Lord Coe, the chairman of the London 2012 Olympic organising committee (Locog), said today that he "could not rule out" asking for the current deployment of 17,000 to be increased. According to the Daily Telegraph, the MoD (unsurprisingly) has contingency plans for additional deployment. Senior military officers told the newspaper this week that they expect "up to 20,000" service personnel to be involved in the Olympic operation.

(BBC, 1 March 2010) The Conservative party has led a debate on the government's record on defence, accusing the prime minister of showing an "instinctive lack of interest" in the armed forces.

"A theorem: In matters of military contingency, the expected, precisely because it is expected, is not to be expected. Rationale: What we expect, we plan and provide for; what we plan and provide for, we thereby deter; what we deter does not happen. What does happen is what we did not deter, because we did not plan and provide for it, because we did not expect it."

BAFF's primary interest at this stage is in ensuring the maximum participation in the referendum by those armed forces personnel and their partners who are registered or genuinely entitled to register to vote in Scotland, in order to make their own voting choice when the time comes.

"Maximum participation" raises various issues including publicity, information, ease of registration and, of course, the actual voting process, especially for those entitled service personnel who are away from Scotland at the time of the referndum, and their wives, husbands or civil partners. The franchise for the referendum must not be less than the franchise for Scottish parliamentary and local government elections.

BAFF understands that around 760 service personnel in Afghanistan used the special Op Herrick service voter registration form to register to vote. Of these, some 500 applied for a proxy vote and some 260 applied for a postal vote.

G4S, the private security firm which has an estimated £284 million contract for the provision of guards for the Olympic Games [2012], says in a statement tonight that it is "grateful for the additional military support involving at least 3,500 armed forces personnel". It adds that "We do not underestimate the impact on the military personnel and their families and express our appreciation to them."

A story at MailOnline says that "A highly decorated former head of the SAS is quitting the Army following the Government’s decision to cut education allowances for serving soldiers."

Applying for redundancy is a difficult decision in any profession. Our advice is to do your homework, ask questions, consider all your options, and make sure that you have properly discussed it with your partner before submitting an application.

Amid the speculation and debate about the the findings of the Future Reserves 2020 Study (FR20), this is a message from the Vice Chief of the Defence Staff, General Sir Nick Houghton.

The Daily Mirror claims that the war on terror is taking its toll on the mental state of British troops with a "dramatic rise in the number seeking psychiatric help":