Number of British troops in Afghanistan to be reduced

LONDON Jan. 17 -- The British government on Tuesday announced hundreds of soldiers would be axed from units which are fighting the war in Afghanistan.

A total of 4,200 servicemen and women will lose their jobs, including 2,900 in the army, 1,000 in the Royal Navy, and 300 in the Royal Air Force. The move is seen as a bid to fend off a looming budget crisis caused by a 38 billion pound (about 58.4 billion U.S. dollars) overspend in equipment programs.

"Difficult decisions had to be taken to deal with the vast black hole in the Ministry of Defence budget," Defence Secretary Philip Hammond said.

"The redundancy program will not impact adversely on the current operations in Afghanistan," he added.

The opposition Labor Party supported the need for cuts to balance the overall government budget, but raised security fears.

"The most important baseline, however, is national security, and we worry these cuts are wrong-headed and rushed," Shadow Defense Secretary Jim Murphy said.

"We need to know the full military impact of losing such important capability," he stated.

The British army is already small enough that many of its soldiers have fought in the 10,000-strong force which has been in Afghanistan since 2006 and which is likely to remain in place in those numbers until at least the end of this year.

The prospect for some of these soldiers is that they will have finished a tour of duty in a war zone to return home to Britain and face reduced career prospects, or even possibly redundancy.

The cuts will ultimately reduce the army from its current 100,000 by 18,000 to 82,000 by 2020.

The Royal Navy will be reduced by 5,000 to 31,640 over the same period, and the Royal Air Force will fall from a current 36,340 by about 5,000.

The latest round of redundancies follows cuts of 3,000 personnel in September last year. There are also likely to be more, as yet unplanned cuts in personnel following the recasting of economic targets by the Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne in his autumn economic statement.