Question to the Ministry of Defence:

To ask the Secretary of State for Defence, what recent progress has been made on establishing the Strike Experimentation Group.

The Strike Experimentation Group (SEG) was established in Warminster in April 2017 and is part of the headquarters of 1st Armoured Infantry Brigade. This will build and develop understanding of the Strike concept within the brigade and its units. The SEG has engaged with Allies, including in the US, France, Canada and Italy, to develop opportunities for combined experimentation and knowledge exchange. They have also developed some early tactics for operational analysis by the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory, and conducted a battlegroup level live experiment with the Canadian Army to investigate armoured cavalry techniques using a surrogate for the Ajax vehicles.

Since the statement on refinements to the Army's structure by the then Secretary of State for Defence on 15 December 2016 [HCWS367], the Army has made minor changes to the sequencing of units to form Strike. The 1st Armoured Infantry Brigade will become the first Strike Brigade by 2020. It will comprise the Household Cavalry Regiment, the Royal Dragoon Guards, 1st Battalion Scots Guards, and 3rd Battalion The Rifles.