The Daily Telegraph has more details : Promotion for Royal Navy officers is to be frozen for five years in a cost-cutting measure that has caused fury in the Fleet, The Daily Telegraph can reveal. Morale is plummeting as officers stand to lose more than £10,000 a year in pay.An official Navy document passed to [the Telegraph] states that all promotions to the rank of Lieutenant Commander or above will be halted until 2012. The internal memo, labelled Galaxy 36/06, said that a temporary halt will be required to “rebalance in favour of the front line”. With billions being spent on the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and on costly procurement programmes, the Ministry of Defence is desperate to make savings. The Navy has become a target and proposals to retire a further six frigates and destroyers to bring budgets into line were revealed by The Telegraph yesterday. The fleet will lose almost half its warships with 19 out of 44 laid up in port.If the warship cuts go ahead, 1,500 sailors will probably lose their jobs in a service that has already been reduced to 36,000 personnel in recent years…The Tories accused the Government of “destroying” the Navy over the past decade and refusing to accept its responsibility to defend the nation by slashing the number of ships to pay for Iraq and Afghanistan. What the Tories do not seem to mention (odd, that) is that it’s not just a question of “paying for Iraq and Afghanistan” that is the problem, but the Blair government’s extraordinarily costly decision increasingly to integrate the armed forces within the emerging EU defense infrastructure, something that will be immensely damaging to the UK’s ability to be an effective US ally (let alone its ability to defend its own interests). Oh, but I forget, Tony Blair is “a friend of America.”