Scrapped -- both the Harrier jets and the aircraft carrier HMS Ark Royal

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From the Guardian:

Britain's armed forces will no longer be able to mount the kind of operations conducted in Iraq and Afghanistan, the government's strategic defence review made clear today. For at least a decade it will also be impossible to deploy the kind of carrier taskforce which liberated the Falklands 28 years ago.

Though defence chiefs said today they will still have significant expeditionary forces, they will not be able to intervene on the scale of recent years. ...

Shocking on its face, to be sure. But honestly, what did such "intervention" -- blood and treasure to the tune of a £36bn "black hole" in the British defense budget (I shudder to think about ours) -- actually accomplish?  Was making Iraq free to bond with Iran and Afghanistan free to bond with the Taliban worth such a price? Most wasteful, however, is the fact that the expensive lessons the experience begs to teach us are, to date, being scrapped along with all of this military might.

Among the many slashing cuts the British government is enacting, this one stands out:

The government also decided to:

• Withdraw 20,000 British military personnel will be withdrawn from Germany by 2020.

Why were/are 20,000 British military personnel required ... in Germany?