Army short of troops and equipment

The Daily Telegraph has been leaked a memo by Sir Richard Dannatt Chief of the General Staff to other senior defence chiefs.

The situation is that our military is severely overstretched and has not got any capacity to handle the unexpected.

To put this in perspective during the cold war, and at the time of the Falklands war we had something like 250,000 men in the army, now we have about 100,000.

What is more regiments are no longer moving with their equipment, for example the Parachute Regiment has had to leave most of its equipment in Afghanistan so that their replacements can use it. This has two knock on effects. Firstly it means that can't train with their own equipment out of theatre, to ready themselves for a return, and secondly the equipment gets worn out, because it is in constant use without the downtime for maintenance. There seems to be little or no budget to replace battlefield losses either.

Being engaged in a long war does involve a lot of expense, as well as extra equipment. Despite promises the forces in Afghanistan still do not have what they need to fight and do the job.

In short, the problem is we have peace time defence spending whilst we are fighting wars on two fronts. In short, it is nuts.

The BBC also has this.