Commodore Mansergh: Cuts mean 'difficult day' for navy

More than 1,000 Royal Navy personnel will learn they are being made redundant later as part of a first round of military job cuts.

Of about 1,020 job losses, a third are compulsory. Some 810 sailors applied for redundancy and 670 were accepted.

The navy is cutting numbers by 5,000 to 30,000 by 2015, as part of 22,000 armed forces cuts designed to help save £5bn.

Commodore Michael Mansergh of the Royal Navy has said he "wouldn't want to underestimate the pain" of redundancies at the Royal Navy.

"A sensitive process" has been used to identify "those people whose service we no longer need", he said.