Any comment made about 80,000 people is bound to be unreasonable and stereotypical for most of those it applies to and this article is no exception. Especially amazing is the attack on 'fast track' (no such thing Anonymous, can only imagine you mean Fast Stream?) for the problems at the top of the shop? That's essentially blaming the apprentice for the state of the management team. There are numerous problems with MOD at the moment, do you really believe they'd be solved by handing management processes to uniformed officers with no background for it? Surely the answer is for the best of the uniformed services and the civil service to work together to minimise bureaucracy and deliver the armed forces we need for a world that is much changed since the glory days you talk of. Reinstating a 1980s MOD for 2008 world isn't the answer, symmetrical inter-nation conflicts are not our future. As for the uniform issue, I'd recommend a trip to Bristol, where virtually all uniform personnel wear uniform and the healthy mix of civvy to services is clear to the eye.

This is one of the most pathetic, whining articles imaginable. Whoever wrote it clearly has no knowledge of the MOD and the way things work. Example - procurement of military equipment is run almost completely by senior military Officers who head up the 'DECs' (Directorate Equipment Capability), so blame them for petty inter-service fighting which leads to wasted billions. Other than that, this article strings together a few meaningless anecdotes and writes off the many dedicated people working to support the military whilst being paid half what their equivalent in the services are. You are a disgrace, and you know it, because you don't have the balls to give you name. Idiot.

Can I join the MOD slagging off session? Here's my two penneth; In May I emailed the US Military's Medical Research and Material Command, seeing if they were interested in our Hands-Free Drinking System to help hydrate their injured and disabled service personnel coming back from Afghanistan. I timed it so they'd receive my email first thing in the morning. They took just three hours to write back to advise me of the procedure and who to contact. They even answered my follow-on questions. On the same day I wrote letters to the various Head Shed within the Defence Medical Services Dept. Six weeks later and a chase-up phone call to Whitehall - still waiting for an acknowledgement. I also wrote with reference to Headley Court, offering some free-issue equipment to help our personnel in rehab - still no reply. Is this reality? A reflection of what's happening in the rest of the MOD/Services? I hope not but if so, maybe it's why I didn't respond to the call to celebrate at Buck Palace. God save the Queen.

This is scary

I work in one of the defence technical colleges and we are at the mercy of civil servant management and instructional staff. Civilian staff are far cheaper but completely inflexible and unfortunately led astray by barrack room lawyers and trade union reps who fail to see what we are supposed to be achieving. When you have soldiers organising and delivering training they do it to the best of their ability, make do with limited resources, work unsocial hours if that's what the job takes and overall deliver training that is 100% contextual. The majority of the civilian instructors are ex-military staff who are merely topping up their pension and clocking off at 1630, they no longer care about operational relevance, thinking that we are fighting the 4th shock army across the Rhine. The tail is wagging the dog. But it's absolutely essential that every soldier makes sure he is in there where it counts, in as many of these decisions as possible and understands how these penny-pinching people think in order to be ahead of the game and fight for Queen and Country. Keep your friends close and your enemies closer.

This should be re titled the enemy within, pray someone stops the rot.

'Army Surplus': with the end of the British empire and the end of the Soviet empire UK forces have been whittled down to become a exercise in nostalgia. The British army has fewer than 100,000 under arms making it technically a defence force. Against this background dont be surprised that the MOD has abandoned the so-called covenant years ago. Because it has become cosmetic I feel that flesh and blood troops should only be used to defend the British Isles and that UN projects should be done by countries who have large standing armies with surplus capacity. Britain is no longer one of these.

This is an important article and brings together several important strands. The first is the creeping erosion of the military ethos, support and values within the nation, reflected by the giggly young civil servant. However, the civil service - like the services themselves - only reflect the education, experience and values of the society from which it is drawn. Second is the msisunderstanding of Defernce as an 'insurance' policy as much as anything else.You can't plan for the unexpected: but you can certainly prepare for it. Next I would identify the Achilles heel of the Armed Armed Services themselves in confronting the sustained attack by the No 10 -Treasury- MoD Civil Service nexus over the past decade. Inter-service fighting over the MoD budget has allowed the administration to set the armed forces at each other's budgetary throats. This ability to divide and rule the three services has been disastrous. For example, it is not an either/or between fighting a hot war in in Afghanistan and procuring new frigates or aeroplanes. The two budgets are separate things and should be handled that way. Not for nothing did Willy Whitelaw caution Margaret Thatcher on no account to have a memeber of the Treasury team in any war cabinet. The Treasury's job is to pay for the wars that the politicians choose to fight, not to control them. If Britain is to retain a sovereign defence capability then we need a complete re-evaluation of just how we handle defence. Conspiracy theorists might even believe that the whole affair is in fact a long term hidden policy to run down our armed forces in order to pool them with Europe as that would be cheaper. We need to start putting the armed forces back on the political and social agenda of the national debate. A first step would be robust and critical public leadership by senior officers. They are - not yet, anyway - emphatically not in post to reflect the views of the political party in power. They are there to prepare for wars, and to act as the mouthpieces of the soldiers, sailors and airmen for which they are responsible and which they are charged to lead.

It is worth bearing in mind that with the lack of will on the part of Downing street and other main EU countries, NATO expansion has dilluted the idiocy of NATO. Romanian Forces have probably played a greater role in security in Afghanistan than French forces. It is true that in some circomstances the uniform matters little, it is also true that officers can be held accountable by their men and other military personnel in a way that military personnel cannot hold civilians accountable. At this point, the British military is respected for its technology, not for its expertise or will among new NATO countries.

Disgraceful as the MOD may be, the heart of the problem lies in Downing Street. The bureaucrats operate in an environment established by their political masters, especially Tony Blair. It was Mr Blair who committed the British Army to a series of adventures which required above all large numbers of infantrymen. At the same time his government set about reducing the numbers of infantry battalions from 40 to 32. The British infantry are superb, and widely recognised around the world as such. But they are not supermen. We failed in Basra because we needed three times as many troops to dominate the militias and deter the Iranians. The commitment to Afghanistan was laughable, initially one battalion tasked, according to our dysfunctional government, to defend women's rights and discourage the growing of poppy. Most shaming is the lack of debate in Britain about this systemic failure. I hope that Standpoint's article will help regenerate public consciousness of military matters.