The British Navy has shed 1,000 jobs as part of the country's wider efforts to balance its military budget, Xinhua reported on Friday.
They are the first part of cuts that will see 5,000 jobs lost from the Royal Navy by 2015, as Prime Minister David Cameron's coalition government, which came to power in 2010, struggles to keep its budgets under control.
A spokesman for the defence ministry said the cuts were “the next step after last year's announcement of the Strategic Defence and Security Review (SDSR).”
"It was announced then that there would be 5,000 redundancies in the Royal Navy, 7,000 in the army, and 5,000 within the Royal Air Force".