news & articles

This article looks at the challenges posed by new military recruitment strategies including the “army showroom” concept and the “Start Thinking Soldier” internet and TV advertising campaign – both “initiatives which utilise the language and tools of computer games and simulation, which young people immediately relate to, and desire.”

A decade after Deepcut, MoD reports reveal failure to tackle problem affecting hundreds of trainees.

Controversial plans to radically expand military cadet corps in English state secondary schools are being pushed forward by Ed Balls, the Children’s Secretary, apparently backed by No 10. The plans were the idea of Quentin Davies, a Labour MP who defected from the Tories last year, and come on the back of a government-commissioned review of “civil and military relations”.

“Stricken by Iraq and low morale, the British army is on a desperate recruitment drive. Its new targets? Poorly educated teenagers and young schoolchildren.” This article looks at new recruitment techniques such as the Camoflage scheme, which includes a magazine and website designed for those as young as 13, MoD school presentation teams and various forms of ‘outreach’. “Our new model is about raising awareness, and that takes a ten-year span. It starts with a seven-year-old boy seeing a parachutist at an air show and thinking, 'That looks great.' From then the army is trying to build interest by drip, drip, drip."