Download or read book Readiness and Recuperation of the Armed Forces written by Great Britain. Parliament. House of Commons. Defence Committee and published by . This book was released on 2010 with total page 121 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The UK's Armed Forces are under heavy pressure. They have been involved in operations in Iraq and Afghanistan for many years while maintaining key standing tasks such as the strategic nuclear deterrent and UK air defence. The manpower of the Armed Forces has been stretched: significant parts of the Army and key parts of the other Services are being deployed and away from home more frequently and for longer periods than the Ministry of Defence (MoD) would wish. The ability of the Armed Forces to be ready to perform contingent tasks -- that is, those over and above current operations -- is low. More than half of the different force elements are reporting serious or critical weaknesses. Performance against readiness targets has been declining over several years. In April 2008, 55% of force elements had no critical or serious weaknesses against a target of 73% for peace time contingent tasks. This compares with December 2005 when 81% of these elements had no such weaknesses. In 2008-09, readiness had fallen further with only, on average, 43% of force elements reporting no critical or serious weaknesses.