Page 8 - The Chapka 2016
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 6 REGIMENTAL JOURNAL OF THE ROYAL LANCERS (QUEEN ELIZABETHS’ OWN) Looking Forward – The Training and Readiness Years
 2016 proved to be busy for the Regiment. Many personnel were trawled to support a whole breadth of exercises and deploy- ments, and a great many collective tasks were completed. In 2017, The Royal Lancers will move into their ‘training year’ and return to focus on their core role as an Armoured Cavalry Regiment. The Regiment will then be at ‘readiness’ for 2018 and 2019.
The training year will be a fantastic opportunity for the Regi- ment to focus on reconnaissance. We will spend the first few months of the year in camp, conducting low-level build-up training, preparing for the larger scale collective training that will take place later in the year. Initially we will be training as troops, increasing to squadrons and finally as a battlegroup with attached arms from the Artillery and Engineers. At each level we’ll use a mixture of live, dry and simulated training. As this journal goes to press we will be sending our final sabre squadron through a mounted gunnery training package at Castlemartin Ranges in Wales and all Squadrons will also have completed dis- mounted live ranges in either Wales or Yorkshire. A mounted exercise on Salisbury Plain will take place in the summer with
vehicle crews and troops having the opportunity to exercise and manoeuvre on CVR(T) and a planning exercise for the battle group headquarters will follow. Squadrons will then execute the planned missions in individual vehicle simulators, known col- lectively as the Combined Arms Tactical Trainer (CATT). Final- ly, the Regiment is likely to conduct a large scale exercise in the north of England and on the borders that will focus on recon- naissance skills. The human and physical geography presented by the real-word is a fantastic opportunity to develop command- ers in a way that the sterile training estates often fail to.
This training will qualify the Regiment to take the position as part of the Vanguard Armoured Infantry Brigade for 24 months. This force remains at a high level of readiness to deploy around the world. With the ‘enhanced forward presence’ as part of a wider NATO deployment now a reality, it would be hard to im- agine The Royal Lancers not taking a slice of the pie. Looking further ahead, the Regiment will move to Warminster in 2020 and take-over a new fleet of AJAX vehicles in 2021.
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