The British experience of military intelligence in the last four decades raises a number of important issues. The first is the uneven nature of the learning process. The struggles in Northern Ireland in the 1970s saw the British military deploy large troop numbers and take heavy casualties; US troops took heavy casualties in the Iraq surge after 2007 and UK and US troops took increasing casualties in the Afghanistan surge in 2009-10. In contrast the British deployment to southern Iraq from 2003 involved a limited force overall even adding the forces of other nations. The British military stepped up decapitation operations alongside the US forces. The nature of ethical debates over the last decade with regard to tackling terrorism and fighting small wars in the UK and USA has been an instructive one. In the last four decades the UK state and its functions have been increasingly 'juridified', subjected to legal scrutiny, formal legal coverage and even sanction.