17/01/2012

MoD To Announce Armed Forces Cuts

A second round of redundancies has been announced by the armed forces on Tuesday.

The Ministry of Defence said it plans to reduce the size of the Army by 7,000 personnel and both the Navy and RAF by 5,000 personnel by 2015.

A spokesman said the reduction would ensure the UK's Armed Forces were "sufficiently flexible and adaptable", to meet the demands in the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) in October 2010.

The Army is expected to announce up to 3,000 redundancies, the RAF up to 1,000 and the Royal Navy 500. The Gurkhas are expected to lose up to 400 personnel.

Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said: "Difficult decisions had to be taken in the SDSR to deal with the vast black hole in the MOD budget. The size of the fiscal deficit we inherited left us no choice but to reduce the size of the Armed Forces - while reconfiguring them to ensure they remain agile, adaptable and effective.

"As we continue with the redundancy process we will ensure we retain the capabilities that our Armed Forces will require to meet the challenges of the future. The redundancy programme will not impact adversely on the current operations in Afghanistan, where our Armed Forces continue to fight so bravely on this country's behalf."

The MoD said difficult decisions had to be taken to deal with the "black hole" in its budget.

Last September 2,860 Service personnel were notified that they had been selected in the first tranche of redundancies, which included 1,020 from the Royal Navy, 920 from the Army and 920 from the Royal Air Force.

(DW)

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