British army use floating vehicles in Nato war games leaving American allies trailing behind

The 156 metre stretch across the Drawa River in western Poland would normally be a perilous scenario for approaching armies.

But yesterday British engineers using specially designed floating vehicles opened a crossing for battle tanks in just 18 minutes leaving their American allies trailing behind.

As the US took an hour to assemble a regular ribbon bridge, British engineers raced ahead using the Army's M3 amphibious rig, a 24.5 tonne truck which folds out into a a floating platform.

The vehicles, which have their own nicknames ranging from M-3PO, after the Star Wars character, to M3 Hammer, after the rapper, first entered service in the 1990s and have not been used in combat since the beginning of the Iraq war.

However they have now become more strategically important than ever amid the backdrop of the war in Ukraine and the threat of Russia to Eastern Europe.

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