LONDON, December 24. /TASS/. Up to 20% of British servicemen are unfit of partially fit to fight due to health problems, The Times said, citing Veterans' Minister Alistair Carns.
According to the newspaper, "more than 10,000 serving sailors, soldiers and aviators cannot go to war because they have been declared medically unfit" and "nearly 15,000 troops can only be deployed if the mission meets certain criteria.
Only 55,000 troops out of the army’s entire personnel of over 71,300 (77%) are considered fully deployable.
Carns said earlier this month that the entire British regular army "would be expended - as part of a broader multinational coalition - in six months to a year" if it is involved in a large-scale armed conflict "on the current casualty rates."
"There are two issues here: the size of our armed forces, especially the army, which are numerically too small due to the underfunding of defense since the end of the Cold War, [there have been] too many peace dividends taken by successive governments; and secondly the limited deployability of serving military personnel," The Times quoted Lord Richard Dannatt, the former chief of the general staff.
Meanwhile, an MoD spokeswoman told the newspaper that up to 90% of British servicemen "are deployable at any point, with most of the remaining members of our armed forces employed in wider military roles."