Third of UK military unready due to strain: report

Mon Feb 27, 7:05 PM ET

LONDON (Reuters) - Years of strain in Iraq and Afghanistan have left nearly a third of British military units suffering from serious deficiencies, a parliamentary committee said in a report issued on Tuesday.

The Public Affairs Committee said the country's armed forces had yet to recover from the impact of the invasion of Iraq in 2003, and that continued deployments since then have gone beyond the maximum scenarios predicted by planners.

Strain on the British military has been the focus of renewed attention in recent weeks since the government announced an ambitious three-year mission to southern Afghanistan, beginning within months, before troops come home from Iraq.

"We found that almost a third of forces had serious or critical weaknesses to their required peacetime readiness levels -- their readiness to deploy on any future operations -- against a backdrop of a continued high level of commitment to current operations," the report said.

"The continuing high levels of operational commitment are leading to significant strain on equipment support in particular areas, with long term effects."

The Ministry of Defense played down the findings.

"It would simply not be true to interpret the report to say that about a third of Britain's armed forces would struggle to deploy," junior defense minister Adam Ingram said in a statement.

"The impact of current operations on the Armed Forces is judged by the Chiefs of Staff to be manageable and the Armed Forces as a whole remain ready for future operations."

A ministry spokesman said that while many units have deficiencies, none of the shortages is defined as "critical," or bad enough to prevent deployment without a quick fix.

BIG TEST

This year could be a crucial test for Britain's military strength. When plans for the new Afghanistan mission were drawn up, British officials were hoping their 8,500-strong contingent in Iraq would be mostly home by the middle of this year.

But so far there are few signs that British troops will be returning from Iraq for months at least, raising the prospect of Britain fighting two medium-sized wars at once, with a military that never fully recovered strength from the Iraq invasion.

As Washington's only major ally during the invasion of Iraq, London sent more than 45,000 troops to the Gulf in 2003, its biggest deployment since the Korean War 50 years ago.

Since then it has maintained about 8,500 troops in Iraq. Its new deployment to Afghanistan is set to peak at about 5,700 troops this year.

"The Armed Forces are still recovering from large scale operations in Iraq, and have been operating above the most demanding combination of scenarios envisaged by defense planning assumptions during five of the past six years," the report said.

"Ordinarily, the (defense ministry) would expect to achieve full readiness within three years of a large scale operation. But, given the level of operational commitment, recuperation will take longer."

The Iraq and Afghanistan missions have been particularly taxing for the Army and the transport arm of the Air Force.

To keep those overstretched units up to scratch, the government has in turn cut back on maintenance for the Royal Navy, hurting the readiness of the fleet, the report said.

"While this reduction has not prevented the Royal Navy undertaking its current operational tasks, the extent of its impact on future operational capabilities of the fleet is uncertain."

Source

FAIR USE NOTICE

This site contains copyrighted material the use of which has not always been specifically authorized by the copyright owner. We are making such material available in our efforts to advance understanding of environmental, political, human rights, economic, democracy, scientific, and social justice issues, etc. We believe this constitutes a 'fair use' of any such copyrighted material as provided for in section 107 of the US Copyright Law. In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, the material on this site is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes. For more information go to: http://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/17/107.shtml. If you wish to use copyrighted material from this site for purposes of your own that go beyond 'fair use', you must obtain permission from the copyright owner.