According to a series of defence planning assumptions, the UK will in future be able to carry out a one-off intervention, such as an invasion of another country, with no more than 30,000 troops. This is about two-thirds the size of the force of 45,000 British troops which went into Iraq in 2003.
The assumptions also state that Britain will be able to deploy no more than 6,500 troops with maritime and air support in a long-term stabilisation force. This is well below the figure of 10,000 troops which are currently deployed on long-term stabilisation in Afghanistan, mainly in Helmand province.
As part of the cuts the flagship of the Royal Navy, the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal and its fleet of Harriers will be immediately scrapped. That will leave the UK without an aircraft carrier capable of carrying jets for 10 years.
Cameron said massive budget deficits made completely reshaping the British military a necessity.
"From a Ministry of Defence that is too big, too inefficient and too overspent to a department that is smaller, smarter, and more responsible in its spending," he said.
"From a strategy over-reliant on military intervention to a higher priority for conflict prevention. From concentrating on conventional threats to a new focus on unconventional threats. And from armed forces that are overstretched, under-equipped and deployed too often without appropriate planning to the most professional and most flexible modern forces in the world, fully equipped for the challenges of the future."
Also to be cut, 7,000 Army personnel, 5,000 Navy personnel, another 5,000 from the RAF, and 40% of the country's tank force.
Some gay activist groups were planning to send people to enlist at recruiting stations to test the Pentagon's Tuesday announcement.
A federal judge in California who overturned the 17-year policy last week rejected the government's latest effort on Tuesday to halt her order telling the military to stop enforcing the law. Government lawyers will likely appeal.
The Defense Department has said it would comply with U.S. District Judge Virginia Phillips' order and had frozen any discharge cases. But at least one case was reported of a man being turned away from an Army recruiting office in Austin, Texas.
Pentagon spokeswoman Cynthia Smith said recruiters had been given top-level guidance to accept applicants who say they are gay.
Recruiters also have been told to inform potential recruits that the moratorium on enforcement of the policy could be reversed at any time, if the ruling is appealed or the court grants a stay, she said.
While activists were going to enlist, gay rights groups were continuing to tell service members to avoid revealing that they are gay, fearing they could find themselves in trouble should the law be reinstated.
"What people aren't really getting is that the discretion and caution that gay troops are showing now is exactly the same standard of conduct that they will adhere to when the ban is lifted permanently," said Aaron Belkin, executive director of the Palm Center, a think tank on gays and the military at the University of California Santa Barbara.
The uncertain status of the law has caused much confusion within an institution that has historically discriminated against gays. Before the 1993 law, the military banned gays entirely and declared them incompatible with military service.
Twenty-nine nations, including Israel, Canada, Germany and Sweden, allow openly gay troops, according to the Log Cabin Republicans, a gay-rights group and plaintiff in the lawsuit before Phillips.
The Pentagon guidance to recruiters comes after Dan Woods, the group's attorney, sent a letter last week warning the Justice Department that Army recruiters who turned away Omar Lopez in Texas may have caused the government to violate Phillips' injunction.
Woods wrote that the military could be subject to a citation for contempt.
Douglas Smith, spokesman for U.S. Army Recruiting Command based at Fort Knox, Ky., said even before the ruling recruiters did not ask applicants about their sexual orientation. The difference now is that recruiters will process those who say they are gay.
"If they were to self-admit that they are gay and want to enlist, we will process them for enlistment, but will tell them that the legal situation could change," Smith said.
He said the enlistment process takes time and recruiters have been told to inform those who are openly gay that they could be declared ineligible if the law is upheld on appeal.
"U.S. Army Recruiting Command is going to follow the law, whatever the law is," he said.
The message, however, had not reached some recruiting stations.
At one for all branches in Pensacola, Marine Sgt. Timothy Chandler said he had been given no direction. "As far as we are concerned everything is the same, the policy hasn't changed," he said, as others in office nodded.
Chandler said no one had come to the small office questioning the policy or asking about being openly gay and serving.
Recruiters at the Navy office next door referred all media questions to the Pentagon. Air Force recruiters said they were not authorized to talk to the media. Army recruiters referred questions to another office in Mobile, Ala.
Phillips said at a hearing Monday that she was learning toward denying the Obama administration's request to delay her order. That would send the case to the 9th Circuit Court of Appeals in San Francisco.
After Phillips' ruling last week, Lopez — discharged from the Navy in 2006 after admitting his gay status to his military doctor — walked into an Army recruiting office in Austin and asked if he could re-enlist.
He said he was up front, even showing the recruiters his Navy discharge papers. But they told him he couldn't re-enlist because they had not gotten word from the Pentagon to allow openly gay recruits.
Smith was unable to confirm the account. She said guidance on gay applicants had been issued to recruiting commands on Oct. 15.
On Tuesday, upon hearing of the changes to recruiting, Lopez said, "Oh my God! I've been waiting for this for four years."
Lopez said he'll try again Friday and will go to a Navy recruiting office in Austin to see if he can enroll in ROTC as an officer. He is currently studying hospitality services at Austin Community College.
"I'm hoping they'll let me in because I was able to switch over from an enlistment to an officer. I'm really hoping they can accept me," he said.
bill oreilly fox news hamid karzai barak obama hillary clinton
bill oreilly fox news hamid karzai barak obama hillary clinton
After numbing her foot with Novocain, Theodore turns on an expensive German-made machine that beams tightly focused sound energy at Cassidy Driscoll's heel, near the point where her painful plantar fascia attaches to the heel bone. Suddenly the room is filled with the rhythmic click-click-click of a metronome.
It's a kind of paradox: Theodore is damaging her foot in order to heal it.
"The shocks are like a little baseball bat hitting the tissue," Theodore says. "It's producing a little bit of a repair process — a little microbleeding."
The healing process takes place over several months after the shock-wave therapy, which Theodore does in a single treatment. [Other centers use lower-energy shock waves over several treatments.]
Theodore has been doing the shock-wave therapy for plantar fasciitis for about eight years, after longer experiences in Europe. It's the same technology used since the 1980s to blast kidney stones, an application called lithotripsy, but for foot problems doctors use less intense shock waves.
Shock-wave therapy for plantar fasciitis is beginning to catch on around the U.S., partly since this stubborn type of foot pain is so common — and so difficult to treat. Nearly 2 million Americans seek care for plantar fasciitis (pronounced PLAN-tar FASH-ee-EYE-tus) every year.
Theodore tells Cassidy Driscoll that shock-wave therapy gives her a 60 to 80 percent chance of reducing her pain by half; about one-quarter of patients will become pain-free from the treatment.
After the 20-minute treatment, Cassidy Driscoll says she felt no pain, only a sort of tapping. She gets off the table, walks out of Theodore's office and drives herself home. Two days later, she says her foot felt bruised, but she didn't have enough pain to require medication.
Judges in Iowa are appointed, not elected. And the periodic "yes or no" ballot questions on whether to keep them on the bench are usually low-key affairs. But in several states, anger over recent court decisions is turning the normally sleepy judicial elections — known as retention votes — into pitched battles.
'We're Watching'
In a cavernous exhibit hall at the State Fairgrounds, the Iowa Christian Alliance is holding its annual convention to rally religious conservatives. Activist Barb Heki is handing out yard signs that read "Vote no to activist judges."
"We greatly underestimated the demand. People have taken stacks of them," Heki says.
Conservatives like Heki who oppose the Iowa Supreme Court's ruling on same-sex marriage are furiously organizing voters to check "no" on their ballots when they're asked if three of the justices should keep their jobs. It's like any other modern political campaign. But what's new is that the targets are appointed judges who routinely stay on the bench without the indignities of politicking.
Campaign chairman Bob Vander Plaats argues that these justices ignored the will of the people, who now have a chance to be heard.
"This is a way to vent their frustration, vote no, and let the courts know that we're watching and we're willing to hold you in check," Vander Plaats says.
Vander Plaats says conservatives want to send a message to judges that their jobs could be on the line if they throw out popular laws.
This urge to strike back at judges is catching on in other states as well. A study by Adam Skaggs at New York University Law School shows retention elections are turning out to be more hotly contested this year than in the past decade.
"And I think what we're seeing, in a couple of states at least, is outside groups getting involved, really striking the same partisan terms that we've seen in traditional political races," Skaggs says.
In addition to the Iowa battle, anti-abortion activists are campaigning to recall a justice in Kansas, where a similar nonpolitical merit system has held sway. The same thing is happening in Colorado, where three justices are being targeted for rulings on tax issues.
Justices Go Low Key
In Iowa, the justices are taking the high road, declining to form campaign committees or raise money to urge a yes vote. One of the targeted justices, David Baker, says they want to avoid any suggestion that future rulings could be affected by campaign donations.
"We fully understand this course of action may not be the smartest move politically," Baker says.
So instead of a well-funded "vote yes" campaign, justices and their allies are lecturing on the value of a nonpolitical judiciary.
"Before you vote in the retention elections this year, reflect on the rule of law and the need for impartial justice for all, free of politics and free of special interests," another target, Chief Justice Marsha Ternus, recently told college students in Dubuque.
But that low-key approach may not carry the day. Dennis Goldford, who teaches politics at Drake University, says angry people are often motivated to vote.
"And in this particular case, they're focused on a particular decision and angry about it. The other side's focusing on an independent judiciary. It's hard to get impassioned about that," Goldford says.
And polls seem to bear that out. The most recent Des Moines Register survey shows that the referendum on the justices, which in normal years might pass overwhelmingly, is now a tossup.
Joyce Russell reports for Iowa Public Radio.