SDSR 2015 and the Army inquiry

Published 15 September 2017.

The Government welcomes the Committee's report and says it will fully fund Joint Force 2025, including a modernised war-fighting division, while responding paragraph by paragraph, often by noting the Committee's points rather than accepting them.

• On air defence, the Government says work to establish the future requirement and identify replacements is "in hand", and will be considered in its next planning round, Annual Budget Cycle 2018, which begins later this year. No delivery dates are given.
• On training costs, it "notes" the Committee's request but says the information sought is held as input costs which "cannot easily be converted" into output costs. It gives figures showing 73 collective exercises conducted and six cancelled from 2011 to 2016.
• On defence engagement and national resilience, it says it is "not possible" to separate the cost of defence engagement from other activity, and that national resilience costs cannot all be identified. Only aspects that can be separately identified and are centrally funded will be included in future MoD Annual Reports and Accounts.
• On Army manpower and recruitment, it says the Army has the manpower it needs for current demands and acknowledges that Recruiting Partnering Project performance has been "unsatisfactory". It states the new ICT system is scheduled to "Go Live" in November 2017.

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