So, Gordon Brown has started to backtrack on the assertions he made at the Chilcot inquiry.

He has today been forced to admit that he had misled the official inquiry into the Iraq War when insisting the defence budget had risen in real terms every year under Labour.

Since his appearance in front of Chilcot, his evidence at the inquiry had been repeated challenged by military chiefs and top MoD civil servants, not to mention defence pundits in the media (except the Daily Mirror, of course); they all seemed to have a different recollection of events from Gordon.

At PM Questions today, when confronted with Commons figures which proved that the defence budget had been cut 4 times during his chancellorship, he was forced to admit he had been economical with the truth.

Shadow defence secretary Liam Fox said of Gordon's disclosure: 'This is a humiliating climbdown for Gordon Brown as his attempt to rewrite history has failed and his fantasy figures have been exposed. He has made repeated and fundamentally false claims, misleading Parliament, the public and, worst of all, the armed forces and their families."

I expect that this will be only the first of many confessions to be squeezed from Mr Brown. He may well be summonsed to appear before Chilcot again and this time he may not get away with it so easily.

Let's hope he comes up before the bench before the elections.

The Mail: Brown admits defence budget did NOT rise every year - as he claimed to Iraq inquiry

Sky News: PM Writes To Iraq Inquiry About Defence Cash

While our old friend Gordon is making electioneering trips to Afghanistan, grabbing any photo opportunity he can with the troops and cynically using them as "political props" to divert attention away from the "disingenuous" comments he made at the Chilcot Inquiry, while all this is going on the MoD has ordered a "truth blackout" over the war in Afghanistan for the duration of the election campaign.

Although Britain's Armed Forces are engaged in a major war and Operation MOSHTARAK is about to enter a critical phase, the British public are apparently only going to be allowed to hear a sanitised, labour-spun version of events.

To manage the news to their own liking the government, through the MoD, has decreed that:

• British journalists and TV crews will be banned from the Afghan frontline;
• Senior officers will be prohibited from making public speeches and talking to reporters;
• MoD websites will be “cleansed” of any “non-factual” material including anything containing troops’ opinions of the war;
• The only information provided about operations will be through MoD briefings in Whitehall.
  

The labour government is clearly seeking to avoid any news that would cause further damage to their ratings. They certainly don't want the voting public to hear Army generals criticising policy, complaining of the lack of vital equipment and accusing labour ministers of neglecting the Service Community.

As far as Gordon and the labour party are concerned, our troops can spill their blood on the frontline but mustn't spill the beans back home.

The Telegraph: Army faces Afghan gag for election

An article in yesterday's Sunday Times exposed how wheeler-dealing by government ministers has allowed soldiers' homes to "fall into ruin".

When the government sold off the military housing stock - 56,000 properties - to the private sector back in 1996, the MoD remained responsible for repairs and maintenance.

When this sale of the century went through it was on the understanding that a significant part of the £1.67billion raised would be spent on refurbishing the dilapidated homes that soldiers and their families were having to live in.

So, guess how much of the £1.67billion has actually been spent on refurbishment and renovation: according to the Times, about £60million or 3.5% of the money raised.

And where has the remaining £1billion gone? To HM Treasury of course. And who has been in charge of HM Treasury since 1997? You guessed it, good old Gordon Brown.

So while our soldiers are being sent to the frontline knowing that back home their wives and children are having to endure damp, leaks and broken boilers, Gordon is happily giving away to his friends in the City the money that should have been spent on bringing their homes upto standard.

Nice one, Gordon. Laughing all the way to the bankers.

A 'leaked' memo from General Sir David Richards, Chief of the General Staff, has pointed out the blindingly obvious: that returning home from a hard-fought tour in Afghanistan to sub-standard living quarters back in the UK is not good for morale.

And it had all seemed to be going so well: Project Slam developments completed at Northwood, Catterick and Perham Down, upgraded family quarters at Blandford, funds even being brought forward from future years to speed up the refurbishment programme. However the latest cuts to the Armed Forces budget is putting paid to all that.

Gen. Richards' memo flagged up that reductions in the Armed Forces budget have caused the refurbishment programme to stall and and improvement plans to be postponed. Cuts are having "a cumulative and corrosive effect on our soldiers and their families. ...... As Chief of the General Staff, I register an early concern about the impact on morale, the potentially severe downstream impact on retention, and our ability to sustain the campaign in the long term."

The General's comments came after he'd seen the results of an internal survey carried out at 'home' bases in the UK, Germany, N. Ireland and Cyprus. This survey showed the effects that the recent £100m cuts, and the diversion of resources to fund the war in Afghanistan, were having on morale across the Service Community. The survey highlights that there is a real feeling that Service personnel consider themselves undervalued by the government.

And its not only the poor state of military accommodation that is fuelling this feeling of neglect. Shortages in training and IT equipment, the axing of events like the annual Aldershot Army Show, the undermining of the harmony guidelines, extended times away from home between deployments, the threatened 20% cut in numbers, shortages of medics, etc are all compounding the problem.

Another concern is that after two or three successive deployments to the warzone, coupled with the sheer intensity of the fighting and the relentless pace of operations, there is an increasing incidence of both physical and psychological injury for the guys serving out there.

General Richards is perhaps unexpectedly broadcasting exactly the concerns of his predecessor, General Dannatt: that you can't fight a war with the funding profile of a peace-time budget. Last August Gen. Richards was characterised as being a subtle, behind-the-scenes political animal. Today, however, he may be turning out to be the vociferous champion that the Army badly needs.

The Mail: Troops' morale is in crisis at defence cuts, says Army chief

Where Germany leads, France of course follows. These two countries are already pressing ahead with their plans to set up a "Synchronised Armed Forces Europe" or SAFE. Under this scheme the national armies of the EU countries will become increasingly synchronised until they will eventually, some say "naturally", merge into a single European Army. Military "interoperability" (in eurospeak) will be the inevitable outcome of this sychronisation process: sychronisation in equipment = sychronisation in training = sychronisation of command.

The labour government's collusion with this Anschluss was witnessed yesterday when Quentin Davies, minister for Defence Equipment and Support, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with France enabling closer co-operation on the procurement of military equipment.

This synchronisation of British and French military equipment is an example of labour's policy announced in the government's recent green paper: "the UK will in future need to co-operate more closely with allies such as France to provide the full range of military capabilities". Defence secretary Ainsworth said in the green paper: "In Europe, the return of France to Nato's integrated military structures offers an opportunity for even greater cooperation with a key partner across a range of defence activity."

The insidious incremental subordination of Britain's Armed Forces to the diktats of the EU will inevitably mean that Britain will soon lose the capability to act unilaterally to defend her national interest and national security. But, I suppose, in Grosse Europa there is no such thing as "national" interest only Franco-German interest.

MoD: MoU between UK and France on urgent operational requests

The MoD and the British Armed Forces have grown used to the concept of outsourcing.

Since 1983, when the MoD introduced its competitive procurement policy, competitive tendering for equipment and the contracting-out of support services to the private sector have not only become accepted practice but have become the de facto rule. Contracted-out services provided by private companies soon came to include such areas as catering, security guarding, training, IT, property maintenance, engineering, laundry and cleaning.

Things moved up a notch in 1990s when the MoD embaced the Thatcherite Private Finance Initiative (PFI) doctrine which was then being promulgated across Whitehall. When Tony came to power in 1997, PFI was re-launched, in Alastair Campbell Newspeak, as Public Private Partnerships - which had a nice, nulabour sound to it. The idea behind this was that private capital and private sector companies would finance and operate infrastructure that previously had been publicly funded and managed. Private companies would claw back their investment over time on a kind of lease basis. For example, the Matrix consortium were to build, manage and run the new £12billion tri-Service Training Academy at St Athan and would then charge the MoD fees for each student sent there on a course.... simples.

Moving on quickly to 2010 and we find that things have taken a quantum leap forward in the privatization stakes. Qinetiq, one of the MoD's favourite private sector companies - sorry, partners - is now sending its employees out to Afghanistan to operate the British military's UAVs. As Qinetiq puts it: "Unmanned air systems (UAS) including unmanned air vehicles (UAVS) are becoming increasingly important enablers in the fields of surveillance, security and defence. QinetiQ provides a total service for both civil and military UAS operations.... QinetiQ delivers a true end-to-end UAS service".

While the use of mercenaries was not uncommon in the barbaric past, for a civilised country in the 21st century to be employing civilians to help fight its wars for it, and to kill its enemies (directly or indirectedly), is unacceptable and must be challenged on ethical grounds.

In its panic to cut costs, the MoD has started to contract-out the waging of its wars to the cheapest bidder with the decision to pull a trigger becoming part of a commercial contract.

The use of contract killers belongs in the murky world of the Mafia and should stay there.

The Times: Outsourced QinetiQ staff operate drones in Afghanistan

The government is now considering whether troops who have been injured in Iraq and Afghanistan could make up a "Border Defence Regiment". The BDR is the brainchild of Immigration Minister Phil Woolas; he has yet to publish any details about his proposal.

Whilst anything that would stop the number of illegal immigrants coming into the country would be welcomed, the idea of injured soldiers guarding the Kent and Sussex beaches seems more reminiscent of the dark days of the Second World War than of today's War on Terror.

Woolas and his labour party mates are just beginning to wake up to the disaster that their open door policy on immigration has been to this country and, with the election looming, are starting to come up with all sorts of "initiatives" to repair the damage they have caused.

508 wounded soldiers were treated in field hospitals in Afghanistan in 2009 (more than the combined total for 2007 and 2008). These guys should be treated honourably not just used as some political gimmick.

Remember Phil, Joanna is watching you!

The Mail: Shambolic and unfair: Watchdog's damning verdict on immigration service after 13 years of Labour government

That General Dannatt will be the military advisor to the next government is welcome news. Having a former Chief of the General Staff working on their team will mean that the government will be able to call directly on a vast amount of experience.

David Cameron has already promised that, with Britain at war, one of the first things he'll do will be to set up a War Cabinet "from minute one, hour one, day one that I walk through the door of Downing Street".

The appointment of The General will mean that someone who speaks for the soldiers on the ground will be part of that War Cabinet and in a position to influence policy. It may also mean that resources will be redirected away from grandiose projects to where they are most needed: on the frontline in Afghanistan

For months labour ministers and MoD mandarins have been conspiring to undermine General Dannatt. It comes as no surprise, therefore, that senior labour figures should now be threatening to impose a £40,000 fine on General Dannatt in revenge for his accepting a post with the Tories.

The labour clique which at the moment runs the country has in its wisdom decided to save twenty million quid by closing down the Territorial Army.

Not satisfied with having slashed the numbers in the TA from 57,000 to 19,000, Brown and his cronies have now called a halt to all TA training for the next six months -

that's drill-hall instruction, weekend exercises and all other raining associated with the TA. This is bound to have an impact on operations in Afghanistan as hundreds of TA soldiers routinely serve on the frontline.

The news will go down really well with the guys who give up their time to serve their country; I'm sure it's just what they wanted to hear. It's certain to encourage more volunteers to join up.

So much for "One Army".

Nice one Gordon.

Tory shadow defence minister Liam Fox has said that he is determined to hold a Strategic Defence Review as soon as he is sat behind his desk at the MoD.

He also ominously says that what will govern the Review will be “the budgetary constraints within which we will have to operate”.

We know what that means: stringent cuts in the defence budget can be expected soon after a Tory government is installed.

Mr Fox has already promised a cull of civilian personnel in the MoD along with vague references to other "efficiency savings". But we've heard all this many times before; we know empirically that the defence bureaucracy always seems to escape the knife.

No, it will be frontline services - in the true sense of the word - which will again have to suffer the deepest cuts and the pressure will be on the Royal Navy and the Royal Air Force to surrender large chunks of their budgets in favour of the Army.

Although the Army has been doing most of the fighting, bearing the brunt of the consequences of recent foreign policy initiatives, it has actually been on the receiving end of only 10% of the total spending on military equipment (based on actual and planned spending between 2003-18).

When it comes to new equipment it is the RN and RAF which get the lion share with £billions allocated to aspirational projects (Future Aircraft Carriers, SSBN nuclear subs, Eurofighter Typhoons) which have little relevance to the type of conflicts in which UK Armed Forces are currently engaged, or likely to be engaged in in the foreseeable future. The RN and RAF may be supporting the Army in Afghanistan, but they haven't been fully involved in a major operation since the Falklands in 1982.

Under both Tory and Labour governments the Armed Forces have seen their budget whittled away year on year so that in real terms it is now stands at just about half of what it was at the end of the Cold War (from 4% to 2% of GDP). In today's economic climate and with current social and educational imperatives, the military can only expect their finances to get worse. Nor can they rely on other departments' continued acquiescence in the exceptional transfer of state funds (the Urgent Operational Requirement programme).

What is clear is that there is an imbalance between the aspirations of politicians on the world stage and their willingness to provide the resources to match these aspirations. What is compounding the problem is that military budgets are still operating within the framework determined by the last Defence Review carried out some ten years ago. At that time UK's foreign policy was about the long-range projection of British influence around the world and, as a consequence, behemoths tramped over any calls their might have been for regiments and battalions.

A lot has changed over the last ten years. Now it is all about counter-insurgency and anti-terrorism and, as is obvious in Afghanistan, what such conflicts need are boots on the ground, in large numbers.

A general election is a good time for a real public debate on defence policy. The guys risking their lives on the frontline deserve clearly defined war aims, the resources to carry them out and the knowledge that the public supports them.

In reply to the direct question from visiting Defence Secretary Ainsworth "What is your top desire from right here at the chalkface (sic) - what would you have more of today?", Staff Sergeant Kim Hughes of 11 Regiment EOD replied: "more troops on the ground".

The apparently surprised Defence Secretary asked: "People?". Staff Sgt Hughes replied: "Absolutely, more troops." He went on: "If you give us more troops, we can form a counter-IED taskforce to train ground troops better." And consequently reduce injuries and save lives.

That British forces in Afghanistan are stretched and that ISAF numbers need to be increased has been shouted by frontline soldiers into the ears of politicians for months. But little has so far been forthcoming. Ainsworth is flogging a dead horse when he says that we've got to get our European allies to do their share; they clearly have no intention of honouring their NATO commitments.

Today former CGS General Sir Richard Dannatt has accused Gordon Brown of refusing the military's requests for major troop reinforcement. The General says that sInce the beginning of the year the Army has been advising that 2,000 extra troops need to be sent out to Afghanistan but this advice has been repeatedly ignored. Gordon Brown, however, has denied the General's claims - now, whose word would you believe?

Newly-appointed CGS General Sir David Richards has also backed calls for significant reinforcements in Afghanistan to allow hard-pressed coalition forces to dominate the ground more and reverse the spread of Taliban influence. He told the Sunday Telegraph more troops would allow the coalition to 'start winning the psychological battle' for the support of ordinary Afghans.

Let's hope that Ainsworth and Brown will heed the advice of Kim Hughes and David Richards and actually do something about it.

AOL: Hero soldier asks for more troops
BBC: PM 'refused extra Afghan troops'

• The report slams Britain's EU partners (particularly Germany) for failing to meet their obligations in Afghanistan and for thereby placing an "unacceptable strain" on the handful of NATO countries which are: principally the US, UK & Canada. Germany is also criticised for even failing to provide adequate training to the Afghan police force. The Committee says that if they can't provide fighters on the ground, out EU friends should be providing kit instead.
• The Bush Administration is criticised for its unilaterlism and for its misdirection of the war in its early stages. The US focus on solely military objectives meant that there was little engagement with the local Afghan population, little reconstruction undertaken, a failure to build robust democratic and legal structures and a failure to tackle endemic corruption.
• The UK government is slated for "unrealistic planning at senior levels, poor co-ordination between Whitehall departments and crucially, a failure to provide the military with clear direction". From the original goal of supporting the US's War on Terror, UK Armed Forces have been subjected to "mission-creep" with the result that they now committed to an "open-ended and wide-ranging series of objectives" (counter-insurgency, counter-narcotics, protection of human rights, state-building) without any prioritisation forthcoming from government.
• The Committee states the blindingly obvious when it concludes that "the government must ensure that our armed forces are provided with the appropriate resources to undertake the tasks requested of them". Although euphemistically referring to "well-documented difficulties", the Committee fails to come out openly about the actual lack of resources currently being experienced on the frontline.
  

The report contains little new: UK Armed Forces are overstretched, lack cohesive political direction, are let down by EU partners and need to be adequately resourced. Despite all this the MPs found that their "overall impression was of British forces doing a terrific job to contain and improve the security situation in Helmand, but with very limited resources and support."

"Lions lead by donkeys" springs to mind.

Foreign Affairs Committee: Global Strategy: Afghanistan and Pakistan

It has just been announced that 16 Air Assault Brigade and 3 Commando Brigade are being called on to undertake their third tours in Afghanistan. 16 Air Assault Brigade will return to Afghanistan in October 2010 and will be relieved by 3 Commando Brigade in the spring of 2011.

The two brigades have been requested by senior officers in the UK's Permanent Joint Headquarters (PJHQ) in Northwood because of their combat record in Afghanistan and experience of air-land integration,. They are the only two UK formations to have served two tours in Afghanistan to date.

16 Air Assault's most recent tour of duty marked the first time that any Brigade of the British Army had returned to Helmand province and was noted for the delivery of a generator to the Kajaki Dam and significant progress in the counter insurgency campaign. Since it was formed in 1999, 50 soldiers from the Brigade have lost their lives in enemy action during Brigade deployments: 3 in Iraq on Operation TELIC I, 19 in Afghanistan during 2006 and 2007, and 28 in Afghanistan during the Brigade's most recent deployment on Operation Herrick 8 from March to October 2008

3 Commando Brigade returned last Spring from a particularly tough tour, a tour in which they suffered 33 casualities and many others were wounded. On their return they paraded through central London and were honoured with a high profile reception at the Houses of Parliament.

19 Light Brigade is currently providing the UK Task Force in Helmand province to be replaced in October by 11 Light Brigade.

In response to a recent parliamentary question from Shadow Defence Sec. Liam Fox MP asking for the numbers of British military personnel on operations around the world, Bill Rammell MP, Armed Forces Minister of State. gave the following reply.

"The endorsed force levels for UK military operations are provided in the following table by location:"

CGS General Sir Richard Dannatt today urged the Government not to betray Britain's Armed Forces by cutting the Defence Budget.
Gen. Dannatt has fought long and hard to make sure that the guys on the front line have at last started to get the kit and equipment they need to fight the Taliban.

While continuing to press Hash Brown and Co to send out the additional troops considered necessary to wage an effective war in Afghanistan, The General has now opened up another front, this time against anticipated budget cuts.

It's being reported in today's Sun that the much heralded £multi-billion accommodation improvement programme, FRES and even medical facilities are under threat from the Treasury. The newspaper quotes The General as saying: “My biggest fear now is in the time of recession, with a real squeeze on government spending, that the extra money that has been put in will now be raided out of those programmes."

He added: “One of our catchphrases is ‘Be the Best’. Well, I think we really do have amongst the best, and it’s just a great privilege to be their leader. It’s a fine and honourable thing to be a British soldier. I think they're fantastic people. It’s also a fine and honourable thing the public has done to get behind our soldiers. They are the best supporting the best.”

Unfortunately Gen. Dannatt is retiring in August; let's hope that his successor takes as strong a line as he has when dealing with our self-serving politicians and bureaucrats..

The Sun: Hands off!

Whilst recruitment and retention within the Armed Forces is generally picking up, the number of soldiers applying to join the Special Air Service has dropped alarmingly - by more than a third.
In a normal year there are about 150 applicants for the SAS of whom 10% are eventually successful; this year only 93 applied with only 8 getting through.
A source told the Sunday Mirror that during peacetime the SAS is seen as an atrractive option for those looking for excitment. Nowadays however with the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, soldiers in regular regiments are experiencing fighting on the frontline and therefore do not need to look to the SAS for action.

The fall-off in the in-take and the recent high casualty rate are putting a strain on the Regiment and forcing Army chiefs to look at ways of improving retention - perhaps even upping the pay: who stays gains.

The Mirror: SAS recruitment crisis as applications plummet

So, on the personal decision of Prudence Brown, British taxpayers are going to fork out a further £2billion on Tranche 3 of Eurofighter, a supendously expensive aircraft that the MoD no longer wants, nor the RAF for that matter.

While arms-industry workers and shareholders in Europe (and the US) will be elated that the orders for these unwanted combat-aircraft haven't been cancelled, the guys risking their lives in real, serious bloody combat on the frontline certainly won't.

The £2billion could be spent on the equipment that could save lives and limbs in Afghanistan - body armour, helicopters, the right kind of vehicles, drones and, oh yes, helicopters. But no, Prudence would rather spend our money on aircraft that will probably never be used - they're certainly no use fighting the Taliban. As General Dannatt said: the Government is squandering defence cash on the wrong equipment.

The Telegraph: General Sir Richard Dannatt: 'Government is squandering defence cash'

Only hours after Prudence had given Joanna Lumley assurances that the discredited criteria by which Gurkha veterans are allowed to settle in the UK would be redrafted, his Immigration Minister Phil Woolas was sending out letters turning down the applications from five Gurkhas because they failed to meet these very criteria!

For months the Labour Government

has been fighting a desperate rearguard action to deny the Gurkha veterans the same rights allowed to those Commonwealth veterans who have served in the British Army.

What is particularly shameful in the machinations of HMG is that they have been going on for so long. Here you have soldiers who have fought with courageously for Britain in numerous wars around the world and yet for months the British Government have been trying to find every means possible to humiliate them.

Prudence and his merry band are too busy "maximising" their expenses to hear the public outcry against their policies of betrayal.

The Mail: Joanna takes charge: As Gurkha affair descends into farce
AFP: Gurkhas angry as test cases snubbed

Britain's Armed Forces have taken yet another step on the slippery slope towards full European military integration.

Yesterday Armed Forces Minister Bob Ainsworth announced that Royal Marine Commandos will be on standby over the first six months of 2010 to form part of a battlegroup ready to be deployed to a conflict zone determined by the EU.

Not only will this put British troops under EU control; it also means that the Commandos on EU standby will not be available to serve with British forces in Afghanistan.

Defence management: Royal Marines on EU stand by

We have seen how the Labour Government tried to renege on its moral obligations towards the Gurkhas; now it's the turn of the Army's Iraqi interpreters to be betrayed and cast aside.

The Government is about to abandon to the vengence of the militias those Iraqis who risked their lives, and the lives of their families, working for Britain's Armed Forces in Iraq. Foreign Secretary David Miliband has just called an abrupt end to the "Assistance Scheme" which ostensibly offers a resettlement package to qualifying Iraqis. The trouble is that, just like for the Gurkhas, the entitlement criteria of the Scheme have been contrived to be as deliberately restrictive as possible and only a small minority of those people who gave vital assistance to our troops will be eligible.

"I think it's a scandal - a dereliction of duty," said Daniel Leader, from law firm Leigh Day, which has been representing former translators appealing to be let into the country.

The Labour Government has for years been letting countless thousands of bogus asylum seekers into this country without any questions asked. Now, when there is a legitimate case for granting asylum, they slam the door. Britain has a moral obligation to help anyone who is in danger because they worked for our Armed Forces.

You can be sure that those Afghans serving as interpreters in Helmand will be looking over their shoulders at how their Iraqi counterparts are being treated and will be having second thoughts on whether it's such a good idea to continue to assist British forces against the Taliban.

How much more dishonour can this Labour Government bring on our country?

The Times: Government to close lifeline for Iraqi interpreters in two weeks
BBC: Iraqi interpreters 'still at risk'

However, the righting of this obvious wrong was not so much due to the conscience of politicians as to the years of struggle by the Gurkha Rights campaign and to the groundswell of indignation that was being voiced by the British people.

So, despite the black propaganda being spread by the MoD about residency for all Gurkha veterans costing a ridiculous £1.6billion per year, the Government is going to have to come up with new guidelines.

Lets hope that it will do this soon. The protracted wrangling is doing no good at all to Britain's reputation, let alone to the morale of the Army.

Although Chancellor Darling has so far left the Defence Budget for 2009-10 more or less intact (it shouldn't be too hard for the MoD to find the £315million in efficiency savings it's offered up), the Treasury has made it clear that purchases under the Urgent Operational Requirement scheme will be limited to £635million this year, £265million less than 2008-09.

The real bad news comes in 2010-11 when the Treasury has already revealed that the Defence Budget will be slashed by £2billion from £38.7bn to £36.7bn, a cut of over 5%.

Major RAF procurement programmes are likely to face the brunt of the cuts:

• It now appears likely that the planned purchase of Airbus A400M military transport planes will be ditched and the far cheaper Lockheed C-130 Hercules will be ordered instead. This switch alone would save £1billion over the 25 aircraft being purchased.
• The long awaited, much over budget Nimrod MRA4 replacement programme may also face the axe with a cheaper, off-the-shelf US model being purchased instead.
• Defence analysts also believe that the number of F-35 Joint Strike Fighters being ordered will be halved from 150 to 75-80.

Although Defence Secretary John Hutton says he is adamant that current operations will not be jeopardised by a shortage of cash, the Army is unlikely to escape the cuts with the ill-fated Future Rapid Effect System (FRES) likely once again to be kicked into touch.

This is just the first round in what is sure to be a long drawn out, bloody battle over dwindling public funds.

"An alliance worth its name must be one that shares the burden of membership equally amongst its members, because there can be no freeloading when it comes to collective security." So said Defence Secretary John Hutton at a meeting of NATO ambassadors earlier in the week.
And he went on: "Volunteering, not waiting to be asked, must be the hallmark of a proper

relationship between the transatlantic members of this alliance."

While the UK, Canada, the US, the Netherlands, Denmark and Estonia have their troops fighting in the frontline against the Taliban, the other European NATO allies are sitting on their hands in some cushy billet in Alsace-Lorraine or some such place. It was NATO which collectively agreed to take the fight against terrorism to Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in Afghanistan but it would seem it's one thing to put your hand up but quite another to put boots on the ground.

In his speech John Hutton also said it was time all NATO countries woke up to the fact that NATO is at war: "we don't need a peacetime mentality in NATO about Afghanistan because there is no peace in Afghanistan." Peacetime bureaucracy is stiffling progress and crippling decision-making.

Unless other NATO countries, (particularly France and Germany but also Italy, Spain, Poland, Greece.....,) "step up to the plate" there is a danger that not only will Al-Qeada and the Taliban win but also that the US will turn its back on Europe altogether.... ..... ... and then there'll only be the EuroWehr to defend us.

In line with Gordon Brown's patriotic cry of "British jobs for British workers", the Army has decided that, for the duration of the Recession, it will cease to actively seek recruits from foreign lands. Currently 17% of the Army's manpower is made up of foreigh nationals.

As predicted, the decline in the jobs market has seen an increase in the number of Britons applying for careers in the Armed Forces.

A senior MoD source told the Daily Mail that "British recruiting figures have soared since the credit crunch set in last year".

The former head of the Army, General Sir Mike Jackson, said that some limit on the number of foreign recruits was now necessary. "One has got to come to a judgment as to what is appropriate, what is right, what the British Army can properly absorb without losing its own British identity and ethos."

The Mail: Army puts jobless Britons before foreign recruits

The MoD website has posted a number of reports this month on how the UK's Armed Forces are helping with reconstruction projects in Afghanistan (see post below).

However, according to Baktash Siawash in his Afghan Citizen blog, western governments' efforts at reconstruction are off-target.

Baktash cites the UK-led Provincial Reconstruction Team's plans to spend $20million (£14.5million) on a new radio station in Helmand as an example of why he thinks the West is losing it in Afghanistan. He argues that western governments are missing the point; that it is the basics (food, clean water, medicines) that the people need not the luxury of listening to the BBC World Service. As he says: "The needy of Afghans are not the same with westerns citizens, Afghans still think how bring a Piece of bread and glass of tea at the end of the day for their children and family."

Since 2001 the UK has committed to spend over £1billion on reconstruction in Afghanistan and the British Government claims real progress particularly in education and health care (achievements since 2006 by the PRT in Helmand can be seen here).

As has notoriously happened in Iraq, there can be no doubt that corruption is taking a significant bite out of the money being provided to Afghanistan. In the debate on the Queen's Speech last month in the House of Lords, Lord Astor said: "However, [returning soldiers] ask what cause their colleagues are dying for as they see the Afghan Government spending their time lining their pockets. We are annually putting £1.6 billion in aid into Afghanistan and apparently less than 4 per cent of it works through the system to ground level, largely due to corruption. It is outrageous that so little of our taxes go to improve the lives of ordinary Afghans. Far too much goes on luxuries such as cars and houses for Afghanistan's new rich. DfID must urgently redirect its policy on this".

Although Lord Astor did say apparently only 4% of UK's aid percolates through to ground level, even if 40% of it benefits the people, that's still a scandal.

Whilst Baktash's eloquent appeal to the West to "review your strategies about Afghanistan" could equally be directed to his own government in Kabul, I would agree with him that spending 50% of PRT's annual budget of £29million on a new radio station does seem misdirected, especially when people are hungry.

You can't win hearts and minds when stomachs are empty.

Afghan Citizen: A wonderful example,why Westerns beat in Afghanistan?
Foreign & Commonwealth Office: UK in Afghanistan - reconstruction
Foreign & Commonwealth Office: Provincial Reconstruction Team Helmand
They Work For You: Lord Astor's speech

Building a football pitch for local kids
A newly constructed playing field for the children of a village near Basra, built with the help of soldiers from 1st Battalion The Yorkshire Regiment (1 YORKS), was opened this week with a local football tournament.
MoD: British soldiers provide Iraqi kids with sports field

Repairing a bridge over the Shatt al-Arab
The Royal Engineers, from 29 Armoured Engineer Squadron, part of 35 Engineer Regiment, worked tirelessly to repair wear-and-tear damage, which had been caused by constant use, to some of the steel plates that make up the bridge.

MoD: Sappers repair Basra bridge

Bringing seed stock to Helmand's farmers
Soldiers from 1st Battalion The Rifles (1 RIFLES) have been helping the Afghan Security Forces ensure that 3,200 tonnes of wheat seed have reached thousands of farmers across Helmand province.

MoD: Rifles help bring seed to Helmand farmers