Amazing, the people running the show are so spineless they cannot prvent a huge drawdown in the size of the armed forces at a time of war.
In full here
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...ntroops124.xml
By Thomas Harding, Defence Correspondent
The military is in the grip of a personnel "crisis" as figures showed yesterday that a substantial number of troops have left in the past three months.
.........Morale at some bases has been described by some RAF commanders as "fragile" with issues over old equipment and not enough training as well as the constant operations.
All three instructors teaching pilots to fly Nimrod reconnaissance aircraft have resigned at RAF Kinloss. No instructor will be available until the end of the year. Fourteen aircrew from the base died over Afghanistan when their ageing Nimrod MR2 crashed last year.
Hercules pilots, who work one month on, one off, during operations, are suffering. One senior flier said: "My wife told me either get another job or we divorce."
Families have also been affected by repatriation ceremonies for dead Servicemen at RAF Lyneham.
A source at the Wiltshire base said it seriously impacted on morale each time a hearse went past wives at the station's creche.
Casualty rates in Iraq and Afghanistan have soared this year, with 67 deaths and hundreds of wounded. Rates for front-line units in Afghanistan are now thought to have passed Second World War levels.
Helicopter pilots are also working flat out in Chinooks and Merlins and ground staff are becoming overwhelmed by the workload. "We are now beginning to see engineering mistakes creep in that we have not seen for 30 years," said an RAF source. "People simply don't have time to develop skills that they did before."
The stress is also starting to tell on Harrier pilots, who have been flying difficult missions in Afghanistan since 2004, two years before the main British force deployed.
RAF numbers have plummeted from 50,000 three years ago to 42,000. The Ministry of Defence is aiming for a figure just below this level next year as part of "restructuring".
As with the Army and Navy, the decision has been taken to cut numbers at a time when the military is at its highest operational tempo in 50 years.