This statement that relates to the past reflects a route cause of the problems that resulted.
Earlier in the decade the UK MoD stated that, "The Department remains committed to a process of civilianisation. Increasingly, it makes no sense to employ expensively trained and highly professional military personnel in jobs which civilians could do equally well. Civilians are generally cheaper than their military counterparts and as they often remain longer in post, can provide greater continuity. For these reasons, it is our long-standing policy to civilianise posts and so release valuable military resources to the front line whenever it makes operational and economic sense to do so".
Sounds wonderful doesn’t it, it talks about freeing up expensive trained service personnel and leaving those jobs to cheaper to employ civi’s.
But what happens, you no longer need all these expensive Service personnel as you have cheap civi’s doing the job, so you lay them off, but no matter, you have those cheap civi’s.
Then there becomes a shortage of those civi’s in the rest of the world and the pay rises, so they leave and recruitment falls as the wages are no longer comparable. And you decimated the Service personnel numbers as you no longer needed them , and hence the knock on effect on reduced recruitment.
…