To answer that question, we need to consider what we would do if it suddenly disappeared. Starting at the top, the shrunken numbers of our armed forces must leave the Chief of the Defence Staff (CDS) with rather less to do apart from arguing with the Defence Secretary about resources. If the PM wants to send a battalion to Estonia, he has to ask the Defence Secretary who has to ask the CDS. Much simpler would be for the CDS not to have to wait for his retirement for his life peerage, but to ennoble him on appointment as CDS and Defence Secretary combined. 

The MoD HQ has six three or four star flag officers and nine civil servants of equivalent status. That is not counting the 18 three and four star flag officers outside the HQ. A similar compaction to the military staff plus the Director General Finance and his department should be feasible. In other words, units immediately relevant to conducting warfare (plus the accountants) should fall under the command of the CDS. The other units should either be disbanded, privatised or transferred to more relevant government departments.  

According to its 2020/21 accounts, the Ministry of Defence (MoD) employed 63,393 civilians, i.e. excluding the 160,232 in the armed forces. In 2016, the MoD employed just over 56,000 civilians with 196,590 in the armed forces. Few will be surprised that the former headcount has increased whilst the latter has decreased. The army is about a Corps in size which should require just one Lieutenant General (three stars). In 2015, and the numbers will not have greatly changed since, the payroll included three Lieutenant Generals in the Royal Marines and 11 Lieutenant Generals in the Army. No shortage of top people to cover the necessary staff roles. 

Apart from procurement (16,902 staff) which is a separate blog, three of the other 12 MoD enabling organisations duplicate services provided by other government departments. Police forces are already too splintered around the country without the MoD having its own. Similarly, the Defence Safety Authority (created 2015) provides the same health, safety and environmental protection regulation that the rest of us enjoy through seven Regulators. Its annual report gives no staff numbers, performance indications or costs. Finally, the Defence Science and Technology Laboratory (Porton Down – 4,378 staff) mostly works for other government departments and should be integrated into the government’s mainstream research under UKRI. The Medical Research Council is part of that, not the Department of Health and Social Care; defence research should follow the same logic. 

The above analysis covers all the MoD published units but leaves roughly half of the 56,000 staff unaccounted for, not to mention the military personnel driving desks. It is said that each MoD job needs a military officer who might know something about it during his or her short secondment and a civilian overseer. Whatever the truth, a great deal of the headcount is unexplained. A streamlined armed forces ministry might at least aim to limit each job to just one person. 

The bottom line is that Her Majesty’s realm would most probably be better defended without the MoD but we need an explanation of the missing headcount to be sure.