The Haythornthwaite Review (examined in the section below) found that in 2022 there was a net outflow (the difference between the number of people leaving and those joining) of 4,660 from the UK Armed Forces with the “overall voluntary outflow rate increasing to 6.0%, up 1.7% from the previous year”. In the past decade the forces’ proportion of untrained personnel has “significantly increased”, which means that the “rising demand for skills is already not being met in some key areas, including cyber, engineering, nuclear, digital, logistics, aviation and medical” and that there are now “significant risks to overall capability arising from skills shortages in cyber and digital, intelligence, engineering 150 Foreign Affairs Committee, First Report of Session 2023–24, A rock and a hard place: building critical mineral resilience, HC 371, paras 5; 9 151 Oral evidence taken on 15 November 2023, HC (2023–24) 52, Q77 152 Defence Committee, Sixth Report of Session 2022–23, Special Relationships? US, UK and NATO, HC 184, Paras 86–95 153 Defence Committee, Sixth Special Report of Session 2022–23, Special Relationships? US, UK and NATO: Government Response to the Committee’s Sixth Report, HC 1533, Para 16 Ready for War? 31 (including nuclear), logistics and health/medical professions”.154 Professor Sir Lawrence Freedman underlined that without sufficient numbers of trained personnel, the Services simply would not be able to operate the equipment that was available to them.155