HC Deb 28 February 1969 vol 778 cc369-70W
Mr. Dalyell

asked the Secretary of State for Defence for what purposes a major redeployment and reinforcement exercise is to take place in the Baltic region in the late spring of 1969.

Mr. Healey

A brigade group of 3 Division and aircraft of 38 Group R.A.F. are now deploying via southern Jutland to Schleswig-Holstein, thus practising the reinforcement of Allied forces in Allied Command Baltic Approaches. This is one of the responses by the United Kingdom to the Russian invasion of Czechoslovakia, as part of the collective effort to strengthen the defensive forces of the Alliance of which my right hon. Friend informed the House on 14th November, 1968. The forces concerned are part of the mobile force earmarked for assignment to N.A.T.O. in May, 1968. They will join Danish and German forces in a N.A.T.O. exercise, Bold Adventure, with the aim of exercising command and control of composite N.A.T.O. army and air forces.—[Vol. 773, c. 146–7.]