The United Kingdom will deploy an extra 400 troops to Estonia from next year under a new defence agreement with the Baltic nation.<\/p>\n
The move is intended to reinforce NATO’s eastern flank, and will see the number of British troops in the country rise from 800 to 1,200 from April.<\/p>\n
Defence Secretary Dan Jarvis said: “We are strengthening our deployment in Estonia to defend NATO territory and deter Russian aggression.”<\/p>\n
The agreement, signed by Jarvis and his Estonian counterpart Hanno Pevkur in Tallinn on Thursday, will see British forces in Estonia transition from an armoured battlegroup to a more manoeuvrable mobile anti-armour force (MAAF).<\/p>\n
It will be equipped with more mobile vehicles, advanced weapons and high-tech drones designed specifically to operate in Estonia.<\/p>\n
Jarvis said the agreement “reflects the realities of warfare today and shows how we are modernizing our forces to meet the threats we face.”<\/p>\n
As well as greater mobility and new technology, the new force will benefit from UK equipment and ammunition that is already being moved into position in Estonia.<\/p>\n
Pevkur said the pre-positioning of supplies would allow British troops to respond “significantly faster in a crisis situation.”<\/p>\n
The two countries have also agreed to co-operate more closely on new military technologies.<\/p>\n
British troops have been deployed to Estonia under Operation Cabrit since 2016 as part of the UK’s commitment to NATO.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The United Kingdom will deploy an extra 400 troops to Estonia from next year under a new defence…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":8216,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[4659,2068,68,333,7],"class_list":["post-8215","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-news","tag-british-troops","tag-dan-jarvis","tag-estonia","tag-hanno-pevkur","tag-nato"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8215"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8215\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8216"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8215"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8215"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/nato\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8215"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}