The British Army has been forced to cancel military exercises because of last-minute training cuts, with some soldiers reportedly left “twiddling their thumbs” for weeks as ministers wrestle with defence spending.
The disruption has been blamed on repeated delays to Labour’s Defence Investment Plan (DIP), which was originally due to be published in full last autumn.
The prolonged negotiations between the Treasury and Ministry of Defence left the armed forces facing a funding gap after annual training schedules had already been drawn up.
The Army, Royal Navy and RAF typically plan their programmes around the start of the financial year in April. By the time the DIP was finally published in June, promising billions of pounds in additional defence funding, the services had already committed to their training plans.
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One official told The Times: “What that means is that all of the things that we had planned to do, we could not then afford to do with the very significant settlement we have.
“We have a duty to our taxpayers and to the rest of government to live within our means.”
Military planners were consequently forced to “look at the totality of where the £11.5billion they spend a year was going and identified those things that they would have to stop doing”.
Senior commanders were then required to “choose those measures that have the least impact on our operational capability and output”.
The cuts have included the cancellation of heavy-armour exercises involving multiple vehicles, with training resources instead directed towards smaller-scale operations focused on drones and modern battlefield tactics.
Military analysts have accused the Army of “pulling its armoured punch” at a time when Britain is attempting to rebuild its ability to fight a major conventional war.
The official stressed: “Training is an important part of the readiness of our armed forces.”
But they added that the MoD was seeking to “ensure that our soldiers, sailors, and aviators are able to do the training that they need…but we also have a duty to live within the budget that we are set”.
Chief of the Defence Staff Sir Richard Knighton is reportedly examining how training levels can be increased “to ensure that we are as ready as we can be”.
The pressure comes as Western intelligence suggests Vladimir Putin remains unwilling to back down from his war in Ukraine despite the enormous Russian death toll.
Sir Richard said: “That’s half a million photographs hanging on the walls in devastated, darkened homes in Russia.
“That means half a million families will never see their father, their son, their brother or husband again.
“I think these numbers illustrate clearly the senseless and futile waste of human life for such little progress and against such an illegitimate aim of President Putin.”
A Western official added: “We don’t see any intelligence that suggests that (Putin) is reflective of the huge cost to his people.”
The row over training comes amid a wider political clash over the pace of Britain’s defence spending increase.
Prime Minister Andy Burnham clashed with Conservative leader Kemi Badenoch over whether the Government will reach the three per cent defence spending target by 2030, warning there were “serious threats to national security that cannot wait”.
Burnham also attacked Conservative proposals to fund higher defence spending by cutting housing benefits.
He said: “I don’t think myself that taking £4billion out of housing benefit is going to get the right consensus around this issue, because that would create levels of homelessness in this country that we wouldn’t have seen before, hundreds of thousands of children in temporary accommodation.
“We do everything to support our national security, but it can’t come at the expense of social security.”
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