'I know first-hand why Labour scrapping military training is a disaster - there's only one realistic solution'

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Defence analyst Lt Col Stuart Crawford says crews which have not fired their guns are arguably no more than moving targets

It has been a matter of record that Britain’s armed forces have been under-funded and under-resourced for some time now, dating back several decades to the collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War.

Now we are told that all non-essential training for larger units is to be put on hold until April next year to save money. Only those units to be deployed will receive the full and appropriate training package.

I understand that my own old unit, the Royal Tank Regiment, has had its live firing training at the Castlemartin tank ranges in Wales cancelled. This is not good news. Training on simulators can only go so far, and it’s only when you hear the bang of the gun going off for real that you truly understand your trade.

Tanks with crews which have not fired their guns are arguably no more than moving targets. Similarly, a rifleman who hasn’t fired his rifle is pretty useless.

Cutting military training manoeuvres, however, to save money is nothing new. When the British Army of the Rhine was stationed in Germany, the autumn season often saw large scale combined arms military exercises take place over German farmland, after the crops had been gathered in.

Inevitably a certain amount of damage was caused to fields and buildings of local farmers as large numbers of armoured vehicles crossed their land and occupied their barns. To compensate them for the disruption, we were followed by Damage Control organisations, “Manoverschaden” in German, who paid out for damage caused.

Often a major exercise would be ended not because the aims had been successfully achieved but because Damage Control had run out of funds!

Another savings measure was to limit the number of “track miles” our tanks could use; when the allocation ran out, the tanks stopped also.

None of this was ideal but a reflection on the realpolitik of defence funding. Now we are seeing it again, but in circumstances where the armed services have already been starved of resources for far too long.

Arguably an army that isn’t allowed to train is no use to man or beast.

As I have said until I’m blue in the face, Britain’s welfare budget is roughly six times that of the defence budget. The balance is clearly wrong; without credible defences there will be no need for a welfare budget in the long term, because we’ll be defeated and under a different regime.

The only realistic solutions I can see to the defence funding conundrum are a diversion of money from the welfare budget into defence and/or an increase in taxation. Both are anathema to a Labour government.