Doctors complain about perceived cuts to their service and retired admirals, generals and air marshals rage against anything that looks to them like a reduction in the Armed Forces – particularly their own.

I would be surprised by anything else.

However, the job of ministers facing the brunt of their ire, leastways responsible ones governing in the public interest, is to match income and expenditure or face national ruin.

It’s also to spend wisely across the piece, being in possession of all the available facts.

Sometimes this means doing things that are not popular in some quarters.

Defence is reckoned by inputs. That is, we perceive the amount we have of it to be the sum of the number of soldiers, ships and aircraft in the order of battle.

Thus we are troubled when a battalion is removed, since we can readily conceptualise that, but less so if we learn that a particular aircraft no longer has the capability to do this or that.

With my heart I regret any downsizing of our standing army.

I firmly believe the man behind a bayonet will always be central to defence.

But the PlayStation generation joining our armed forces today has seen the future and it lies firmly in the hi-tech domain.

The possibilities are discomforting to people across the political spectrum: on the right, where military might is reckoned by the regiment as much as on the left where unmanned drones, geeky cyber and technicians twitching at joysticks guiding remote missiles are regarded with deep suspicion.

In the centre, people like me truly get the need to focus on capabilities to credibly deter and repel threats but wonder nevertheless whether our navy, army and air force will be recognisable to us veterans in a generation.

If the thought is unsettling, dismiss it at once because defence is for looking forward, not back – except in one regard.

And as we enter the season of remembrance we should jolly well know what that is.

It is paying tribute to the soldier, sailor and airman who always has been, is now, and always will be the greatest single factor in defence.