we are spending the fifth largest Defence budget in the world. As well as giving details on civilian and personnel numbers and current operations, it also includes a list of the Ministry of Defence’s equipment holdings, the vast majority of which are in service and deployable. We will continue to review the Defence in Numbers booklet to ensure that it best reflects the breadth of defence equipment.

The Defence in Numbers booklet has a section for "training aircraft", and all of the aircraft types listed there are used for training only. This includes the Hawk, Viking, Vigilant, Tucano and Jet Provost aircraft.

The other pieces of equipment used only for ceremonial use are BAE-125 aircraft, Wessex helicopters, Challenger 1 battle tanks, FH70 Towed Howitzers and Chieftain Armoured Vehicles.