Background The Strategic Defence Review 1998
15.The Ministry of Defence Strategic Defence Review 1998(1) recognised the future importance of joint operations by the armed forces and put “jointery” at the centre of the defence planning process. It also concluded that combining the three SDAs into a single Act, and reducing the differences between the systems to the absolute minimum, would better support the armed forces, which increasingly train and operate jointly. The Act is the result of a comprehensive review of all the existing provisions in the SDAs, together with other legislation that relates to discipline in the armed forces such as the Courts-Martial (Appeals) Act 1968 (“the 1968 Act”) and a number of free-standing provisions in the five-yearly Armed Forces Acts—for example, the provisions for Standing Civilian Courts in the Armed Forces Act 1976, and the powers of service police under the Armed Forces Act 2001.