ABSTRACT
This chapter argues that though the British Army Officer Corps is a professional practice, it is a precarious one owing to ongoing tension between institutional and bureaucratic factors. A requirement that army officers exercise professional and moral autonomy on the other. The chapter concerns ethical aspects of military practice, insofar as a defining feature of any professional practice is its ethic or code of ethics. The broadening of working practices beyond those of a traditional military kind is explained in the institutional/occupational thesis that highlights the interplay in the armed forces of both institutional and occupational practices of work. A document defining British Army Values and Standards states that they are: 'the authoritative yardstick that define how the people behave and on which the people judge and measure that behaviour'. The internal institutional and professional factors are not all that complicate or impede such judgements, since a new era of modern warfare has ushered in additional ethical quandaries.
