well certainly from a Navy point of view we are short of pilots, observers, maintainers, engineering officers, seaman officers, sailors etc etc etc! At the last count I think the figures were 37500 serving personnel, but 40050 jobs - oops! Obviously the shortages are accutely manifested in the smaller branches such as aircrew; for example 10 sea harrier pilots equals 20% and so on. The problems again is worsened by the long lead in time to turn a civvie into military aircrew. I do understand that there is no shortage of volunteers however!