Gentlemen, some of our tanks are missing. And so are some of our rifles. Not all the night-vision goggles are where we thought they were. And the cupboard containing the laptops is looking a little bare.

Welcome to the fraught world of the UK defence ministry’s wobbly procurement and supply chain management. A leaked draft report into the MoD’s purchasing methods has revealed “endemic” failures, inefficiency and incompetence. And this after the National Audit Office had refused to sign off on the MoD’s annual accounts this summer, as it did not believe that the existence of £6.6bn ($10.8bn, €7.6bn) of claimed assets had been properly verified.