British army will be extinct by 2020

Commander John Muxworthy, founder and director of the pressure group UK National Defence Association, said the British army could no longer be classified as an army after the country’s Ministry of Defence (MoD) reduces the number of its troops to the lowest level since 1835 to plug a £42 billion black hole in its budget.

“According to all international military definitions, and the generals I have spoken with, it will be too small to technically be called an army if all the proposed cuts go through - it should be a home defence force instead,” said Muxworthy.

According to the 2010 Strategic Defence and Security Review, the MoD is obliged to axe 7,000 troops by 2015 while the current proposed cuts are planned to reduce the number of British troops from 101,300 to 82,000 by 2020.

This comes as similar reductions in the number of army soldiers in other countries have never gone below the 100,000 cut-off.

The reductions in the number of British soldiers come as the Commons Public Accounts Committee launched a scathing attack on the MoD for its “wasteful” projects after it was revealed that the MoD’s 15 largest projects would cost £6.1billion more than the ministry’s budget.

Conservative MP Patrick Mercer called on the British government to give its planned cuts to the British army a second thought, saying “the prospect of our Army being called a Home Defence Force” should be considered quite embarrassing by British officials.

Nevertheless, despite recent reports questioning Britain’s military capability, the British government insists on waging wars around the globe, seeks to secure the approval of the UN Security Council for military intervention in Syria, and refrains from negotiations over the Malvinas islands threatening Argentina by sending a nuclear-armed destroyer to the area.