Deployments in Iraq and Afghanistan are not only damaging morale but also sparking an exodus of experienced officers from the British Army and Royal Air Force (RAF), according to a parliamentary report cited by The Independent on Monday, January 28.
"We are concerned that there are signs that voluntary departure in the armed forces, in particular the Army, is increasing and that in the RAF personnel are not extending for a further engagement to the extent that had happened in the past," concluded the Defense Select Committee.
"The continuing pressure on our Armed Forces personnel is likely to have an impact on retention, and there are some disturbing signs of an increase in early departure in the Army."
Committee chairman James Arbuthnot said: "The army, the navy, the RAF are not able to do what they need to be able to do because people are leaving and that is, of itself, a strong indication of a falling morale."
Ministry of Defense figures show that last year 4.3 per cent of officers and 5.8 per cent of other ranks in the Army left early, according to the Times Online.
The latter figure is nearly 1 per cent higher than normal.
The MPs were also highly critical of the inability to recruit more people from ethnic minorities.
"We continued to be extremely disappointed and concerned to learn that all three services missed their targets for UK ethnic minority recruitment and that the RAF performed particularly poorly."
On October 1 last year 5.9 percent of Service personnel were from ethnic minorities, of which about 60 percent were from the Commonwealth.
The Royal Navy’s intake in 2006 was 2.1 percent of its recruitment total, the Navy’s 3.8 percent and the RAF’s was 1.6 percent.
The report said the figures would have been worse without the ethnic minority recruits from the Commonwealth, outside Britain, amounting to 60 per cent of the total.
The MOD admitted that failure to meet recruitment targets among minorities could be due to "prevalent views on current operations among ethnic minority communities and concerns about ethnic imbalances and racism in the armed forces in general".
Bad Performance
The report also said that military performance was deteriorating after seven years in Afghanistan and nearly five years in Iraq.
"We are deeply concerned that the Armed Forces have been operating at or above the level of concurrent operations they are resourced and structured to deliver for seven of the last eight years, and for every year since 2002."
Britain has over 7,700 troops in Afghanistan and 4,500 in Iraq.
The MPs criticized failure to meet the guidelines set down to allow servicemen and women to have proper breaks between operational duties in Iraq and Afghanistan.
"This is another clear indicator of the pressure on our armed forces from the continuing high level of operations," said the report.
Under Harmony Guidelines no one in the Army should spend more than 415 days away from home in any 30-month period.
But as at March 31, 2007, 13.4 percent of personnel had exceeded the guidelines.
The committee expressed alarm at admission that the Armed Forces are not fully ready for future conflicts.
The Army chief has recently warned that engagement in "enduring" conflicts like Iraq and Afghanistan was laving the Armed Forces unprepared for emergencies at home like possible terrorist attacks.