Chugalug
Torpy has already announced his intention to retire at the end of his tenure so can't see this as self advancement within the MOD. He certainly isn't making / won't make friends in UK Defence Companies by reducing fleet sizes either.
I'm also intrigued by your comment
limited grasp of the realities
Surely the reality is the MOD are broke and somehow, somewhere we have got to make painful savings in order to both support/fight/win the current conflicts and protect from the future conflict. As the books clearly don't balance what would you suggest? Just curious as to how you would do things differently.
As they say don't bring problems bring solutions. And these armchair solutions can't involve more money because there isn't any. And there won't be any under any future government either. At somestage we have to repay the VAT cut etc and, sadly, I suspect this will be through a cut in public spending rather than personal tax rises because guess which one costs more votes. Again, cuts in Health, Social Services and Education are not very voter friendly. As for Defence ....