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  • "No jumps for Paras as MoD cuts £1bn"

    "No jumps for Paras as MoD cuts £1bn"

    http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...7/nparas17.xml

    Parachute training in the Army is set to be halted for four years as part of a £1 billion cost-cutting programme by the Ministry of Defence (MoD).


    Members of the Parachute Regiment will not receive parachute training


    The proposals mean that Britain will be without a parachute-trained force for the first time since the Second World War when the Parachute Regiment was created on the orders of Winston Churchill.

    Documents leaked to The Sunday Telegraph reveal that no new recruits or even serving members of the Parachute Regiment or airborne forces will be trained in military parachuting from next year until 2011. It will then take a year to get the Army's 2,500 paratroopers up to scratch.

    The cost-cutting programme is being launched after defence chiefs warned that spiralling costs of complex equipment and the demands of military operations would create a financial "black hole" in the MoD of £868 million by the end of the next year.

    The severity of the crisis prompted one of the Government's most senior civil servants to describe the situation as "an extremely difficult position with no clear way forward".


    The crisis has placed the MoD on a collision course with Gordon Brown and the Treasury, and has raised fears that multi-billion pound projects could be postponed or even cancelled.

    The planned cuts to be imposed on 16 Air Assault Brigade, which the MoD admits would be a public-relations disaster, can be

    Continued on Page 2revealed just days after 77 members of the unit received awards, including a Victoria Cross and a George Cross, for their actions in Afghanistan.

    The document states that if the cuts were imposed "the Parachute Regiment and other airborne units would be undermined with implications for morale, recruiting and retention. It would take until March 31, 2012, to retrain all aircrews, dispatchers, planers and parachute-trained units".

    It adds: "This measure would also have implications for special forces' recruiting and selection." The Parachute Regiment provides more than half of the special forces' intake.

    Senior officers were aghast last night at the latest round of cuts. One said: "It is extraordinary that at a time when the Armed Forces are fighting two wars and are stretched to the very limit, defence spending is being pared back in this way."

    The crisis has emerged two months after Tony Blair promised commanders in Afghanistan that they would get whatever they needed to beat the Taliban.

    The scale of the crisis within the MoD is highlighted by another leaked document in which Ian Andrews, the 2nd permanent undersecretary of state, warns that the military is having to take "painful measures" to stay within budget. "Equipment, support, fuel and utilities costs are causing real pressures across the departments. We remain in an extremely difficult position with no clear way forward."

    In an effort to stay within budget, he proposes measures including a "moratorium on recruitment" of civilian manpower and that all "existing contracts for agency or casual staff be terminated".

    Instead of flying to meetings around the world, senior officers should "encourage staff to consider video conferencing, e-mail or the telephone".
    To sit down with these men and deal with them as the representatives of an enlightened and civilized people is to deride ones own dignity and to invite the disaster of their treachery - General Matthew Ridgway

  • #2
    What the UK government is doing is simply robbing the Armed services to fund other left wing options. They disgust me with their ineptitude.
    Semper in excretum. Solum profunda variat.

    Comment


    • #3
      I was reading this as well. And been talking to people.
      Unfortunatelly it is and option been put down on paper, by a spasticated pen pushing civie thats sits on a luxary leather seat, in a heated office. Who has no friging idea of anything that is militry, makeing these ludecrous proposals.
      To save money.
      [Simple way of saving money is getting these rag tag foriegners that bleed and scam my country dry, also get rid of these human rights malarki, coming from some more pen pushing, (even worse) foreign panzys from another continent].


      Seriously the MOD has not got a ****ing clue on how to operate.
      And if this was to go ahead within regards to the parras not being able to parachute, would become a very big headache for the mod and goverment.
      Politically stupid. [I doubt they will go through with it.]

      Beginig to wonder wether there are any men in our government that have balls, and actually stand on there feet without bowing down do stupidity, throwing commen scence out the window.

      Bunch of muppets and inbreds.

      Comment


      • #4
        Originally posted by troung View Post
        "No jumps for Paras as MoD cuts £1bn"

        http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main...7/nparas17.xml

        Parachute training in the Army is set to be halted for four years as part of a £1 billion cost-cutting programme by the Ministry of ******* (MoD).


        Members of the Parachute Regiment will not receive parachute training


        The proposals mean that Britain will be without a parachute-trained force for the first time since the Second World War when the Parachute Regiment was created on the orders of Winston Churchill.

        Documents leaked to The Sunday Telegraph reveal that no new recruits or even serving members of the Parachute Regiment or airborne forces will be trained in military parachuting from next year until 2011. It will then take a year to get the Army's 2,500 paratroopers up to scratch.

        The cost-cutting programme is being launched after ******* chiefs warned that spiralling costs of complex equipment and the demands of military operations would create a financial "black hole" in the MoD of £868 million by the end of the next year.

        The severity of the crisis prompted one of the Government's most senior civil servants to describe the situation as "an extremely difficult position with no clear way forward".


        The crisis has placed the MoD on a collision course with Gordon Brown and the Treasury, and has raised fears that multi-billion pound projects could be postponed or even cancelled.

        The planned cuts to be imposed on 16 Air Assault Brigade, which the MoD admits would be a public-relations disaster, can be

        Continued on Page 2revealed just days after 77 members of the unit received awards, including a Victoria Cross and a George Cross, for their actions in Afghanistan.

        The document states that if the cuts were imposed "the Parachute Regiment and other airborne units would be undermined with implications for morale, recruiting and retention. It would take until March 31, 2012, to retrain all aircrews, dispatchers, planers and parachute-trained units".

        It adds: "This measure would also have implications for special forces' recruiting and selection." The Parachute Regiment provides more than half of the special forces' intake.

        Senior officers were aghast last night at the latest round of cuts. One said: "It is extraordinary that at a time when the Armed Forces are fighting two wars and are stretched to the very limit, ******* spending is being pared back in this way."

        The crisis has emerged two months after Tony Blair promised commanders in Afghanistan that they would get whatever they needed to beat the Taliban.

        The scale of the crisis within the MoD is highlighted by another leaked document in which Ian Andrews, the 2nd permanent undersecretary of state, warns that the military is having to take "painful measures" to stay within budget. "Equipment, support, fuel and utilities costs are causing real pressures across the departments. We remain in an extremely difficult position with no clear way forward."

        In an effort to stay within budget, he proposes measures including a "moratorium on recruitment" of civilian manpower and that all "existing contracts for agency or casual staff be terminated".

        Instead of flying to meetings around the world, senior officers should "encourage staff to consider video conferencing, e-mail or the telephone".
        Why does it censor the word *******?

        Comment

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