UK Armed Forces Cuts Needed?

A UK thinktank is projecting the need for a 20% cut in manpower due to budget constraints.

Severe pressures on the defence budget, compounded by the rising costs of increasingly sophisticated weapons systems, could lead to a 20% cut in the number of Britain's trained armed forces personnel, a leading military and security thinktank warned today.
The number of trained military personnel could fall from 175,000 to little more than 140,000 by 2016 as major cuts become "inevitable", said Prof Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute.

Perhaps they can just cut the 20% reportedly not fit for combat.

One-fifth of the British army’s infantry soldiers are unfit to fight on the front lines, according to Ministry of Defence figures released Tuesday.

Some are not deployable due to physical or mental injuries, lack of fitness or other nonmedical reasons, according to a BBC report.

With roughly 9,500 troops deployed, most to southern Afghanistan, Britain is the second-largest contributor to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force there.

The data, obtained by Parliamentarian Bernard Jenkin from the opposition Conservative Party, shows 19 battalions with fewer than the requisite 500 soldiers, according to the BBC. The report says that nearly 5,000 infantry soldiers and officers are unfit for deployment.

By: Brant