Armed Forces are 10,000 short of number of troops needed ‘to keep Britain safe’
The shortage is one of the worst manning crises in military history
BRITAIN’S armed forces are facing one of the worst manning crises in military history, The Sun on Sunday can reveal.
Defence chiefs are almost 10,000 men and women short of the number the government believes are needed to keep the country safe.
Virtually every regiment, infantry battalion, unit and corps in the Army is understrength, figures obtained by this newspaper show.
The Royal Navy and the RAF are also jointly 3,000 troops short of their targets set under the 2015 defence and security review.
Under government defence plans, the MoD are supposed to have an Army of 82,000 men and women by 2020, with the total number of troops in the armed forces standing at 144,200.
But the latest MoD figures reveal that Royal Navy and Royal Marines are 1,230 short of their 30,450 personnel target, the Royal Air Force are 1,740 short of their 31,750 personnel target and the
British Army are 6,930 short of their 82,000 personnel target.
There are also around 10,000 troops across the services who are medically down graded and not fit for frontline duty.
Prince Harry’s former regiment, the Household Cavalry and the Brigade of Guards - the troops responsible for guarding the queen and the Royal Palaces - are hundreds of men short.
Even the elite Paras who supply almost 50 percent of troops to the SAS are more than 100 soldiers understrength.
Every tank regiment, almost every artillery unit and most of the Royal Engineers - what the Army calls “teeth arms” are all short of men and women.
We are fully committed to improving our recruitment process, including working with Capita to ensure any challenges are being addressed
Colonel Richard Kemp, former commander of British troops in Afghanistan
The only unit in the Army strongly over recruited is the Brigade of Gurkhas which has never suffered from manning issues.
Crucially the Intelligence Corps which gathers information on Britain’s potential enemies is also the three battalions of the Intelligence Corps should be composed of 647 serving personnel but there are only 530 men and women serving in the unit - a shortage of 20 per cent.
Another poorly recruited infantry unit is the Royal Irish Regiment which is 80 men short of its required number of 550.
Labour MP Kevan Jones, a former defence minister, said: “I suspect these low figures are more about balancing the MoD budget than their ability to recruit.
“The Treasury and MoD need to address this crisis urgently.”
One serving member of the regiment said that many soldiers are leaving because they are fed up with squalid living conditions.
The regiment’s barracks, based in Ternhill, Shropshire, have been best with a series of problems over the last six months.
Over the winter troops had no hot water to wash either themselves or their clothes and the cookhouse was recently closed because of a rat infestation.
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Colonel Richard Kemp, the former commander of British troops in Afghanistan, said: “The Army’s manning shortfalls endanger our national security. After years of savage cuts the Army’s authorised strength is already far to small — to fail to achieve even such low levels compounds the risks.”
An MOD spokesman said: “The Armed Forces continue to meet all of its operational commitments to keep Britain safe. We are fully committed to improving our recruitment process, including working with Capita to ensure any challenges are being addressed.”
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