By Joe Shute and Mark Oliver
25 Jun 2014
More people are now cutting hair and becoming jihadists than opting to fight for Queen and Country
Britain's Armed Forces are being dramatically reduced in size Photo: Getty
The combined strength of Britain’s hairdressers is now more than that of Her Majesty’s Armed Forces. There are currently 185,000 coiffeurs to 159,630 regular forces personnel, and more troops yet are due for the chop.
The Ministry of Defence is implementing £10.6 billion budget cuts which will lead to regular soldiers being slimmed down from 102,000 to 82,000 by 2020.
But that doesn’t matter, the Government says, because they are going to fill the Army gap with a minimum of 11,000 extra reservists by 2018. That means recruiting an extra 2,750 reservists a year by showing them snazzy recruitment videos like this.
The only problem, is since 2012, the trained strength of the Army reserve has flatlined. The MoD now says recruitment processes have improved. But even so, between April 2013 to April 2014, the number of trained reservists increased by just 170 people.
That means, by a rough estimate, more British people have travelled out to join Isis in Iraq and Syria than helped bulk up our own reservist force last year. That’s an estimated 400 to 500 jihadists, by the way.
Signing up new regular soldiers to plug the gaps is also well behind schedule. Over the past year the Army has recruited 6,366 regular soldiers against a target of 9,715. That’s a shortfall of 34 per cent.
The MoD is now even looking at relaxing rules on tattoos on people's faces, necks and hands to try to bolster numbers. Your country needs you.
No wonder the Army restructuring has now been included on a Government “Watch” list of projects Whitehall should be worried about. The National Audit Office, which scrutinises public spending for Parliament, isn’t very impressed either.
A report released this month claims a two-year delay in recruitment software is actually costing the MoD an estimated £1 million a month, when all this was meant to save money. The restructuring, the report warns, poses risks which could “significantly affect the Army’s ability to achieve its objectives and value for money”.
It also found that Capita, the private firm with whom the Army has signed a 10-year £1.2 billion contract in 2012, is currently 67 per cent below its annual target for recruiting reserves.
A shortage of boots on the ground may be one thing, but at least we still rule the waves, right?
Well, we’ve got plenty of admirals (38) and captains (260) the only problem is there are fewer and fewer warships to accommodate them.
Lord West, a former First Sea Lord, has described the total number of escort vessels a "national disgrace", and the fact we don't have any aircraft carriers as "madness".
But now, at least, we’re finally getting one.
The new 65,000 ton HMS Queen Elizabeth is being named by the Queen in July and will be fully operational by 2020 (so that will just be a decade we've spent without one, then). We’re building another, too. The HMS Prince of Wales will be ours for a cool £3 billion, except the Government is yet to decide whether to sail, sell or mothball her because it says it was committed to building the ship by the previous Labour administration.
Even if we do manage to keep them both, for the time being, at least, we’re not exactly flushed for planes to fly from them.
On top of this, in 2010, it was decided to sell off Britain’s entire fleet of 74 Harrier jump jets to the US for a knock down fee. The plan was to replace them with 138 £70 million F-35 Joint Strike Fighters for both the RAF and the Royal Navy by 2018. But the plane has been dogged by cost overruns, delays and accusations of poor performance. Last week the Pentagon ordered all models grounded after engine trouble triggered “an in-flight emergency”.
Mere “teething problems”, so claim military chiefs, who say the cuts will have no impact on the military force we once were. And, in any case, the world is a safer place these days; the call of duty comes increasingly less.
Yet people like these men... think it matters quite a lot.
Former British Army head Lord Dannatt, General Sir Richard Shirreff, and US defence chief Chuck Hagel
They say Russia's actions in Ukraine have shattered the myth of European security in the post-Cold War era, and civil conflict in Syria and Iraq have left the defence reforms conceived of in 2010 outdated.
At a meeting of Nato foreign ministers in Brussels this week, US defence officials urged every member to now spend a minimum of 2 per cent of GDP on defence to combat the “game-changer” in Ukraine.
At present, Britain remains one of only four countries in the 28-member alliance to do this (the other three are the US, Greece and Estonia).
But a new analysis commissioned by officials in the military and revealed earlier this month, has suggested this may fall to 1.9 per cent of GDP by 2017. The MoD insists defence spending will remain above two per cent this year and the next. But what about after that?
Only yesterday General Sir Peter Wall, the Chief of The General Staff, warned Britain may have to undertake military operations sooner than people think because of the rapidly changing security situation around the world. He also echoed fears that any further defence cuts after the 2015 election would endanger the Army’s new slimmed down structures.
Critics say these have been cuts made by bayonet, rather than careful scissor snip, and anything more puts national security at risk. When you no longer project power, the world stops listening.
But then again, maybe everybody will just leave us peacefully be. Nobody seems to give Costa Rica much bother. And they haven’t had an army since 1948.
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