Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, whether the British Army is currently utilising the British Army Training Unit Kenya.

British Army Training Unit Kenya (BATUK) continues to be used for both training and testing activity, including for uncrewed systems, and will remain a location for the Army’s testing of such systems throughout the current Parliament.

Five exercises are scheduled to take place in each of financial years 2025-26 and 2026-27.

Regarding future use of BATUK, the Defence Cooperation Agreement limits annual exercising personnel to 8,000. While the number of exercises is likely to reduce, the Army intends to shift towards fewer but larger brigade level exercises involving multiple battlegroups, rather than single battlegroup deployments.

This financial year, we forecast expenditure of approximately £56 million for the conduct of military exercises and the maintenance of BATUK, with costs expected to rise to reflect the conduct of larger exercises throughout FY2026-27 and FY 2027-28. Costs beyond FY 2027-28 are not expected to diverge significantly.

*Data for FY 2015-16 and 2016-17 may be incomplete due to MOD data retention policy.‑retention policy.