Lyneham's Fat Albert Exercising

The skies and local roads of Wiltshire will be extremely busy with military manoeuvers from 23rd January 2006 until the 3rd February 2006. The MoD has announced that Lyneham will be a pivotal point in part of a major military exercise, named "Herrick Eagle" to test the techniques of Essex based 16 Air Assault Brigade.

The Colchester army unit are required to ensure they are fully prepared for future deployment to Afghanistan and will need to be tested in the rolling countryside of Salisbury Plain.

Thousands of troops will be involved in this military testing procedure and the skies of Wiltshire will be buzzing with Lyneham's workhorse Hercules. The Hercules aircraft will be low-level flying for the major part of the exercise and ground manoeuvers are expected return the troops to the Lyneham base for continued air drops.

As a result, it is expected to see slightly more aircraft flying in the skies of Wiltshire, but more ground convoys are expected between Salisbury Plain and the Wiltshire airbase. The MoD have stressed that they will keep the training procedures to normal training times and it is hoped to keep noise levels to a minimum. Lyneham, Keevil, Netheravon will be heavily utilised on the military exercise.

16 Air Assault Brigade is the newest and largest Brigade in the British Army. It has also been the busiest over the last few years with major deployments to Macedonia, where they disarmed the Albanian rebels and implemented the Ohrid Agreement, and to Afghanistan where they were the first Brigade into Kabul to set up the International Security and Assistance Force and of course to Iraq.