The size of the UK defence budget is not set by senior officers, but by politicians.
But it is the senior officers who decide how it's spent.
A couple of weeks ago a colleague of mine went off on a short trip in support of a 2 week flying excercise. He was there solely to carry out a couple of checks which because of the flying programme he achieved in the first two days.
Rather than sit around he called home base to see about flying home civ air, he had already looked online and found the cheapest flight home which was £502. He was told that as £502 exceeds the acceptable limit and he was to stay put. Said colleague then points out that by staying put he will be running up accommodation charges, allowances, IE and Sepal which comes to a damn sight more than the cost of the air fare, but he was told it matters not the flight is to expensive so stay put.
This was not a decision of some junior admin person or even WO Accts this was decision made by someone almost at the top of the tree at home base and is almost pythonesque in its daftness and its that sort of joined up thinking that has most of us pulling our hair out.
If you were a government bean counter sat looking in at the way we do our daily business, and the above is just one teeny weeny example of how badly we are being financially supervised, would you seriously be looking to give us even more money to waste?