Recruitment Deliberately Reduced to Shrink Army, Says Military Expert

A screen grab from the British Army's latest recruitment advert, which was launched on Sep. 4, 2023. British Army

The British Army is deliberately missing recruitment targets in order to slim down the British Army, a military expert has claimed.

Earlier this week Conservative MP Mark Francois, a former army reservist, raised the issue of recruitment at the House of Commons defence select committee and claimed the army was only reaching 80 percent of its targets.

One of the world’s most respected war historians, Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman, responded by saying, “If they don’t make progress and reverse these trends, it’s going to be awkward.”

But Tim Ripley, a defence analyst and author of “Little Green Men: The Inside Story of Russia’s New Military Power,” said the army was deliberately slowing down recruitment in order to slim down the army from a roll call of 77,000 to around 73,000.

Mr. Ripley told The Epoch Times: “I would suggest to you that they actually are reducing the number of people recruited into the British army on purpose.”

“Because they have set themselves a target to reduce the size of the British Army to 73,000 by 2025 and they’ve also promised not to make anybody redundant. So they are going to allow natural wastage, people when they finish their contracts they just leave and they’re not replaced. But they’ve also got to reduce the number of people they recruit,” he said.

Army Faces a ‘Churn Factor’

Mr. Ripley said the army also suffered from a “churn factor” with recruits tending to stay for an average of only six or seven years, compared to ten or 12 years in the Royal Navy and RAF, which tended to attract people looking for more specialist roles.

Earlier this week the army launched a new video advert, which popped up on social media, under the slogan, “You belong here.”

A screen grab from the British Army's latest recruitment advert, which was launched on Sep. 4, 2023. British Army

But Mr. Ripley said the army was in fact raising the bar for recruits and rejecting more applicants than in the past.

He said he understood around 90,000 to 100,000 people a year express an interest in joining the army but only half of them put in an application and he said this year only about 1,500 would probably make it through the recruitment process.

In July the then Defence Secretary Ben Wallace defended plans to cut the size of the army.

Mr. Wallace said he thought, “73,000 is enough to meet today’s threat” and said: ”We ... have to be honest about the size of our defence budget envelope. There is no point pretending that we can have huge numbers without a defence budget to match.”

Mr. Wallace, a former army officer, stepped down last week and was replaced by Grant Shapps, who has no military experience.

Mr. Francois told the defence committee on Tuesday the army had in the past outsourced its recruitment to Capita which had resulted in a “distinctly sub-optimal” performance.

Tory MP Warns of ‘Cumulative Effect’

He went on: “In the financial year 2022/2023 the army hit about 80 percent of its recruiting targets but it’s been worse than that for quite a few years. So the cumulative effect of that has been thinning out of a lot of the regiments.”

Mr. Francois said: “What really worries the committee ... is that recruitment is falling across all three services now quite markedly whilst outflow—people leaving—is going up quite markedly. And if you project forward those trends for five years, you end up with operational failure.”

The then Defence Secretary Ben Wallace—who said an army of 73,000 was "enough" for the threats facing Britain—speaks to the crew inside an Ajax armoured personnel at Bovington Camp, England, on Feb. 22, 2023. Ben Birchall/PA Media

Sir Lawrence, who is 74 and emeritus professor of war studies at Kings College London, responded: “It has been hanging over the army all the way through. There is no point saying we want an army of such-and-such size if we can’t get them through the door. But it’s a problem.”

Sir Lawrence, who has written “The Future of War” and numerous other books, said the army had trouble recruiting even before it was shrunk down and he said its role had massively reduced in recent years, with the end of Britain’s role in conflicts in Afghanistan, Iraq and before that Northern Ireland.

Freedman: ‘Army Needs to Think Through its Role and Identity’

He said: “There’s a question for the army about its role. I have a reasonably pragmatic view that there’s always things for which you can find you need the army to do ....  but I think the army needs to think through its role and identity.”

Mr. Francois also asked Sir Lawrence about a “rumour” he said he had heard that the army was shortly going to announce it was cutting the army reserve down to a roll call of 15,000 from 27,500.

Sir Lawrence said he was not aware of that rumour but he would be “disappointed” if it was true.

Lieutenant Colonel Mike Brigham, the British Army spokesperson, said in an email to The Epoch Times: “There are no plans to reduce the size of the Army’s regular or reserve force and we are not commenting on rumours.”

The Epoch Times contacted Capita regarding their 10-year recruitment contract for the British Army, which expired in 2022, but has not received a response.