The capabilities of Britain’s armed forces may not be diminishing as starkly as the numbers might suggest

Following a new announcement of cuts to the UK armed forces, many are asking whether we are seeing Britain’s defence capabilities in decline. Andrew Dorman warns against simply focusing on focus on numbers or money. There is no direct relationship between amount spent or size of the armed forces and the security of the nation or between numbers of personnel and capability. Also, focusing on the armed forces is also problematic given that in many ways the battlefields of today and tomorrow are different.