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UK army over-stretched, under-funded, former defence chiefs warn

IRNA - Islamic Republic News Agency

London, Nov 8, IRNA
UK Army-Overstretched
A group of former senior military leaders and politicians has joined together to issue a wake-up warning about the situation of Britain's armed forces being embroiled in two eparate fronts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The UK National Defence Association (UKNDA), led by three ex-chiefs of the defence staff, called for increased spending on the country's military forces, which it said was over-stretched and under-funded.

Lord Boyce, who was chief of defence staff during the 2003 Iraq invasion, warned that personnel in the armed forced needed to be retained once they had joined, saying that they were "at full stretch and we can expect to be in Afghanistan for many years ahead".

"If people are seeing that the government is not prepared to support them properly then we're not going to get those recruits," Boyce said.

"We're not going to be able to retain people and we're not going to be able to deliver the commitment we should be giving to Afghanistan and indeed Iraq," he was quoted saying by the BBC Thursday.

The warning comes after a report by a leading think-tank on Monday said that Britain's armed forces are on a "dangerously unsustainable course" at a time of growing turbulence and risk.

In a report, entitled Out of September, Demos also warned the government that popular sympathy for troops may not have been damaged by the unpopularity of the Iraq conflict, while also criticizing distorted expenditure and the failure of the UK to adjust to future threats.

UKNDA president Winston Churchill, a grandson of the Britain's prime minister during World War II, said the amount the UK spends on defence "just doesn't add up" and should be about 3 percent of gross domestic product, some 50 percent more that the current budget of Pnds 34 million (Dlrs 70 bn) for next year.

"At the time of the Falklands 25 years ago we were spending 5 percent of our gross domestic product on defence. Today it's down to 2.1 percent and we're fighting the two most intense wars we've fought since Korea" in the 1950s, Churchill said.

Another former chief of the defence staff, Lord Guthrie, urged all those involved in politics to "think very hard" about the future of the country's armed forces.

"I would ask politicians, and those who want to be politicians, to just think very hard about whether they want to destroy and damage something which is really admired around the world and delivers for good and has never let us down," Guthrie said.

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