Missiles in the sea, drones in the air, but no boots on the ground

• Future of army in doubt
• Navy to consume large share of UK military spending

There will be no boots on the ground.

This has been the emphatic refrain from Barack Obama, British ministers, leading French commentators, and anyone else advocating military strikes on Syria.

They knew full well that sending troops to intervene in the civil war would be suicidal politically as well as far too risky militarily.

Opinion polls reflect deep-seated war-weariness in the UK, the US, and elsewhere. So what will soldiers, at least those in democratic countries in the west, do, once they return from Afghanistan next year?

It is a question that should seriously concern anyone interested in the future of the British army. It is already facing a 20% cut with its numbers falling to 82,000 by 2017.

Plans to make up a shortfall by doubling the number of reservists to 30,000 are in serious trouble. Recently leaked documents show that over the past three months the number of people enlisting in the Army Reserve amounted to just 367, barely a quarter of the target.

Over the coming year recruitment expected to be half what needed.

The cost of recruiting reservists is significantly higher than that of regular soldiers, partly because of the plan to compensate employers releasing their staff by £500 a month for each individual.

Many army recruitment offices are being closed and their job handed over to Capita through a 10-year multi-million pound contract.

The army is haemorrhaging young officers. According to a Ministry of Defence survey this summer 75% of officers rated the level of morale in the army as low, more than three times the number in 2010. (The overall figure, including all soldiers, was 55%.)

One young officer recently told The Soldier magazine: “We feel as if we are the forgotten few and an easy and obvious way for the army to reduce its size as cheaply as possible”.

General Sir Nick Houghton, the new chief of defence staff, recently told the MoD magazine, Defence Focus, that the armed forces will have to “recalibrate” their expectations after leaving Afghanistan.

“We have to recalibrate our expectation of the level of capabilities we can field on new operations from a standing start”, he said.

Houghton promised to be “honest, straight talking and supportive” to those working in defence in times he acknowledged as “quite difficult for many of them”.

He also said there was scope for better internal and external communications — and the MoD had “risked people becoming cynical and detached from what defence was trying to do”.

Fundamental questions about the future role of the army coincide with renewed pressure on the defence budget.

Two commentators with a track record, Paul Cornish and Andrew Dorman, point out in the latest edition of International Affairs that it is difficult to see how the government’s Future Force 2020 plan “can be considered affordable and therefore achievable”.

Malcolm Chalmers of the Royal United Services Institute, RUSI, has also warned of increasing pressure on the defence budget.

Contrast the doom and gloom hovering over the …read more