PRESS

ing with the neurosis of underspending. By one account,
successive “reform,” “transformation,” and
“efficiency” programs have eroded the skills, morale,
and strength of the MoD’s civilian staff, resulting in “a
department of state which, rather unusually, is both
short of money and, with reduced personnel, lacking
the capacity to spend the budget allocated to it.” 5
Furthermore, certain budgetary assumptions upon
which the FF2020 construct was based were challenged
by a series of cuts and adjustments made in the
2013 UK government spending review. Not the least
of these was the decision to depart from past practice
in the funding of operational military deployments.
Whereas in the past such costs had come from the
treasury’s contingency reserve, henceforth, the MoD’s
main budget will be liable for as much as 50 percent of
operational costs.
With a recent assessment suggesting that the overall
cost of UK involvement in operations in Afghanistan
and Iraq could be close to £30 billion, operational
costs might represent a very significant new charge
on the defense budget. 6 As Andrew Dorman and I
have argued:
for these financial reasons alone it is difficult to see
how the structure and goal of FF2020, as published in
SDSR 2010, can be considered affordable and therefore
achievable-unless, as some world-weary commentators
suggest, 2025 is to become ‘the new 2020’. 7
UK MILITARY CAPABILITIES
The picture is less encouraging when military capabilities
are considered. Figures 11-2, 11-3, and 11-4
show trends in land, naval, and air capabilities, respectively.
Each figure shows the regular (full-time
professional) personnel strength of its featured force
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