Cutting manpower is no answer

Another day, another load of bad news from the defence world, which lurches from the bizarre to the downright depressing.

A day after it is confirmed that 11,000 serving men and women are to have their redundancy notices, we hear that the RAF's new Typhoon fighter bomber is costing 75 per cent more than it should.

It won't be fully capable of ground attack operations, which is what it's really required for in Afghanistan, until 2018. The National Audit Office reports that the Ministry of Defence made "key investment decisions on an over-optimistic basis."

The RAF ordered 232 of the aircraft, later reduced to 160. Even so, the whole project will cost something little shy of £40 billion.

The MoD civil servants appear to fiddle while defence procurement threatens to burn a hole in the nation's pocket.

They have taken the easy option of cutting manpower -not remembering that while it is easy to turn off the recruiting tap, it is very difficult to turn on again.