New Delhi: Even as Europe goes through a major churn by ramping up defence investment to beef up security in the region in response to the Russia-Ukraine war, the British Army is facing a sharp manpower decline that has sent the government scrambling for solutions.
Such is the manpower crisis that serving personnel are forced to stay on the field far longer than ideal rotation norms allow.
UK parliamentary data published last year paints a stark picture: the Royal Navy met only 60 percent of its recruitment target, the British Army 63 percent, and the Royal Air Force (RAF) roughly 70 percent.
In a bid to reverse the slide, the British military is trying everything it can to attract young recruits.
One of the more unusual measures has been the army’s appearance in mid-game Premier League (EPL) advertisements—sandwiched between sponsors like Uber Eats, Guinness and Coca-Cola.
A pre-season press release quoting Major General Joe Fossey, director of army recruiting, states: “Many of our core values such as discipline, loyalty, courage and respect are shown every week in the Premier League. The sponsorship offers a powerful platform to highlight the exciting opportunities that we offer, while celebrating the spirit of belonging that football, its supporters and the army all share.”
The British Army as one of the four new “whistle to whistle” sponsors of the EPL would compare with the Indian forces, hypothetically, sponsoring the IPL (Indian Premier League). This expensive exercise underscores the sensitive situation British forces have found themselves in.
Also Read: Pakistani jawans are haunted by the imaginings of the British Indian Army
Telling numbers
According to The Telegraph, British Army personnel have gone down below 73,000 for the first time since the Napoleonic era. In 2010, the regular army was nearly 110,000-strong. Now, it is struggling to meet its target of 73,000 soldiers.
Interestingly, recruitment and retention numbers are not in sync, resulting in a net decrease in armed personnel in the last few years.
Recruitment activity from 2010 onwards, in part by private contractors previously and now fully, shows a concerning trend of falling short of the set targets.
Parliamentary data published in November 2024 laid bare the shortfall in recruitment between 2019 and 2024. The Royal Navy achieved around 60 percent of its target, the army about 63 percent, and the RAF roughly 70 percent.
Defence Secretary John Healey acknowledged the scale of the problem during a session with the Defence Committee last year.
“Recruitment targets were set and missed every year; in the last year, service morale fell to record lows,” Healey said. “Over the last year, our forces were losing 300 more full-time personnel than were joining, every month.”
According to the UK government’s Quarterly Service Personnel Statistics, released on 29 May, 2025, the total strength of forces was 181,890 as of 1 April this year. There was an overall decrease of 1,340 personnel (1%) compared to the same point last year. Even though the recruitment numbers surged slightly and fewer personnel left-year-on-year basis, the forces have shrunk.
This October, Defence Minister Luke Pollard said the “resource challenges” were impacting parts of the army’s modernisation effort.
Analysts attribute this to attrition, by far, outstripping recruitment. A report by ForcesWatch highlighted a decrease in average length of service to less than 10 years.
Recruitment troubles
This year, the UK Ministry of Defence’s Armed Forces Recruitment Service contract was awarded to Serco, replacing Capita, in a deal worth 1.5 billion pounds over 10 years.
Former recruitment contractor Capita has been in the news over the years for all the wrong reasons, gaining the nickname “Crapita” for its lengthy and delayed recruitment process.
Before Capita (pre-2012), an applicant could go to a recruitment office, speak to a recruitment officer, and if on-board, could be in basic training inside a month, according to reports. But since it got the contract, recruitment seems to have become a slow and convoluted process, involving call centres and barely any contact with serving members, averaging, according to ministry numbers, 249 days to get to basic training.
Healey admitted that the ministry has struggled to streamline the recruitment process, with many applicants abandoning their applications due to delays. He revealed that over the past decade, more than a million young people applied to join the armed forces, but over three-quarters gave up before reaching the point of acceptance or rejection.
With Serco, the defence ministry has assured sweeping changes to streamline and simplify the process. But applicants, enthusiasts and analysts remain wary of putting too much faith in their words.
Also Read: No, Nehru didn’t hoist India’s first tricolour at Red Fort. And British flag wasn’t lowered
The spillover
On 17 March, a Royal Navy Vanguard-class submarine haggardly crept into harbour after almost seven months at sea, setting a record of 204 days on patrol at sea. The usual applause followed, commending the sailors on the record.
But the barnacled surface of the submarine told a different story. Last year, HMS Vengeance set the dreaded record, by remaining continuously submerged for 201 days to maintain a nuclear Continuous At Sea Deterrence (CASD), known as Operation Relentless. This is to keep at bay the Russian Yasen-class “hunter killer” submarines which sporadically roam the high seas off the coast of Scotland.
These long duration underwater patrols are unfortunately becoming a norm, due to sustained budgetary cuts, delayed inductions of Dreadnought class submarines and low morale among sailors.
It’s no coincidence that these records are a product of one single navy. Commissioned in the 90s, the Vanguards are dated and as a result, getting harder to keep seaworthy. Of the four Vanguards, for the last 10 years, one always remains in the dock for a major refit, putting major strain on the remaining three boats and its occupants.
Regarding the military, amid the recruitment crisis, a new Gurkha artillery unit has been created. King’s Gurkha Artillery (KGA). It currently has next to none legacy AS-90 self-propelled howitzers. Of the original 179, the majority have been phased out gradually and the rest, around 68, went to Ukraine, according to reports.
The meagre 14 Swedish-made Archer 08’s, despite their longer range and higher fire-rate, were an interim procurement to offset the loss. The regiments await the delivery of the RCH-155 gun, which, as of May this year, was still stuck in the “assessment phase”. It is expected to join service by 2029 and reach full operating capability (FOC) by 2033, three years short of its anticipated target, The Spectator reported.
Of the army’s 200 or so Challenger tanks that date largely to the 1980s and 1990s, 148 have reportedly been earmarked for further updates under the Challenger 3 programme with the rest are gradually getting phased out.
The initial operational clearance is expected to be granted by November 2027 and full capability by the end of 2030. This leaves the armoured regiments under-equipped and, upon induction of Challenger 3 tanks, under strengthened, a report in National Security Journal stated.
Reserve bases housing the British Expeditionary Force are also bearing the brunt with less than 50 active bases.
This November, the Royal Navy’s carrier strike capability was reported as having achieved FOC which means that the navy can actively field at least one carrier in the open seas, with 24 fully operational F-35s onboard.
The F-35s, though, face slight concerns which came to light when a UK parliamentary report, published in late October this year, stated that a “severe shortage of… engineers, cyber specialists, pilots and qualified flying instructors” is reducing the number of available aircraft.
This comes after concerns aired by Air Chief Marshal Richard Knighton, highlighting the lack of long-range stand-off missiles on the jet. Tests are still underway to integrate Meteor and Spear 3 missiles but are way behind schedule.
Concerns
There are concerns within the military about what many soldiers see as injustice.
The Times last month carried an open letter from nine former four-star generals addressed to UK Prime Minister Keir Starmer, warning that “lawfare” and the erosion of soldiers’ trust in the legal system was a direct national security threat.
This stems from ongoing issues around legal persecution based on wars from yesteryears. Inquiries set up to investigate war crimes and abuses have dragged servicemen through courts for years, occasionally acting on circumstantial evidence.
In fact, Britain is one of the few countries which allows its judiciary to act on the armed forces.
This has had dire implications, especially on the famed members of the SAS (Special Air Service), who tend to operate in the “grey zone”–often ordered to and sometimes, in the heat of the moment, forced to do legally questionable stuff. The “tip of the spear” operates with an implicit faith that the organisation which has put them there will have their backs.
Tejas Bhatotia is an alum of ThePrint School of Journalism, currently interning with ThePrint.
(Edited by Nida Fatima Siddiqui)