BHR's point makes a kind of sense, if UK politicians could resist the temptation to send UK forces all over the globe, for historical reasons or otherwise. When they do we can probably downsize to a couple of Hawk 128s, a row boat and some ceremonial swords. In the meantime we appear to need everything we can get our hands on for global power projection. And as Brown seems to want to solve Africa's problems I can see this dragging on for a while.