The United Kingdom is to hold its largest home defence exercise in decades next year, in an effort to better prepare the whole country for the possibility of war. According to the account, a senior minister confirmed the plan and said that a new campaign focused on national resilience would be launched later this year, part of a broader push to make the country readier for a serious crisis.
The scale of the planned drill sets it apart from anything seen in recent years. According to the account, the exercise was set out by Darren Jones of the Cabinet Office, and is expected to involve ministers as well as hundreds of officials from central government and from local authorities. It is due to play out over a number of days, testing how the different arms of the state would respond together under pressure.
At the heart of the exercise is a category of danger that stops short of open warfare. According to the account, it will test the United Kingdom's responses to what are known as hybrid threats, which sit below the threshold of all-out war. Those could include cyber attacks, acts of sabotage against critical infrastructure such as undersea cables, and potentially even assassinations aimed at destabilising the country.
The drill has been given its own name and a clear place within a larger allied effort. According to the account, the exercise has been dubbed Operation Albiston Shadow and is designed to complement a much wider NATO exercise taking place around the same time. That broader alliance exercise is expected to simulate scenarios reaching beyond the threshold of an all-out armed attack, extending the scope of what is being rehearsed.
The revival of this kind of planning marks a return to habits that had faded from view. According to the account, exercises of this sort were carried out fairly routinely during the Cold War as part of home defence preparedness, but were largely shelved after it ended. They are now being resurrected against the backdrop of a growing threat from Russia, with the Prime Minister and other ministers openly discussing the possibility of war between Russia and NATO as soon as 2030.
The announcement was tied to a wider assessment of the dangers facing the country. According to the account, it forms part of an annual update to the National Risk Register, a document that lists threats ranging from all-out war down to something as ordinary as the lights going out in a power cut. New entries added this year include threats to the democratic process, amid allegations that Russia is seeking to undermine the country by targeting its politics, and the risk that artificial intelligence could accelerate attacks on critical systems such as data, water and police infrastructure.
Alongside the work of government, officials underlined the role that ordinary people can play in being ready. According to the account, individuals and households were encouraged to think about basic preparations, such as keeping supplies of water and food, battery powered torches and wind up radios. These were presented as small, practical steps that could prove useful in a minor emergency and, in a crisis of national proportions such as an armed attack, could matter a great deal more.