Army cannot afford to recruit

[MFC]

From the Telegraph

Army cannot afford to recruit
By Michael Smith, Defence Correspondent
(Filed: 06/07/2004)


The MoD is deliberately keeping the Army down to 102,000 soldiers, 5,000 below its proper strength, because of a cash crisis.

The Army has been short of soldiers for a decade and the rapid increase in overseas operations over the past few years has left it overstretched and unable to cope.

Army chiefs complain that the training cycle has been completely disrupted, with some regiments having served in both Afghanistan and Iraq while others are already returning for their second tour in Iraq.

They were pleased to find recruitment booming in the wake of the war in Iraq, offering potential respite from the problems of overstretch as well as a move towards a fully manned army of 107,000 men.

But, with recruitment booming and the Army's strength approaching 103,000, they were told by the MoD that there was not enough money in the defence budget to cope with more than 102,000 troops.

Furious Army chiefs realised they had only two options: take money from other areas of their budget to pay for the extra 1,000 soldiers or slow down recruitment and accelerate the discharge of soldiers.

The Army Board decided that, with cuts in other areas likely only to damage morale, they had no choice but to order Lt-Gen Sir Alistair Irwin, the Adjutant-General, to bring numbers down to the 102,000 figure they could afford.

Sir Alistair's response was to ban infantry recruitment from May to October to keep numbers down to the level they could afford.

The move has infuriated officers in battalions threatened by defence cuts expected next week because the argument for axing them was lack of recruits but they are currently banned from recruiting.

Battalions set to be axed include the Black Watch and the Royal Scots, both of which have severe shortages. The Black Watch is about a third short while the Royal Scots has kept its numbers higher only by recruiting troops from Fiji. Overstretch has put immense pressure on the Army's more experienced NCOs and officers, most of whom have wives and families and do not want to spend long periods separated from them.

Large numbers of those men, vital to the efficiency of regiments, have left but not enough to satisfy the civil servants. The ban on recruitment was accompanied by a series of measures to speed up the number leaving.

Army personnel chiefs had already instigated active measures to get rid of soldiers under a system known as "manning control".

That involved tearing up the contracts of soldiers due to serve 22 years, when they would receive an immediate pension, and forcing them out early. But, faced with hundreds of legal challenges, they have now resorted to other measures.

Any soldier putting in his notice is likely to be told he must leave immediately, whether or not he has had time to sort out a new job, to bring the number down to the 102,000 level that can be paid for, one defence source said.

"There is an undisclosed, conscious policy to reduce further the size of the Army; ostensibly by the very same people - the Army Board - who supposedly tell ministers how overstretched the Army is," the source said.


And we're surprised? At least it is being said.
The endangered species of the Scottish Division were within 62 recruits of full manning in financial year 2003-04, according to a written Commons reply by the MoD to an SNP question yesterday. Then came the "capping" of recruitment and uncertainty over the future and the numbers have plummeted again. Not rocket science. The Royal Scots are really struggling. The Highlanders are saying privately a number of units are being set up for the chop by manipulation of policy. The MoD's only going down this road because its misuse of manning control and S-type contracts was exposed by the media. Great credit to the 2 Para website campaign on this one.

http://pages.123-reg.co.uk/eve3-37327/e ... id118.html

[tyke172]

F#cking disgusting, Tony Blair and Geoff Hoon should weild the axe on all the pen-pushing fat gits in whitehall!

I'm annoyed now, hold me back!

[MFC]

well if you read some of the posts here you would explode

http://pages.123-reg.co.uk/eve3-37327/e ... id118.html

[Tab]

I was speaking to a officer in the RA he has been to so many countries during the last few months that he has stop and think every morning and work out just what country he is in.

[tin4tin]

i think it is time we stop spending all our money on europe and asylum seekers and start putting it back into our own country

[df2inaus]

Tab may recall that I've made this analogy before, but I watch with interest from across the pond as UK Forces shrink, inexorably, it appears.

The UK, founding member of NATO with a population of 60 million maintains a regular army of 102,000 and the serving senior officers rightly and publicly demand more from the government until the target of a sustainable 107,000 personnel is met.

Canada, a founding member of NATO with a population of 31 million maintains a regular army of approximately 17,000 (only unified force numbers are published to hide the shrink from a public that is increasingly aware of the military's existence).

Only 1.7 per cent of Canada's GDP is spent on defence, which is about half that of the UK.

Theoretically, Canada should have 50,000 regular personnel in the army, as it was in 1961, but the government is all-too-aware that the urban self-absorbed, Starbucks-guzzling Canadian will never care, so they don't bother.

Senior officers wait until they're retired before they utter a peep to the left-of-centre government which will stop at nothing to gut the military. Maj-Gen Lewis MacKenzie is one such person who writes for a national newspaper now, but while the military was collapsing around him in 1992-93, he did nothing publicly that I can remember.

Our miltary is what yours could be if the public continues to tolerate personnel cuts that Hoon seems so hell-bent on.

When Canadian soldiers have to travel on American transports in order to prove we're independent of the USA, the government still doesn't even see the irony.

Write to your MP, if he/she isn't Labour, go directly to the cabinet minister, demand meetings, join a lobby group. Write to commanding officers and encourage them to speak up. Protest that the public sector grows as the army shrinks-why? Don't let it happen to you.

df2inaus

[El Prez]

This is rather a long piece, however it is beautifully written by John Keagan, Defence Correspondent of the DT, and is worth the five minutes it takes to read.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/opinion/main ... do0902.xml

[tin4tin]

got to agree with that

[J J]

just a question...does anyone know the number of people that apply for entry into the army and how much are taken each year???

[tin4tin]

i dont know it but i expect it is alot