Without the facts and without knowing the idividual, it is almost impossible to reach a proper conclusion: perhaps it would be best not to comment at all. The case, however, raises important questions.
One can only trust that tried by serving officers, he got a fair hearing. Do not write this man off too eagerly: In the Words of 16th C English Protestant martyr John Bradford, "there but for the grace of God". The problem may, however, sometimes be that a moment's madness leads to inevitable further falsification to cover it up. There are people serving who may nver have made an error of judgement in their whole career: these I find very frightening. It takes enormous courage to confess failure but it also requires trust in superiors and support from them: in our new blame culture I find that this may be lacking. What sort of bureaucratically led culture do we have that someone thinks that they have to falsify paperwork in the first place?
I suspect that the savage (and possibly unhelpful) sentence of imprisonment relates more in our paranoid epoch of "gun crime" to the posession of ammunition, rather than the falsification of qualifications. I am appalled, though, at the suggestion that the ammunition would not be taken on charge/disposed of safely without the correct paperwork: I trust that this will be addressed internally.
If he potentially put others in danger, than that is bad news and his departure and conscience will haunt him always: what saddens me about this is that in an era when we are falling over ourselves to demonstrate duty of care, it appears that when there is greatest physical courage in our young people deploying into harm's way, there is the greatest moral cowardice amongst our leadership, particularly the politicians and our politicised seniors. Honesty is rightly highly prised amongst the more junior members of the Armed Forces: this appears to become less so higher up the tree.
The training is without question for the benefit of the individual: the certification is for the prevention of embarrasment to the CoC and the Gubment after things have gone wrong. I would like to pose one question: as we continue to pare down training on the grounds of cost are we certain that every qualification means "competent", or does it really mean "attended"? I think that this has important implications. I know people who are not professionally qualified but are competent and people who are not professionally competent who are fully trained. Do your people trust you enough to say either: "Boss, Ive f*cked up.." or "I am not fully confident with my abilty to..."? What would your reaction be?
It is a pretty pass when we concentrate so hard on the process and the paperwork that we cannot see if there is a real problem with our people? Less management, more leadership please.