David Cameron will tomorrow announce that ex-army chief General Sir Richard Dannatt is to become an adviser to the party on defence.
It is understood that the Tory leader will award Dannatt a peerage in order for him to take up the role.
Sources said Cameron had been impressed by Dannatt's "formidable" record and experience.
But the announcement was almost immediately undermined by an embarrassing frontbench gaffe when Chris Grayling, the shadow home secretary, appeared to mistakenly believe Dannatt was to advise the government, rather than Cameron.
Asked about Dannatt's appointment, Grayling replied: "I hope that this isn't a political gimmick. We've seen too many appointments from this government of external [people] where it has all been about Gordon Brown's PR.
"General Dannatt is an experienced figure. We rightly should be working alongside government but I'm always suspicious of this government's motives when it does things like this."
Alan Johnson, the home secretary, said: "Chris Grayling is so keen to do Britain down, he'll attack anything – including his own party."
Johnson spoke out after the BBC reported that the former head of the British army had accused government ministers of resorting to "politics by smear" because they disagreed with his advice on increasing the number of troops in Afghanistan.
Dannatt is said to have told the BBC the government tried to damage his reputation after "losing the argument". He also said the defence secretary, Bob Ainsworth, did not "call the shots" on setting the level of troops, the corporation said.
Dannatt sparked controversy earlier this week when he said soldiers were having to fight the Taliban with "at least part of one arm" tied behind their backs because a call for 2,000 extra troops was refused.
In January, he decried the lack of equipment that meant soldiers could not train with modern weapons.
In a forthright address on the state of the army and the pressures his troops faced, the general said: "We have seriously stretched our soldiers to the very limit. Many families and marriages have unfortunately fallen victim to the relentless pace of operations."
Sometimes there was just a year between the end of one operation and the start of another, with much of that taken up by training and preparing for the next operation, Dannatt said.
He revealed he was drawing up plans to restructure the army to make it more flexible and give soldiers more space between operations – an issue he is likely to take up with the Cameron.
Dannatt told Radio 5 Live he had not been publicly approached about taking a role in a Cameron government.
But he said ministers resorted to "politics by smear" when they disagreed with his advice on extra troops for Afghanistan.
Cameron told the BBC: "I've spoken to him on previous occasions as well as recently about his views about how we improve our armed services ... I think he's a man of great talent and ability, he's been a great public servant and I think he's got more to give."
Yesterday, the Conservatives announced that Richard Thaler, a Chicago behavioural economist close to the Barack Obama camp, is to join the Conservative party as an adviser on regulation issues.
Earlier in the week, MySociety's Tom Steinberg accepted a role advising the party on information technology policy, a move that was criticised by Labour MP Tom Watson for politicising the non-political web company.
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