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The press release issued by the Ministry of Defence on 15 May 2025.

A joint statement between the UK and Germany, providing progress on the Trinity House Agreement, following a meeting of Defence Secretary John Healey and Minister of Defence Boris Pistorius in Berlin.

On 23 October 2024, the United Kingdom and Germany signed the Trinity House Agreement on Defence Co-operation in London. The agreement set out our shared commitment to improve and further enhance bilateral defence co-operation to better meet the common challenges of the 21st century and to best secure the common interests of both countries in defence.

The strategic situation remains difficult, the world is more unpredictable and challenging  than ever before. At this time, it is crucial that Allies stick together. This is most true for Ukraine, where the UK and Germany are leading Europe in stepping up our support by our joint leadership of the Ukraine Defence Contact Group (UDCG), first on 11 April, raising nearly $23.5bn from partners so far. We will maintain our commitment and we will host the 28th UDCG in June, as well as the follow-on meetings.

Today we held the first Defence Ministerial Council under the Trinity House Agreement. Since we signed the agreement in October, our Ministries of Defence have worked together to take the first steps towards turning the words of the text into real, practical co-operation. Trinity House committed us to meet in key forums in military co-operation, capability and industrial collaboration, and policy coordination. We are pleased that all these, as well as our Armies, Navies, and Air Forces, have met over the last six months, driving forward Trinity House, its lighthouse projects, and co-operation between our armed forces.

In October 2024 we announced a series of Lighthouse Projects, which provide the ambition and substance to Trinity House. Today we reviewed progress against these, and we continue to encourage our teams to accelerate progress. We are pleased to announce concrete steps we have taken, to work towards our shared ambition.

Through Trinity House, we agreed to start work on a new Deep Precision Strike Capability. For the first time, we can confirm that we will aim for this system to have a range of over 2,000km, and are jointly leading a programme of work within the European Long Range Strike Approach.

We agreed on a strategic partnership in land systems and will continue our close BOXER co-operation. Our armies signed a new bilateral vision statement to drive this forward, they have agreed a new Statement of Intent on Bridging, enabling Germany to purchase General Support Bridges via an existing UK contract.

We agreed to work together to counter undersea threats. We have twice now had German crews fly on UK P-8A Maritime Patrol Aircraft, supporting NATO’s Baltic Sentry and helping to prepare for the German aircraft delivery later this year. And a UK P-8A will use the German Naval Air Base as a stopover shortly. Today we also signed a new agreement driving forward with a joint procurement of new Sting Ray torpedoes under development for our aircraft.

We agreed to develop further connectivity between our Air Forces. They have now developed a detailed “Flight Plan” to make this a reality.

Beyond these projects, work has advanced across the breadth of defence to enhance our co-operation more broadly, aiming to add joint operational value. We plan on establishing a defence industrial forum beneath Trinity House, bringing together our defence trade associations. We have a shared understanding, that digital transformation is central to the modernisation of the defence sector as it enables it to respond to evolving threats with agility, speed and precision. Consequently, we are intensifying our co-operation in the field of digitalisation and cyber. Finally, following Trinity House our governments are engaged in the development of a Bilateral Treaty, growing the strategic relationship between our nations even further.

The press release issued by the Ministry of Defence on 15 May 2025.

More than 250 personnel from the UK Armed Forces are deployed to locations such as Cyprus and Somalia, working to reduce the threat of violence.

The UK has announced a raft of investment for international initiatives to support UN peacekeeping activity.

As one of the largest financial contributors to UN peacekeeping operations, the UK has enduring deployments of around 250 military personnel to locations such as Cyprus, Somalia, and South Sudan, which see British troops working alongside peacekeepers from other countries, building their capability and enabling the UN to deliver its peacekeeping mandates.

Attending the annual UN Peacekeeping Ministerial summit in Berlin today, the Minister for the Armed Forces confirmed more than a million pounds of additional investment in international programmes to make peacekeeping operations more effective, deliver training to partner armed forces around the world, and to enhance accountability.

Pledges announced include:

• £150,000 to support the roll-out of a UN reinforcement training package for commanders to help build skills to raise standards of conduct and discipline, while specifically aiming to strengthen leadership and accountability while combatting sexual exploitation and abuse.
• £200,000 will fund monitoring and analysis of Action for Peacekeeping Plus – a key UN reform agenda – using data-driven insights to enhance and reform international peacekeeping with an evidence-based approach.
• £500,000 to be invested in the Elsie Initiative Fund, which is co-chaired by the UK and UN Women, that aims to accelerate the pace of change in security institutions to enable more uniformed women to meaningfully deploy to and participate in peace operations.
• £100,000 of investment will see the UK step up to co-host a peacekeeping course aimed at women alongside Austria and Kenya.
• £125,000 will be spent on funding for the Peace Operations Training Institute, an NGO focused on delivering training to support peace operations and providing resources to counter disinformation and misinformation.

Not only will these measures contribute to building effective UN peacekeeping missions, they will also support the UK to ensure its forces have experience working alongside key partners, building their skills, capability and operational effectiveness.

Minister for the Armed Forces, Luke Pollard, said:

With the threat of conflict rising around the world, it has never been more important for countries to come together to assess what more we can collectively do to support those who selflessly put their lives at risk in the name of peace.

The UK has always been a staunch supporter of UN peacekeeping and the multilateral, and with hundreds of our personnel deployed on operations or supporting peace programmes in Europe and Africa, it was a pleasure to reaffirm our commitment today in Berlin to supporting peace processes and reducing the threat of conflict.

65 UN peacekeepers were killed or lost their lives in the line-of-duty last year. Their determination and sacrifice will be honoured by our reaffirmed commitment to deepening our international partnerships to deliver peace and cease unnecessary conflict.

Peacekeeping is essential to assisting countries transition from conflict to peace, helping to support stability in some of the most volatile regions the world, in turn positively affecting the UK’s own national security – which is the foundation of the government’s Plan for Change. It plays a critical role in preventing the outbreak of larger-scale violence and conflict which would otherwise require greater UK diplomatic, defence or development investment.

The most prominent UK activity in support of UN peace operations is through Operation Tosca in Cyprus, a reoccurring deployment to maintain 50 years calm, which sees British troops patrolling and maintaining the integrity of the buffer zone that runs between the Republic of Cyprus to the south and the so-called Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC) to the north (which is not recognised by the UK as a sovereign territory). It has been one of the UK’s longest-running operations and continues to play an essential part in the peace process between the RoC and the so-called TRNC.

Lord Collins of Highbury, FCDO Minister for Africa said:

Peacekeepers are in harm’s way every day to keep the communities they serve safe through courage and determination. In an era of global instability, they need the support of the international community now more than ever.

That’s why the UK is strengthening its commitment to UN peacekeeping operations through new funding and support, and why we must continue to strengthen our collective will to use peacekeeping effectively for peace and security.

A small number of British personnel also support a UN peace mission in Somalia, which conducts vital work to reduce the threat from extremist groups, such as Al-Shabaab, by helping to prevent them establishing a foothold in the country.

More broadly, the UK helps train and support the security forces of many African nations to enhance their peace operations, through the British Peace Support Team (Africa) which is headquartered in Nairobi, Kenya.

BPST(A) conducts around a hundred activities a year across sub-Saharan Africa, working closely with the UN to develop and deliver capacity-building, especially in peacekeeping intelligence, senior leaders’ courses, training to help counter the threat of improvised explosive devices, and combat sexual exploitation and abuse.

The team delivers these activities primarily alongside the African Union’s Peace and Security Operations Division, with African Standby Forces ,and with training institutions across the continent – training more than 3,000 personnel a year all ranks, from junior soldier to senior mission leader, from police, civilian and military disciplines.