Soulless recruitment puts young people off joining the Armed Forces

Sir – I served 23 years in the Royal Air Force and for the last two was part of a recruitment team (Letters, January 29). The training for this role included an extensive specialist course on recruitment techniques and policies, and a visit to many training establishments that enabled me to offer advice to potential recruits on their chosen trade.

I feel this specialist training, together with my personal experience of Service life and conditions, allowed me to encourage, test and eventually recruit large numbers of young people to what I still consider to be among the finest careers available.

How can the present recruitment process – involving anonymous and faceless computer screens and decisions made by inexperienced and uncaring private-sector office workers – offer the same quality of service to young people interested in a career in the Armed Forces?

How long can the Government continue to ignore the current recruitment crisis? Perhaps until our recruitment offices are based in Moscow or Beijing. Patrick Garside

Bournemouth, Dorset

Sir – Talk of a third world war needs to stop. Russia cannot even conquer a smaller neighbour, Ukraine, let alone Nato. Her military losses in troops, vehicles, aircraft, warships and other military hardware have been devastating. First World War tactics and senior-level corruption that has denied troops the full capabilities of their otherwise (in many cases) excellent military kit all point to Russia as a paper tiger.

However, abysmally weak Western politicians have given Vladimir Putin’s odious regime hope that it might yet win because of Western cowardice and neglect of Ukraine’s needs.

An escalation of the Russia-ukraine war is very likely. Russian aircraft have fired live missiles at RAF reconnaissance jets. Then the RAF got lucky; the missiles failed. The law of averages states that the Russians only have to get “lucky” once for a huge expansion of that war to happen.

Then we will need cool heads, not conscription, to solve the problem. Sqn Ldr Steve Oakley (retd)

Epsom, Surrey

Sir – I read with grave concern that Iran could produce enough weaponsgrade uranium to make 12 nuclear bombs within five months (report, January 28). The widely held belief that the principle of mutually assured destruction will prevent nuclear conflict does not necessarily stand up when dealing with a regime that glorifies death and suicide bombing. Martin Mitchell

Laxfield, Suffolk

Sir – Russia, China and Iran are spending billions on armaments, while the UK is spending billions on net zero.

Keith Morgan

Minting, Lincolnshire