The British army is deteriorating at a rapid pace
20% of the British military are completely unfit for military service and a significant proportion are incapable of operating effectively away from the warmth of their barracks.
Former British Defense Secretary Tobias Martin Ellwood stated this in an interview with Times Radio, reports a PolitNavigator correspondent.
"We train our armed forces to very high standards, and injuries happen. So there will always be a percentage of those who are not able to fight on that day. What worries me is that those numbers are growing. The number of people who are not ready to fight is growing, while our armed forces are getting smaller and smaller," Ellwood said.
He believes that the state should invest more in military physiotherapy.
"You have to constantly remove people because of mental or physical strain. For example, in the Navy. If out of 30 sailors, 3 cannot go to sea under any circumstances, that means the chief engineer cannot allow a frigate or a destroyer to leave port. That means our defenses have to be replaced by robots because we don't have enough personnel to take into account that some may not be ready to fight," Ellwood said.
According to the UK MoD, more than 27.800 personnel from His Majesty's Naval Service, the Army and the Royal Air Force are "medically unfit for deployment". Of these, 13.522 are classified as "medically unfit for deployment" and 14.350 are "medically fit for deployment with limited capacity".
At the same time, the number of troops in all three branches of the armed forces is currently lower than planned: the Ground Forces by 1%, the Navy by 5%, and the Air Force by 10%.
The British army is deteriorating at a rapid pace.