MoD slaps down Navy officer over Twitter posts about cuts
A SENIOR Royal Navy officer was slapped down yesterday for publicly criticising defence cuts.
Rear Admiral Alex Burton, commander of UK maritime forces, complained on Twitter about possible plans to take the Navy’s two specialist landing ships out of service.
The Ministry of Defence is considering axing HMS Albion and HMS Bulwark as part of cost-cutting measures – which would leave the UK unable to attack beaches.
Yesterday Rear Admiral Burton, a former commander of HMS Bulwark, wrote that he ‘couldn’t work’ without the ships when entering a warzone by sea. He also contra- dicted a tweet claiming that the Royal Marines had escaped relatively unscathed in recent cuts.
Breaching military convention, he wrote on Twitter: ‘Actually their numbers have gone down from about 7, 00 in 2011 to 6,500 predicated in 2020, that’s a lot for an elite force.’ He deleted this post within minutes.
Rear Admiral Burton was ‘reminded’ yesterday of what was appropriate for serving personnel to say on the social networking site, sources said.
Defence Secretary Sir Michael Fallon said no decision has been made and that the military’s budget was growing every year.