Author Description

This annual statistical compendium from the Ministry of Defence contains a wide range of data relating to the armed forces, defence expenditure, service and civilian personnel and defence activities. Findings for the period 2004-05 include: i) defence spending was estimated to be the Governments third highest expenditure, with a provisional outturn against the Departmental Expenditure Limits of £38.4 billion, and a total value of MoD fixed assets of £87.3 billion as of March 2004; ii) the total number of MoD personnel fell by over 35 per cent between 1990 to 2005, with service personnel down by 34 per cent; iii) the proportion of serving personnel from the ethnic minorities rose from 1.3 per cent to 5.3 per cent between 2000 and 2005; iv) in 2003-04, MoD net expenditure on R&D activity totalled £2.7 billion; and v) the MoD spent around £1.1 billion on conflict prevention activities worldwide during the year 2004-05.