Britain's new coalition government faces interrelated challenges: reining in the country's soaring debt by quickly cutting spending, and spearheading a defense review to shape the country's military future.Although the new Strategic Defence and Security Review won't be finished for another six months, it's clear that major cuts are coming. Last week, the new government said it is working to reduce operating costs by 25 percent and will shrink Ministry of Defence's top-line budget.
That's a tall order for Britain's ever-shrinking military. With large and continual combat deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, it's easy to forget how tiny the U.K. armed forces is: about 185,000 uniformed personnel, smaller than the U.S. Marine Corps.
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May I say that the reference to 25% cuts in the MOD budget is rather misleading.
ReplyDeleteWhat was said was the the MOD itself would suffer 25% cuts, meaning that organisation itself. Not the armed forces budget as whole.
The government are looking at savings in efficiency,personel and departmental cutbacks within the thousands of civil servants withing MOD.