Today's shock research finding
"Mr. Laws: To ask the Secretary of State for Defence what the (a) full strength and (b) actual number of deployable troops is of each infantry battalion; and if he will make a statement.
Mr. Bob Ainsworth: The figures requested are shown in the following table:
Before letting loose my chart, have a guess which regiment is the most battle-ready, numbers-wise.
(Click to see something other than a blur)
Yup, the Gurkhas. 96.8% of 2 Gurkha is deployable as is 96.5% of 1 Gurkha. Next up are the Coldstream Guards at 95.9%. At the other end of the scale at 81.6% are 2 Royal Regiment of Fusiliers, although a little sniffing around shows that its assigned role is 'light duties / public roles', which may well mean they are doing recruitment or somesuch. 2 Scottish Regiment is 82.1% deployable, but also seems to be on light duties. 2 Royal Welsh, however, are down as armoured infantry, and only 83.4% of them are ready to jump in the nearest Hercules, should it be necessary. Before writing anything foolish about the relative health of the Welsh and the Nepalese, any insight from readers with military backgrounds would be welcome.
Labels: arms and the man, fun with statistics, Health and inefficiency
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on Tuesday, February 24, 2009 at 8:51 am.
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I've lived and worked with various Gurkha regiments. They are tough, resilient and highly professional. A true delight for a soldier, I greatly admire them.
I suspect that one of the reasons for the discrepancies is that Gurkhas tend to travel light and fast with the minimum of mechanical encumbrance. Other regiments which are mechanised will have their deployability affected by equipment failures - and there are far too many of those.
There are more Nepalese trying to join the Gurkhas, than there are places for them, hence the lack of gapped posts.
Whereas the rest of the infantry has been struggling to maintain numbers for years. Rumour was that the brass always tried to keep the Guards regiments fully manned.
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