According to a recent story in the Telegraph, the Ministry of Defence is still supposed to be rewriting its transgender policy, more than a year after the Supreme Court judgment on the meaning of "woman" in the Equality Act, leaving commanding officers and service personnel uncertain about the applicable rules. 

Women’s organisations and campaigners quoted by the paper argue that female personnel are being “failed” because there is no clear direction on issues such as accommodation, changing facilities and single-sex spaces. 

The article suggests that the Armed Forces have continued operating under older guidance while awaiting a revised policy. 

Transgender policy is hardly a priority matter compared to other crises facing the Department. The fact remains that we do not exclude transgender people from serving in the armed forces.

Irrespective of one’s views on transgender policy, leaving personnel and commanding officers in uncertainty for such a long period is difficult to defend. The Armed Forces depend on clear administrative instructions.

Continued uncertainty affects everyone involved: women concerned about single-sex facilities, transgender personnel trying to understand their status, and commanders who may have to make difficult decisions without definitive guidance.

BAFF has generally tried to avoid taking ideological positions while arguing that all personnel deserve clear, workable rules and fair treatment.

We would be interested to know whether this delay is being reflected in service complaints or administrative cases. If units are making decisions based on interim interpretations rather than published

Good to see Armed Forces Day being celebrated once again in many places across England, Wales, Northern Ireland and Scotland, which had "more than a dozen events" from Edinburgh and Glasgow to Thurso and Dumfries.

The fact that Glasgow held (and were always going to hold) an official AFD event is perhaps worth noting in view of recent controversies.

Indeed, Glasgow registered their event on the official AFD website, thus they are one of the places mentioned in national as well as regional and local media.

As it happens, there were more official events in Scotland than were ever registered on the national site. That is of course entirely a matter for the organisers of each event, often a local branch of the Royal British Legion or Royal British Legion Scotland (Legion Scotland),j with strong support from the local authority along with regular and reserve armed forces, youth organisations, charities and others and of course the members of the public who turned out to enjoy an event honouring our country's armed forces personnel.

Those such as Inverness in Highland, who chose not to be included on the national UK listing, no doubt felt that local and regional publicity would be sufficient to inform their local public.

Organisers of a locally-funded AFD event are in no way obliged to register it in order to have it included in the online 'Find Your Event - Armed Forces Day'

A report just released by the National Audit Office says that the Ministry of Defence lost the taxpayer around £14.5 billion over the life of the Annington Homes deal, compared to where we would be if the 1996 deal had never happened.

But there is also praise for the action finally taken by MoD to repurchase more than 36,000 service family homes in England and Wales for £6 billion.

The deal involved the transfer to the private sector of the bulk of the MOD's service family accommodation (SFA) in England. It was widely criiticised, increasingly so as the maintenance standard of SFA under a separate contract was seen as deteriorating, and when surplus accommodation was being released for the market, the MOD had to pay to refurbish the properties before being sold for private sector profit.

The NAO had reported that the MoD’s main aims had been "to secure funds for upgrade work; improve management of the estate; and secure value for money through a competitive sale." [Comment: There were 19 bidders.] They had found that "the sale and leaseback appeared to satisfy the MoD’s immediate objectives. However, the sale price was lower than the value of retaining the estate, and the MoD retained important responsibilities for managing it."

So although there were rational objectives for the deal at the time, there were criticisms at the time which only increased in the new century.

Although as ever there were financial pressures

Following the resignations of John Healey and Al Carns, Hamish de Bretton-Gordon writes in the Telegraph that Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton, who as Chief of the Defence Staff is the professional head of the armed forces, should now "show that he represents British servicemen and women by falling on his sword as well", because –

Given the colossal insult that has just been offered to all the armed services – nobody in defence was apparently allowed to see the funding figures until this week – I believe that the Chief of the Defence Staff, the head of the Armed Forces, should also do the honourable thing.

Colonel de Bretton-Gordon is an all-round good guy who is always worth reading and listening to. His call for CDS to resign is, after all, only a newspaper column about which we could go on for ever agreeing or disagreeing.

The last very senior officer to resign on a point of principle is thought to be General Sir Richard O'Connor, who resigned as Adjutant-General in 1947 over the cancelled return home and demobilisation of troops in the Far East. (Monty had a different version of events, but the cancelled demob was a reasonable point to resign over.)

As far as I know, Air Chief Marshal Sir Richard Knighton is not a member of British Armed Forces Federation (BAFF). BAFF is all-ranks, tri-service but I believe we have yet to recruit any RAF officer above

The resignation of John Healey MP as Defence Secretary marks the end of a period in which, whatever one's political views, Defence had at its head someone who had prepared thoroughly for it in Opposition and, when the time came, did not disappoint.

I haven't met Mr Healey personally, but I've heard him speak a couple of times at RUSI events, and came away impressed by both his grasp of the issues and the evident work he had put into understanding the challenges facing Defence and Armed Forces personnel. In a field where easy slogans can sometimes substitute for detailed knowledge, he struck me as someone who had done his homework.

BAFF has not always agreed with every policy of successive governments, nor would anyone expect us to. Our role is to represent and promote the interests of our members – Service personnel and veterans – irrespective of party politics. However, it is only fair to acknowledge those ministers who engage seriously with Defence and who make the effort to listen.

Mr Healey inherited a department which inevitably faced significant personnel, recruitment and retention challenges, whichever party was in power. Although much of today's reporting understandably concentrates on the crucial defence investment aspect, RUSI's Ed Arnold has highlighted Mr Healey's efforts on defence reform:

'For the MoD, it is a very rare case of a senior minister taking a principled stand against the hollowing out of the UK armed

AFPRB UPDATE: The full AFPRB report and recommendations for financial year 2026-27, accepted by the Government and published on 9 June 2026, is now available at this link: Armed Forces’ Pay Review Body Fifty-Fifth Report 2026.

We previously reported that:

The armed forces are set to receive an above-inflation pay award, with an announcement expected in the coming days.

The award, for the current financial year 2026-27, will be backdated to 1st April.

Traditionally recommendations by the Armed Forces Pay Review Body (AFPRB) would be accepted by the Government in time to be implemented on 1st April. This gradually slipped over the years but this time round there was an aspiration for a more timely award. Delay in issuing the award is not ideal, but has at times been claimed to allow a more generous award when it came.

This year's pay recommendations will cover the whole of the Armed Forces including senior officers of two-star rank and above, who had historically had their pay recommended by the Senior Salaries Review Body (SSRB).

Today, 22nd May 2026, is the fifteenth anniversary of the official end of Operation Telic, the formal name for UK operations in Iraq that began with the 2003 invasion and subsequent removal of the dictator.

UK combat forces, primarily based in the southern city of Basra, had withdrawn from Iraq in July 2009, but, since then, at the request of the Iraqi Government, the Royal Navy had continued to train the Iraqi Navy to defend its territorial waters and offshore oil infrastructure. That mission ended in 2011 but UK defence engagement with Iraq continues to this day.

We remember the 179 British personnel who lost their lives. We honour all who served on Operation Telic and their families. And we think of those who returned injured in body or mind, in some cases catastrophically so.

Some veterans have very mixed memories combining justified pride with pain and anger.

Every BAFF member is either a serving or a former member of the UK Armed Forces.

When the British Armed Forces Federation (BAFF) was formed in 2006, several of the its founding members were veterans of the early stages of Op Telic. Some were Regulars and some were members of the Territorial Army, the predecessor of today's Army reserve.

As time went on, some BAFF members returned to Iraq on further Op Telic rotations. Others returned as civilian contractors or in some other capacity.

Fifteen years later, consequences of the war continue, not

This year's Armed Forces Day national event will be hosted by Rushmoor Borough Council at Aldershot and Farnborough on Saturday, 27th June 2026, with other events taking place across the UK on or around the same date.

When Armed Forces Day was started by the then Labour government one view was that armed forces personnel were hardly honoured by giving them extra work at the weekend.

In practice, events have tended to involve a wide community effort, with considerable local authority input, and - without downplaying the preparation and time involved - forces personnel themselves being as much as possible the 'stars' rather than the 'general dogsbodies'.

We certainly wouldn't argue with the need to improve and reinforce engagement between the armed forces and the community.

Armed Forces Day in the UK started 20 years ago as 'Veterans' Day'. It was rebranded as Armed Forces Day in 2009 to better recognise all branches of the military, including serving regular and reserve personnel, veterans, and cadets. The main national event is held annually on the last Saturday in June; last year's was hosted by Ards and North Down Borough Council at Newtownards Airfield.

Armed Forces Day isn't the same one-size-fits-all event across the United Kingdom. The lead organiser can be the Council, the Legion, or a community organisation. For Armed Forces Day 2026 events in your area, visit this link:

• Armed Forces Day - Find Events

Events will continue to

An MOD written parliamentary answer to James Cartlidge MP (Cons, Shadow Secretary of State for Defence) reveals that in just under 20 months, nearly sixty thousand applications to join the armed forces were rejected on medical grounds.

The answer also revealed striking disparities amongst the figures for the respective services -

Rejections per service

• Army: 45,680 rejected on medical grounds
• RAF:   12,310
• Navy:    1,020

Although not specifically stated, these figures are for regular forces. Applying them to the approximate current size of each regular force reveals a huge variation in the proportion per service of applicants rejected on medical grounds -

Rejections compared with approx service size

• Army ∼ 62% rejections as %age of current force
• RAF   ∼ 41% rejections as %age of current force
• RN/RM ∼3% rejections as %age of current force

Another way to view these figures is that the Army rejected on medical grounds around 6 applicants for every 10 serving soldiers; the RAF rejected around 4 applicants per 10 serving aviators, and the RN/RM rejected less than one applicant per 10 serving sailors or marines.

Comparing the medical rejection figures with annual targets, however, shows the Army and the RAF rejecting about the same percentage on medical grounds, with the RN/RM rjecting far fewer -

Medical rejections compared with target recruitment intake

• Army - around 2.7 rejections per target recruit
• RAF - around 2.6 rejections per target