Losing track of some office equipment or the odd bit of plant machinery is par for the course for your average business but the MoD isn’t average.

Auditors at the Ministry of Defence have been unable to account for £6.6bn of equipment, covering a sixth of all vehicles, weapons, and radios used by troops according to the FT. That’s the equivalent to the entire annual defence equipment budget so there must be some fairly hefty hardware missing out there – have you seen my tank chaps?

All is not as it appears however – in its defence the MoD stated that the £6.6bn in assets ‘were never physically lost’ and the NAO figure was an ‘extrapolation’ from its audit.