Jackson says the deployable army is about 75-80,000, though not all of them are fully trained.
This means having a nuclear deterrent, a deployable army division, a blue-water navy with two aircraft carriers, and an air force with fighters and deep-strike jets.Defence ties with America bring big benefits: intelligence is shared and Britain has preferential access to some American technology, not least the Trident missiles that help make Britain's nuclear deterrent cheaper than France's.
A more important development, strongly supported by America, is the formation of a 20,000-strong deployable standing army, known as the NATO Response Force (NRF), with land, air and sea components.
"The blunt message from Colorado is going to be this: We need real, deployable soldiers, not paper armies," Lord Robertson said, arguing that territorial defense forces must be redesigned for other deployments, given the diminished threat to European soil since the end of the cold war.
Skilled military personnel, technology and deployable capability are more important than massed armies and large installations.
Of note, similar to deployable medical teams, rapid military deployments out of area require deployable logistic support units within combat formations, assured access to strategic lift and deployable logistic assets (77).
Almost half of all non-deployable US soldiers have suffered preventable musculoskeletal injuries, according to army officials.
The lighter ground forces that America's army is hoping to field soon should be more easily deployable than today's tanks.
"In 2018, will the armed forces be blamed if 30,000 reservists are not trained and deployable by then?" He has previously accused the government of "trying to get as inexpensive an army as possible... an army on the cheap".
Its armed forces are "the least deployable, mobile and sustainable of NATO's and the EU's leading armies", according to a recent essay by Christian Hacke, a foreign-policy analyst.Ms Merkel is starting her second term in a changed world.
Fox indicated a reduction in the size of the army when he said after his meeting with Gates in Washington: "We would be able to maintain a moderate deployable force for a considerable length of time if required," adding: "Maybe not exactly at the level we have now but at still a respectable and useful level".
