Recruitment targets aren't hit

The latest statistics by the Ministry of Defence reveals that in spite of a range of recruitment campaigns, the Royal Navy was still 320 people short of the 4,650 target of general service engineers.

And the navy’s fleet of submarines is shy of 190 engineers for its 2,270 target. In contrast, the Senior Service has hit its target total air engineers.

The figures come after The News revealed the navy was struggling to maintain its £6bn fleet of state-of-the-art destroyers.

Elsewhere, the navy’s general service warfare branch is 130 sailors shy of its 3,980 goal, with both the submarine and air wings recording a deficit of 60.

The logistics and medical departments are also shy of their targets, with a deficit of 190 and 90, respectively.

An MoD spokesman said the Royal Navy was ‘meeting all’ of its commitments ‘at home and abroad’ and that the UK had ‘enough people to do this’.