“Then there is the case of Norfolk, Virginia, where a British general recently took command of Nato’s Atlantic headquarters in September. To date, Britain has filled 44 of its 71 posts there. The ministry’s tepid response to this is that its fill rate across Nato is among the highest in the alliance. I wondered whether there has ever been a more meaningless metric. Back in the real world, if we cannot staff the commands we ask for, at what point do we stop being given them?” “So how do we unpick this long-standing mess? First, consequences. Nobody in Main Building or the front-line commands has ever lost a job for presiding over this ritual, and the single services are not innocent: each protects its own headquarters and sacrifices its own capability. A few sackings would concentrate minds, “pour encourager les autres”, as Voltaire had it, even if the execution he alluded to might be a little extreme.” “A friend of mine summed it up succinctly: “The pushers of this ‘jam tomorrow if we can just take a bit of famine today’ theology are now amongst the highest ranks. A theology which is clung to despite several iterations of proven failure.” Grim, but unarguable.” “So long as it remains in the Treasury’s interest to run defence year by year and the decision makers that could force this to improve either fear anything that challenges the status quo…[or defence itself], then nothing will change.” “Next autumn there will be another round of cancelled exercises and another speech about a war footing. This cycle of cuts and waffle is about the only thing in British defence right now that is reliable.”