Quite a lot of mudslinging in these pages is directed at senior officers and the MOD. However, the reality is that the armed forces must be accountable to a democratically elected civilian administration. Senior officers and the MOD do the government's bidding and the government is elected by the people. The bottom line is that the government makes decisions on the allocation of resources according to the priorities which it believes will get it re-elected by the people. The problem here is that we have been engaged on operations which the government believe to be 'the right thing to do' but the Treasury (and the people) would rather that tax was spent on Health, Education and pretty much anything but Defence. At the same time industrial, economic and employment interests mean that the government (Treasury) wants to retain UK defence industries and so impose additional costs on defence procurement without making any provision for those costs.
The consequence of all of this is that Defence Chiefs are required to achieve more whilst spending unnecessary amounts of money on securing future capability. Every year the spending round requires difficult decisions about what important areas of expenditure should take a cut to balance the books. Trade-offs between managing current commitments (and safety) and ensuring that the UK still has Armed Forces worth a damn in 25 years' time are made in every round. Inevitably, eventually something had to break. The British people and the Treasury need to understand that it is their priorities which caused this tragedy not MOD or military ineptitude. Hopefully, the outcome of this will be a reconciliation between our commitments and our resources; if not, the next disaster is in the pipeline.
I might add that it is for the Cabinet to provide a coherent Grand Strategy for the United Kingdom. A recent BBC documentary alleged that Cabinet Government ceased to function under the current government. If so, then it might be a good idea to re-instate it.