Please don't let's turn this into an inter-Service slanging match, here or in the meeja. It's interesting that the 1SL feels it is necessary to go public, but I suspect that if CAS or CGS were to do likewise at this point, the meeja would simply see it as just that.
The fact is that all the Armed Services are continually being nibbled to death by the Treasury ducks.
Mr C Hinecap:
If the government quantified what it wanted the Armed Forces to do, then perhaps we could define what we needed to carry out the task.
The way this bunch works, they would bring a huge team of consultants in, none of whom have any experience of the Armed Forces, get them to list the vote-grabbing items and get rid of everything else - or did they already do that? As for us defining what we need, we've never been terribly good at that, or at least never been very good at defending that which we believe we need to carry out the tasks, against those Treasury ducks! Gun for Typhoon anybody?
STH