Options for Change was a restructuring of the British Armed Forces in 1990, aimed at cutting defence spending following the end of the Cold War.
UK military strategy had until this point been almost entirely focused on defending the UK against the Soviet military; whether the Royal Marines in Scandinavia, the Royal Air Force in West Germany or over the North Sea, the Royal Navy in the Norwegian Sea and North Atlantic, or the British Army in Germany. With the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Pact these scenarios were no longer relevant. While criticised both before and after, it was an exercise mirrored by governments of almost every major western military power, the so-called "peace dividend".
Among the changes implemented was the cutting total manpower by approximately 18% to around 255,000 (120,000 British Army; 60,000 Royal Navy; 75,000 Royal Air Force). Another major casualty of Options for Change was the UK's combined nuclear civil defence organisations — the United Kingdom Warning and Monitoring Organisation and its field force the Royal Observer Corps (a spare time volunteer branch of the RAF), both of which were wound down and disbanded between September 1991 and December 1995.
Read more about Options For Change: British Army, Royal Air Force, Royal Navy, On Television
Famous quotes containing the word change:
“[T]here is no Part of the World where Servants have those Privileges and Advantages as in England: They have no where else such plentiful Diet, large Wages, or indulgent Liberty: There is no place wherein they labour less, and yet where they are so little respectful, more wasteful, more negligent, or where they so frequently change their Masters.”
—Richard Steele (1672–1729)