No jumps for UK Paras!

Dub13

No jumps for Paras as MoD cuts £1bn

By Sean Rayment and Rob Watts, Sunday Telegraph
Last Updated: 1:28am GMT 17/12/2006

Parachute training in the Army is set to be halted for four years as part of a £1 billion cost-cutting programme by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Member of the Parachute Regiment
Members of the Parachute Regiment will not receive parachute training

The proposals mean that Britain will be without a parachute-trained force for the first time since the Second World War when the Parachute Regiment was created on the orders of Winston Churchill.

Documents leaked to The Sunday Telegraph reveal that no new recruits or even serving members of the Parachute Regiment or airborne forces will be trained in military parachuting from next year until 2011. It will then take a year to get the Army's 2,500 paratroopers up to scratch.

The cost-cutting programme is being launched after defence chiefs warned that spiralling costs of complex equipment and the demands of military operations would create a financial "black hole" in the MoD of £868 million by the end of the next year.

The severity of the crisis prompted one of the Government's most senior civil servants to describe the situation as "an extremely difficult position with no clear way forward".
advertisement

The crisis has placed the MoD on a collision course with Gordon Brown and the Treasury, and has raised fears that multi-billion pound projects could be postponed or even cancelled.

The planned cuts to be imposed on 16 Air Assault Brigade, which the MoD admits would be a public-relations disaster, can be

Continued on Page 2revealed just days after 77 members of the unit received awards, including a Victoria Cross and a George Cross, for their actions in Afghanistan.

The document states that if the cuts were imposed "the Parachute Regiment and other airborne units would be undermined with implications for morale, recruiting and retention. It would take until March 31, 2012, to retrain all aircrews, dispatchers, planers and parachute-trained units".

It adds: "This measure would also have implications for special forces' recruiting and selection." The Parachute Regiment provides more than half of the special forces' intake.

Senior officers were aghast last night at the latest round of cuts. One said: "It is extraordinary that at a time when the Armed Forces are fighting two wars and are stretched to the very limit, defence spending is being pared back in this way."

The crisis has emerged two months after Tony Blair promised commanders in Afghanistan that they would get whatever they needed to beat the Taliban.

The scale of the crisis within the MoD is highlighted by another leaked document in which Ian Andrews, the 2nd permanent undersecretary of state, warns that the military is having to take "painful measures" to stay within budget. "Equipment, support, fuel and utilities costs are causing real pressures across the departments. We remain in an extremely difficult position with no clear way forward."

In an effort to stay within budget, he proposes measures including a "moratorium on recruitment" of civilian manpower and that all "existing contracts for agency or casual staff be terminated".

Instead of flying to meetings around the world, senior officers should "encourage staff to consider video conferencing, e-mail or the telephone".

Dub13

I think the MOD in the UK are going crazy with all these cutbacks,here is another story I found.


Mail on Sunday
The cash-strapped Ministry of Defence has sent home 10,000 soldiers from barracks for nearly three weeks to save on heating and lighting bills.

The shutdown - a week longer than the usual Christmas break - means that Army bases all over Britain have only a skeleton staff to protect them.

Soldiers not required for operations were sent home on Tuesday and will not return until January 8.

While they are away, the MoD will save tens of thousands of pounds on electricity, gas, food and accommodation bills because the power will be turned off.

The closures, which include the Army's HQ Land Command at Wilton, near Salisbury, Wiltshire, come less than a fortnight after Home Secretary John Reid warned that an attempted terrorist attack during the Christmas period was 'highly likely'.

Dr Reid said: 'We know the number of conspiracies of a major type are in the tens - 30, or round about that.'

The UK threat assessment posted on the Home Office and MI5 websites is currently 'severe - the second-highest level'.

Tory Homeland Security spokesman Patrick Mercer, a former Army infantry commander, said: 'Only days ago, the Home Secretary was telling us how likely it was that we would be attacked by terrorists.

'Now, we discover that our garrisons are closed for business, just to save a few more quid out of the heating and lighting budget.

'What a state we're in. We may as well hang a sign outside our Army bases saying, 'Please don't invade us until next year.'

The order to close the barracks was issued by the Commander Regional Forces, Lieutenant General John McColl.

The shutdown comes as troops in Afghanistan have complained that they have run out of mortar and machine-gun ammunition.

The Army now has fewer than 100,000 troops - the lowest figure in post-war years.

Senior officers claim that at least 15,000 more soldiers are needed to solve 'overstretch', problems caused by the scale of operations in Iraq and Afghanistan and by other commitments around the world.

A cost-saving drive by the MoD has resulted in RAF jets being overworked, plans to mothball six warships, sub-standard military housing, plus reductions in training exercises and adventure training.

The MoD insisted that there was 'nothing unusual' in Army units and headquarters in the UK standing down at this time of year.

A spokeswoman said: 'This has nothing to do with saving money, nor will it impact on operations. People supporting operations are still working, as they always do.'




Link

vesp

I am not surprised Britain is in such a mess. They have had labour / socialist government there for so long now.

A Dub in Glasgo

Socialist government? You have got to be kidding!

Cost cutting and scrimping on basic military training and materials yet they commit to tens of billions on the biggest white elephants of them all.

From the article in the 1st post wrote:

Instead of flying to meetings around the world, senior officers should "encourage staff to consider video conferencing, e-mail or the telephone".

Totally agree with this

Bam Bam

Its a mess alright, The army is fighting two major engagements on a peacetime budget. The things that Britains forces need are a substantially increased wartime budget, to place a number of factorys on mandatory military hardware production, and dare I say- bring back the draft.

vesp

Bam Bam wrote:

dare I say- bring back the draft.

That will sort out the Dub in Glasgow alright. :rolleyes: Fancy fighting for the country where you earn your living, eh Dub ?

super_furry

vesp wrote:

That will sort out the Dub in Glasgow alright. :rolleyes: Fancy fighting for the country where you earn your living, eh Dub ?

Not wishing to speak for him, but I doubt he does and why the **** should he?

Bam Bam

Ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country.

vesp

Why should he what - escape the hypothetical draft ? I doubt his allegiance to the country he claims to reside in.

testicle

Any draft would not apply to non-citizens...

Dyr

vesp wrote:

That will sort out the Dub in Glasgow alright. :rolleyes: Fancy fighting for the country where you earn your living, eh Dub ?

Would you fight for this country seems as how you like to claim you're irish from time to time? :rolleyes:

Hagar

Vesp is a regular stirrer in both "Politics" and "History and Heritage".
His attempts to politicise debates in this Forum are not welcome.
Please do not feed the troll.

gonk

Dub13 wrote:

Parachute training in the Army is set to be halted for four years as part of a £1 billion cost-cutting programme by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).

Considering the last combat jump by British forces was over 50 years ago in Suez, it makes perfect sense to me - or maybe the Telegraph also thinks the cavalry regiments should still be on horseback.

amen

bring back the draft

interesting idea
but one which no politician in the UK or the USA really wants to do.
In this age of equality and women in the armed forces it may be illegal to only draft men and no one wants to start drafting women as they generally are not allowed fight on the front line

hmmm

Sounds like kite flying to me. If the civilians are not giving you the budget you require, how best to make your point than to pick some cost savings that make great headlines and embarrass the MOD "Paras not being trained with parachutes, Snipers to be equipped with crossbows rather than rifles etc" - I'm sure if they dropped one replacement engine for a Eurofighter they could pay for parachute training for 10 years.

Steyr

Anybody see skynews last night where they were saying the Typhoon is not exactly needed as its a war on terrorism and no specific boundaries so no credible threat etc

gonk

hmmm wrote:

I'm sure if they dropped one replacement engine for a Eurofighter they could pay for parachute training for 10 years.

Maybe they could, but what would the training be for, given that there hasn't actually been any operational use made of it for fifty years?

testicle

gonk stop talking ****e.

173rd Airborne Bde conducted a mass combat jump in Iraq in 2003. That's not 50 years ago.

gonk

testicle wrote:

gonk stop talking ****e.

173rd Airborne Bde conducted a mass combat jump in Iraq in 2003. That's not 50 years ago.

Well, if you want to sling personal abuse, I could say your username is highly apt, since you yourself are talking bo***cks. The 173rd is not a unit of the British army. This thread is about cutbacks in the British army. Once again, for slow readers, the last mass combat drop by British forces was in Suez in November 1956. You can agree or disagree with the decision, but dropping training to maintain a capability which hasn't been used for fifty years can hardly be described as unreasonable.