In June, more than 4,000 British military personnel received redundancy notices (of which about a third are compulsory) in the largest single reduction in the last 20 years. In 2010, cuts were announced of 5,000 jobs each in the navy and air force, 7,000 in the army, and about 25,000 civilian jobs in the MoD.
A further reduction of 12,000 army personnel was then announced, which will cut army numbers to 82,000 by 2015.
The slimmed down force will have a much heavier emphasis on special forces capabilities, according to plans revealed in June.
There’s also an emphasis on replacing the Trident nuclear weapon system.
The MoD awarded contracts worth £350m for designing replacement submarines in May, and then signed contracts in June for £1bn of work on two submarine reactor cores, one of them for Trident replacement.