The British armed forces will take two years to recover from their involvement in the Olympic Games because so many personnel have been deployed at short notice and taken away from normal duties, the UK military\'s chief planner for the Games said. In an interview with British daily (The Guardian), Wing Commander Peter Daulby warned that critics who wanted a smaller military put the country at risk of not being able to cope with these kind of civil emergencies, or a \"national strategic shock\". Daulby, who was put in charge of the military\'s Olympic planning 18 months ago, said the need to send thousands of extra troops to the Games at the last minute after the G4S debacle showed \"the country needs a military for more than war fighting\". Describing the Olympics as the largest peacetime operation ever performed by the armed forces, he said: \"It just shows you the dangers of pulling the military down. I am sure that there are some people who think that if we are a smaller military power we will be less likely to get involved in international operations. \"If we shrink the military, do we really understand what we are losing? Look at the speed with which we pushed up the throttle. It proves the military offers the country a huge amount of resilience.\" Only 5,000 personnel were expected to be deployed, but that increased to 18,000 when the Olympic organisers Locog admitted they had significantly underestimated the number of security guards needed at the venues – and G4S conceded it had over-estimated its ability to recruit and train the extra staff. \"We were originally planning to provide niche capabilities,\" said Daulby. \"When the requirement for venue security was doubled, that was a bit of a game changer. We had to generate 18,000 people. That does not mean that there are 18,000 spare people. It means that the government has prioritised [the Olympics]. \"It will take two years to recover from this, to get back to normal, to get everything back into kilter. You can\'t expect them to go back to normal routine very easily.\" He said the UK\'s commitment to Afghanistan had not been affected by the Olympics, but the military had exceeded by 6,000 the maximum number of people he thought the Ministry of Defence could supply. \"Anything above 18,000 and you start to shut down elements of defence,\" he said.