| Summary
Readiness is the term used to describe the way in which the Ministry of Defence (the Department) holds its military forces at varying levels of preparedness to respond to emerging operations. The Department holds forces at "graduated" levels of peacetime readiness to deploy, ranging from a few hours to several months.
Determining the required readiness of military forces, and then assessing whether or not this is being achieved, is a complex matter. In order to plan for potential future military operations, the Department has developed a set of Defence Planning Assumptions. These Assumptions analyse a number of potential military operations in order to permit the Department to estimate the necessary size and shape of the United Kingdom's Armed Forces.
The Department has developed a sophisticated system for defining, measuring, and reporting the readiness of the Armed Forces. It assesses the readiness of individual units (for example, an armoured brigade, a ship or squadron of aircraft) which are then aggregated to give an assessment of the readiness of larger units or even the Armed Forces as a whole.
On the basis of a Report from the Comptroller and Auditor General,[1][1] the Committee took evidence from the Department on two main issues: the readiness reporting system and operational commitments; and logistics risks to readiness.
We found that almost a third of forces had Serious or Critical weaknesses to their required peacetime readiness levels - their readiness to deploy on any future operations - against a backdrop of a continued high level of commitment to current operations. "Serious" weaknesses are defined as creating a medium risk that forces would not be available for operations within agreed timescales. "Critical" weaknesses, on the other hand, attract a high risk that forces would be unavailable for operations within the required timescale.
The Armed Forces are still recovering from large scale operations in Iraq, and have been operating above the most demanding combination of scenarios envisaged by Defence Planning Assumptions during five of the past six years. Ordinarily, the Department would expect to achieve full readiness within three years of a large scale operation but, given the level of operational commitment, recuperation will take longer.
Under its Public Service Agreement, the Department is aiming to achieve 73% of forces with no Serious or Critical weaknesses to peacetime readiness by March 2008, but has not set a timetable for achieving full peacetime readiness. The Department's redirection of resources from support for the Royal Navy in order to focus on the readiness of the Army and parts of the Royal Air Force, and the rise in equipment cannibalisation, provide an indication of the increased strains on the materiel of the Armed Forces.
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