Training exercise at Lincolnshire RAF stations tests readiness to defend UK skies

With the Ukraine and Iran conflicts currently raging, demonstrating possible threats against Britain and Europe, the recent Exercise Agile Warrior assessed the RAF's ongoing ability to defend the UK when under direct attack, ensuring the RAF can continue protecting the country no matter what challenges it faces.

Group Captain Andy Hampshire, Station Commander at RAF Coningsby, led the station throughout the two weeks. He said: "We have to understand and articulate the threat we face. Agile Warrior tested every part of how we prepare for an attack, how we defend against one, and how rapidly we can recover and get back into the fight. The people of this station rose to every one of those challenges."

Exercise Agile Warrior was a major homeland defence training activity in early March. The exercise is designed to rigorously test the RAF’s ability to protect the United Kingdom in an increasingly hostile world and helps ensure the RAF remains ready to defend the nation.

During the two-week exercise, air and ground units across multiple RAF stations trained, simulating the effects of cyber-attacks, long-range precision strike threats, and persistent attempts to disrupt UK air operations.

Essentially, the exercise is intended to test the RAF’s ongoing ability to defend the UK when under direct attack from an adversary, ensuring the RAF can continue protecting the country no matter what challenges it faces.

All personnel from across the RAF, along with key partners including 39 Engineer Regiment, 20 Works Group, and embedded capabilities from UK Space Command were involved. Participating forces practiced rapid dispersal, improvised command-and-control arrangements, base defence, sustainment and recovery activities, ensuring the RAF could continue operating even when under sustained pressure.

Coningsby’s Base Operations Centre team had no idea what the exercise would bring each day; every new scenario was a closely guarded secret, and every new scenario demanded an answer which detailed how the station would respond to a series of hypothetical (but realistic) escalating threats.

Agile Warrior demanded seriousness and professionalism and this was delivered, as aircraft and personnel were dispatched across the station - responding to rapidly emerging exercise scenarios - ready for whatever the exercise would throw at them next.

Coningsby engineering personnel teamed up with the Army's 39 Engineer Regiment to learn the basics of rapid runway repair. Chief Tech Brereton was part of the Coningsby team. He said: "This scenario gave us an appreciation of the battle damage assessment process. We had to find the quickest way of getting the airfield back into use by assessing the damage and prioritising the repairs to rapidly enable effective aircraft operation."

Wing Commander French, Commanding Officer of the Operations Support Wing, was the Exercise Director at RAF Coningsby. She and her team spent months in careful planning, creating exercise scenarios that would test the station's ability to respond – even under the most difficult conditions.

Wing Commander French said: "You've got to be real about this; there are no shortcuts. Successful defence of the United Kingdom depends on a detailed understanding of everything we do here at Coningsby; how it works, why it works – and applying that understanding to create challenging situations and scenarios that the station must then find solutions to."

Across Agile Warrior, RAF Coningsby was recognised as a standout performer, but Group Captain Hampshire will not let the station rest on its laurels. "There is always more to do, no matter how well resourced you are. But this exercise has proved that Coningsby and its people, civilian and military, are a credit to the Royal Air Force, and are prepared to do what is necessary to defend the United Kingdom."

This work prepares for a major NATO training exercise next year.