Strong alliances and partnerships
The 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review set out the Government’s vision for a secure and prosperous United Kingdom with global reach and influence.
The review recognised that no country is able to address all the challenges alone and as such strong alliances and partnerships are more important than ever.
Defence policy is ‘international by design’, ensuring that we make our partnerships and alliances central to all that we do.
In order for the British Army to work much closer to our allies, we need to ensure we can operate together and where necessary ensure our personnel and equipment can also ‘interoperate’.
Delivering UK security and prosperity
Interoperability capitalises on a framework between like-minded nations creating a pool of high-readiness forces that can respond quickly to a crisis, anywhere, anytime, in any environment, as part of a coalition or on behalf of international organisations such as NATO.
Maintaining security is no longer purely a national matter and recent events have shown that threats take no account of national boundaries but are interconnected and interrelated. Knowledge, skills and resources are shared between Partner Nations to deliver a rapidly deployable, flexible and integrated joint force.
There is no doubt that interoperability between forces is crucial to effectiveness and as such the Army’s Interoperability programme aims to ensure that it is able to operate alongside a wide variety of international partners to help deliver UK security and prosperity.
Our International Partners
The British Army operates alongside a wide variety of international partners including our NATO, EU and global partners, ensuring we remain fully engaged as a strategic partner within the international community. Our strategic allies include the United States, France and Germany and we have agreements with other nations, such as those belonging to the Joint Expeditionary Force (JEF) including Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania.
The British Army is committed to building on the UK and Partner Nations’ shared experiences and interoperability developed over many years so that it can meet any potential threats and requirements for military support.
The British Army stands by its collective treaty commitments to protect our shared security. It remains fully committed to collective defence through NATO and other multinational readiness forces as demonstrated by our deployments to Estonia and many other countries around the world.