The consequences of having a small army

The FT’s look at how the British deployment in Basra got to where it is today is well worth reading. As the FT notes, the reason the British force in Iraq was reduced so quickly after the invasion from 45,000 to 26,000 is that the military is simply not big enough to support such a large deployment for any substantial period of time.

How small the army has become is illustrated by the fact that:

“At just under 100,000 men and women, Britain’s regular army is now smaller than at any time since the early 1840s. It would fit into Manchester’s two Premier League football stadiums, while the 24,000 spare seats would seat three-quarters of the country’s heavily worked reserve force, the Territorial Army, itself smaller than at any time since it was formed in 1908.”