A massive military exercise involving troops from across Europe and North America will get under way off the west coast of Scotland.

Joint Warrior will see warships, submarines and aircraft take to the west coast of Scotland for a two-week training exercise.

The exercise is held twice a year to prepare forces from the UK, US, Denmark, Norway, France, Canada, Germany and the Netherlands for events and active service.

The event is aimed at creating a task group capable of being deployed to worldwide incidents such as last year's war in Libya, as well as testing the ability of the Armed Forces to cope with events such as a terrorist attack on the Olympics.

On Monday an air assault exercise will see troops from the 16 Air Assault Brigade secure an airfield at West Freugh, in Stranraer, through a combination of parachute, air assault and Tactical Air Landings.

Once it has landed, the task force, based around the 5 SCOTS battle group, will defend the airfield and carry out air assault exercises to defeat a notional enemy force.

The exercise will involve more that 1600 troops, and be supported by Apache, Chinook and Sea King from the Joint Helicopter Force.

The Airborne Task Force (ABTF) is a 1600-strong infantry battle group that can be called on at five days' notice to deploy on operations for up to 135 days.

A total of 8000 Royal Navy personnel on board 30 vessels are also taking part in the Joint Warrior exercise.