The Risk Professional: UK MoD target for large scale theft

Cash - not too surprising and nothing of the scale of the wholesale removal of piles of US dollar notes shipped to Iraq where stealing that money turned into a form of gluttony.

Medals and ceremonial swords: more embarrassing than of outright value: these things are usually kept on display in centres for regiments, etc. But as those regiments have been disbanded or subsumed into others, the need for their centres has been reduced - and so has the care taken of their things.

A boat rudder is amongst the stolen items.

But most embarrassing - or worrying depending on one's perspective - is the theft of an entire aircraft fuselage.

But it is not, by any means, the most disturbing; personal military equipment including night vision goggles, ration packs, body armour and guns have also gone AWOL.

And all of this is from within the UK: no one has produced definitive figures for stuff going missing in overseas stations or in combat arenas.

And it's not just the MoD: the Department of Justice has lost or had stolen in the past ten months 34 laptops and 42 Blackberrys.