Call-up age to rise to 65 as 95,000 veterans face mobilisation test

Thousands of former service personnel are set to be called up next year in the biggest test of Britain's reserve system in decades. The Ministry of Defence plans to draw on the UK's 95,000-strong strategic reserve, made up of ex-Army, Royal Navy and RAF personnel, to check whether they can actually be contacted, mobilised and equipped in a crisis. The number taking part has not yet been confirmed.

The strategic reserve is not the same as Britain's roughly 32,000 volunteer reservists who serve part time by choice. It is made up of people who have already left the forces but still carry a legal liability to be recalled. Under existing law, all former regular and reserve officers can be recalled at any point in their lives, and the MoD is required to keep in contact with former personnel for six years after they finish full-time service.

The rules are also being widened. Under the new Armed Forces Bill, the maximum age for call-up rises from 55 to 65. Ministers are lowering the trigger for mobilising former personnel from "national danger, great emergency or attack in the UK" to "war-like preparations". The changes are expected to take effect next spring.

Armed Forces Minister Louise Sandher-Jones set out the plans to the House of Lords national resilience committee on Monday, saying the reserve would be exercised "on a scale we haven't seen for a long time". She said the exercise would "go through measures to call out, use, equip and all the rest of the procedures we'd have to go through to use the strategic reserve properly".

A former Army officer herself, the minister said the pool of ex-service personnel had been "a lot less used in my lifetime" but would matter in future. She added: "When I left the Army and found out I was in the strategic reserve, I just filed it away and never thought about it again. We are definitely no longer in that space."

Whether the system works at all is the open question. Lord Robertson of Port Ellen, who led last year's strategic defence review, has said officials did not "know where most" members of the reserve were, and urged the Government to round up those who are available, fit and willing. Chief of the Defence Staff Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton has warned Britain lacks an "effective system of tracking and engaging" people who have recently left the forces.

The backdrop is a shrinking regular Army, now at around 71,000 fully trained personnel ready for the front line, its smallest in more than 200 years. The MoD said last week that recruitment beat departures across a full year for the first time since 2021, though the gains are small at 170 for the Army, 840 for the RAF and 440 for the Royal Navy and Royal Marines. Training for some soldiers in the Army's 3rd Division was reportedly cancelled to save money, with live firing suspended until April.

Money is the sticking point. The Chancellor is not expected to commit to spending 3 per cent of GDP on defence by 2030 in next month's Budget, even as defence planners warn Britain could be facing Russia before the end of the decade.

For most households this will feel distant, but for anyone who has served it is not. If you left the forces in the past six years, or served as an officer at any point, you may already be on a list you have forgotten about, and the age at which that list stops applying is about to move up ten years.