Army 2020

Earlier this year the Public Accounts Committee said that cuts to defence personnel had been determined by short-term savings and without understanding what skills it needed for the future.

The proposals coming from Army 2020 has critical flaws and unanswered questions:

• The reduced footprint will remove employment from rural areas whose local economy is underpinned by the armed forces presence increasing unemployment
• Reliance upon non regulars, when there are currently issues with recruiting and retaining regulars
• How would non regulars be release from employment for lengthy tours of duty?
• Training capacity reduced under the Strategic Defence and Security Review to a position that it cannot support defence transformation
• The supply chain is already under strain and modernising equipment so regulars and non regulars have the same kit may bring it to its knees on both cost and delivery
• Whatever the politicians might indicate, there is no headroom in the MOD's budget, otherwise thousands and thousands of people would not be losing their jobs
• Our defence deployment has been heavily reliant upon infantry capability, the reduction in capacity will directly reduce defence capability
• No mention of addressing an all time low in morale is made
• No mention of the benefits of civilianising non deployable post to save money and retain skill sets

We believe that the armed forces should be modernised to improve them but defence cannot be weighed in pounds and pence. If the politicians get this wrong, Defence Cuts will Cost Lives.

Army 2020 is yet another politically driven decision based on cost cutting and not on defence capability and need. It does not take into account the economic impact of removing another 20,000 jobs and has the potential to relegate our armed forces to the third division.