Rapid Reaction Forces

The end of the cold war has caused a significant rethink amongst major military powers throughout the world. Focus has shifted to local hotspots where life-threatening situations can escalate at an alarming pace and peacekeeping forces are required quickly to calm potentially dire conflicts. The United Nations needs international support in its efforts to maintain world peace - a difficult task when many ancient racial and political grudges suddenly reignite and where little sense of humanity seems to exist. This volume looks at the preparations that have been made in Britain, the USA and Europe to provide highly mobile units that can be deployed at short notice to counter such spontaneous outbreaks of violence. It describes and shows the latest equipment in use by army, air force and naval units. The reader is taken through deployment exercises with each military objective clarified and shown. The world will see increased use of these elite us in the years ahead as they attempt to maintain peace in an unstable world.
Descriptions of rapid reaction units include coverage of the US Marine Corps' Bell/Boeing MV-22 Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft and Army RAH-66 Comanche attack helicopter, as well as details of the Royal Navy's helicopter carrier HMS Ocean which operates as the spearhead of the Royal Marine's new Amphibious Ready Corps.