The latest trained requirement and strength of each service is provided in the following table.
Trained requirement Trained strength Percentage requirement 1 October 2009 Royal Navy 35,660 34,980 98.1 Army 101,980 100,450 98.5 RAF 40,860 39,460 96.6
The MOD is currently in the process of modifying the criteria against which it collates management information on the medical fitness of service personnel. Whereas previously we have measured the medical “fitness for task” of service personnel, we are now moving to a process of measuring the numbers who are medically “fully deployable”, “limited deployable” and “non-deployable”. This will help us to focus our efforts on maximising the numbers available to deploy on operations.
We have been working on the collection and validation of figures recorded against the new criteria, using data obtained from the Joint Personnel Administration (JPA) system. The aim is to provide reliable, validated data by spring 2010.