The British Army was proud to help out during Covid but is now getting back to its “core purpose” as sights turn to Eastern Europe.
Our troops helped set up Nightingale hospitals, delivered vaccines, provided tests and, recently, drove ambulances during strikes.
But more traditional duties are now back at the top of their agenda.
The Mirror was granted access this week to a mock assault on an enemy urban area in Exercise Khanjar in Oman – the culmination of a four-month deployment.
Soldiers took on what they call a “peer enemy” – an army with similar military capabilities.
Captain Lewis Haigh, of 4th Light Brigade Combat Team, said: “The Army is now getting back to its core purpose. We’re training for a range of different things around the world.
“You have humanitarian and peace support, security and, at the far end, war. The military was proud to support the UK during Covid but the Army is now focused on future threats abroad.”
Capt Haigh, of County Durham, said that during its Covid duties, the Army had never stopped “training the soldiers of the future”.
Speaking a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, he added: “We just now have more of a focus on external threats.”
In the Omani desert, British reconnaissance teams said they were urging top brass to buy more cheap drones.
Captain James Heal of the Royal Anglian Regiment told the Mirror: “In Ukraine, we have seen a lot of drones being shot down constantly and they have had to resupply.
“If you just have one of something and it gets shot down, instead of having lots of them, there is nothing you can do about it.”
The regiment has the most drones in the Army. Capt Heal, 28, added: “The British Army is trying to work out the best way to procure these.
“At the moment, they are supporting commercial off-the-shelf.
“The ones I use are slightly specialist, they cost £8,000. But the ones we really want to use at the lower level are around £500, sub-250 gram ones.”
The Royal Anglian Regiment is next year due to command NATO’s Very High Readiness Joint Task Force, meaning they would be first out to fight President Putin’s Russian army should the 30-country alliance put boots on the ground in Ukraine.
Meanwhile Colonel Hugh Campbell-Smith, commander of the defence hub in Duqm, Oman, insisted the UK’s presence in the country showed it had not forgotten about the Middle East.
The US and UK withdrew from Afghanistan after 20 years in 2021. But Col Campbell-Smith said: “Duqm sits within the Gulf and Indian Ocean. This region has not been abandoned.”
