the public, in their ignorance, still think we have substantial, well armed Army, Navy and Air Forces.
I was talking about this to a friend who has been a builder all of his life and is about my age. He still thinks we have substantial armed forces. We were talking about the stength of the RAF and when I told him that the strength of the RAF wouldn't half fill Old Trafford and we only had seven squadrons of front line/strike aircraft he thought I was having a jape. When he realised I was serious he was genuinely shocked.
It's not ignorance, it's just lack of enlightened information. You may say that the information is out there but so is the information for the rate of MOT failures, fatal shark attacks or the latest findings from CERN. Unless you push it into people's faces it remains abstract on their part.