Chiefs of Defence for the UK and Oman hosted their counterparts from UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait, Egypt, and Jordan as well as the Gulf Cooperation Council’s Assistant Secretary General Military Affairs today onboard HMS Dragon.
The RAF are continuing to take the fight to Daesh in Syria.
A team of 30 RAF medics have been deployed to the hospital as part of Operation TRENTON since July 2018, and will now train the Vietnamese unit on how to run a field hospital, before transferring organisation of the hospital over to them and returning to the UK.
The UN field hospital was initially established early in 2017 and has provided medical care to over 1,800 UN military personnel and civilian staff.
Warrant Officer Naya Heseltine said:
It’s a poignant part of the UN Peacekeeping mission for the UK to handover responsibility of the Role 2 Hospital to the Vietnamese. For us, it has been a momentous occasion and a privilege to have been a part of the first RAF hospital deployment in 27 years.
The UK Engineer Task Force began building a bespoke Level 2 hospital earlier in 2018, of which the Vietnamese Hospital Unit will move into from their temporary tented hospital soon.
RAF Medical Services have begun transferring authority of a UN field hospital in South Sudan to a Vietnamese Hospital Unit.
After three days of intense training in harsh conditions – including helicopter drills, bridging drills and cold weather training – they now form a tight-knit, well-prepared and combat-ready multinational brigade of 2,500 personnel.
Minister for the Armed Forces Mark Lancaster said:
Whether it’s from the seas, the skies or on land, Exercise Trident Juncture will demonstrate the crucial contribution our Armed Forces make to NATO – an alliance which is the cornerstone of European security and stability in an increasingly unpredictable era.
From the skies, the UK is contributing four Hawk aircraft which touched down in Norway last week and in the surrounding seas HMS Cattistock, HMS Enterprise and two Type-23s – HMS Westminster and HMS Northumberland – will support the exercise as part of multinational task groups.
A total of 150 aircraft, 40,000 participants and 10,000 vehicles makes Exercise Trident Juncture 2018 NATO’s largest collective defence exercise in over a decade and will test the alliance in an article 5 scenario – when an attack on one is an attack on all.
Later this week they will all contribute to the Live Exercise. The British-led Multinational Brigade will face the challenging task of countering an advancing enemy, a role played by crack troops from Norway and Germany who are familiar with the terrain and environment.