| answer text |
<p>Overseas tours for military personnel can be broadly grouped into three categories:
operational deployments, exercises and longer-term postings.</p><p>Operational deployment
roles are high readiness deployments anywhere in the world where there is an operational
requirement and are not family accompanied. UK military personnel are currently performing
these roles in parts of Asia, Africa, Europe, the Middle East and the South Atlantic
Islands.</p><p>The standard tour length for operational deployments can vary greatly
depending on the circumstances but is likely to be six months, with some Service personnel
serving up to 12 months or longer.</p><p>Large-scale exercises are conducted in Belize,
Canada and Kenya to provide training for UK military operations. There are a small
number of permanent UK military staff posted in each location, and these roles are
family accompanied. UK military personnel sent to these locations on exercise are
not accompanied by their families.</p><p>Permanent or longer-term posted roles or
assignments can be family accompanied. Permanent overseas postings which can be family
accompanied include Bahrain, Qatar, the USA, Gibraltar, the South Atlantic Islands,
the Cyprus Sovereign Base Areas and the United Nations Operation TOSCA, Singapore
and European countries. Around 4,600 of these posts are family-accompanied.</p>
|
|
