UK Ministry of Defence, The Ministry of Defence has responded to a report published in a UK newspaper today, Saturday 21 July 2007, which claims that the UK is running short of troops, in particular for emergencies.
We have made no secret of the fact that the Armed Forces are working hard. The situation in respect of current operations remains manageable. We have already stated publicly that if the current tempo of operations continues at this pace for another 10 to 15 years, we will have to revisit our planning assumptions.
In recent months, we have drawn down our force levels in a number of operations. The Armed Forces' mission in Northern Ireland will end on 31 July, we withdrew the bulk of our forces from Bosnia-Herzegovina earlier this year and only yesterday we announced that we will reduce further our force levels in Iraq by 500.
We are certainly not complacent about the longer term implications, which we are acutely aware of and are addressing.
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