Up to 2,900 members of the British army including 400 Gurkhas will lose their jobs along with 1,000 air force personnel in the latest round of defence cuts, the government said Tuesday. Around 300 members of the Royal Navy will also be axed. Many senior army posts will be cut, including eight Brigadiers and 60 Lieutenant Colonels and the Ministry of Defence (MoD) said the Gurkhas affected would be those with more than six years' service.
Defence minister Philip Hammond insisted the government had "no choice" but to axe the posts as part of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR) after the previous Labour government overspent on defence. But Hammond insisted the British army - which still has more than 9,000 troops in Afghanistan - would be more flexible and responsive after the cuts. "Difficult decisions had to be taken in the SDSR to deal with the vast black hole in the MoD budget," he said.
"The size of the fiscal deficit we inherited left us no choice but to reduce the size of the armed forces - while reconfiguring them to ensure they remain agile, adaptable and effective. "As we continue with the redundancy process, we will ensure we retain the capabilities that our armed forces will require to meet the challenges of the future.
"The redundancy programme will not impact adversely on the current operations in Afghanistan, where our armed forces continue to fight so bravely on this country's behalf." After the SDSR was carried out in 2010, Prime Minister David Cameron's Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government said it would cut 17,000 jobs from the army, navy and Royal Air Force (RAF) over four years.