1st Battalion, Exercises | 16 July 2026

Exercise Viking Strike – 1st Battalion

The British Army is modernising

The British Army is modernising, and Exercise Viking Strike, held in Otterburn and Kielder Forest on 6 July, gave a glimpse of the latest technology being used by front-line soldiers.

1st Battalion, Royal Anglian Regiment is set to become one of the Army’s first Near Surface Infantry Battalions. Unlike traditional infantry units, these battalions won’t just rely on soldiers moving across the ground. Instead, they will specialise in drones and other unmanned systems to find and defeat enemies in the air and across the electronic spectrum — an area known as the “drone zone.”

Find out more on the British Army website

Each rifle platoon will include drone pilots who can gather intelligence from the front line. A dedicated company will also operate larger drones capable of spotting targets and launching one-way attack drones, sometimes called “kamikaze” drones, which carry explosive charges and destroy whatever they hit.

Exercise Viking Strike brought all these capabilities together, allowing the battalion to hit more targets, faster, and from greater distances.

The mortar platoon were then using 81mm mortars from an underground bunker to hit the selected targets.

The war in Ukraine has changed how modern battles are fought, and the creation of these new battalions is a direct response to those lessons. Otterburn and Kielder Forest were chosen for this exercise because they closely resemble the heavily forested landscape of Finland. If conflict were to break out in Europe, 1 R ANGLIAN, part of the UK’s 11 Brigade, which is partnered with Finland’s Kainuu Brigade, would be ready to defend Finland’s 1,340km border with Russia.