Defence Secretary Ben Wallace defended plans to cut the number of troops as he announced an updated plan for the military on Tuesday.
The Defence White Paper (pdf) confirmed that the Ministry of Defence (MoD) will press ahead with a previously announced plan to reduce the size of the regular army to around 73,000 troops and grow the strength of the Army Reserve to 30,100.
As of April 1 this year, there was 79,006 full-time trained personnel in the army, compared to 82,216 in April 2015 and 98,600 in April 2012.
Defence Committee Chair Tobia Ellwood said in a statement that it’s extremely concerning to many” that the UK will have “the smallest Army since the seventeen hundreds.”…