Stirrup blamed for 'chronic mismanagement'

The commander of the first 1,200 UK troops to deploy to Helmand in 2006, Lt Col Stuart Tootal, said Sir Jock Stirrup should bear some of the blame, including a failure to respond to requests for more support in Afghanistan.

News of Sir Jock's departure comes during an upsurge in violence in Afghanistan, with more than 30 Nato servicemen, including six British troops, killed since the start of the month. On Saturday, a soldier from the 1st Battalion The Mercian Regiment, was killed in an explosion in the Nahr-e Saraj district of Helmand province bringing the British death toll since operations in Afghanistan began in 2001 to 295.

Col Tootal said: "There has been a chronic mismanagement of defence in the last 12 years or so. We have a tendency to blame ministers, but we can't ignore the role of the professional heads in the form of the CDS (Chief of Defence Staff) and PUS (Permanent Under-Secretary at the Ministry of Defence), who advise our ministers on what the armed forces should look like and what they do."

He said Sir Jock had been "very slow" to recognise the need to act on requests from commanders on the ground in Afghanistan for more helicopters and more troops.

And he said his departure should be brought forward to allow his successor to shape the defence review whose recommendations he will be required to implement.

"If he stays through the strategic defence review, then the new CDS has to inherit what someone else has designed and there is a real risk there that it might not be what the new chief wants to do.

"It would make a lot of sense to make the decision as soon as possible and appoint the new CDS."

Sir Jock's tenure as Chief of Defence Staff has coincided with one of the bloodiest periods for the British Armed forces in recent history, with the steadily rising death toll prompting a steady stream of criticism of the Afghan mission.

These include persistent accusations that a poorly-equipped British Army has been fighting the Taliban with too few troops.

During particularly bloody periods – such as when eight soldiers were killed in 24 hours last July, the bloodiest single day since operations began in 2001 – he has publicly shored up the mission.

He said then that the Taliban was "losing" the fight, but another 111 British troops have since died with no end to the mission in sight.

Sir Jock, 60, held a series of senior RAF posts before becoming Chief of the Air Staff in 2003 and then CDS in 2006. He has rarely spoken out against ministers, unlike other senior military figures such as former head of the Army General Sir Richard Dannatt. That has led to suggestions Sir Jock has been too close to the previous Labour government.