Land operations
Right: A British Army Challenger 2 on a training exercise in Wiltshire.
Opening page: General Dynamics’ Ajax, formidable in stature but beset with difficulties, looks unlikely to enter service in the foreseeable future.
From the haggard shell of Kharkiv to the shores of the Black Sea to the edge of Kyiv itself, Russian tanks are rushing like termites over the broad Ukrainian plain. While the campaign is still in its early stages, they have certainly shown their worth, hammering enemy positions and patrolling captured towns. However, Russia’s Ukrainian foes, for their part, are proving just how vulnerable outdated models can be, destroying dozens of creaking Soviet-era tanks with ease. And if Johnson’s strategic faux pas fails to inspire a change of heart, reflecting on his own armoured capability could be the prod he needs. For even as Europe’s borders are convulsed by war – with tanks very much included – the UK’s own reserves are seriously lacking. According to one recent study, Her Majesty’s Armed Forces can only muster 227 main battle tanks. To put that into perspective, even minor powers like the United Arab Emirates muster 388, while the US has over 6,000. More to the point, British attempts to redress the balance have ended in frustrating compromises and technical fiascos. Not that the situation is completely hopeless. With good decisions and investments in new technology, the UK could yet develop a flexible and deadly mobile force. And, as surely even the prime minister realises by now, time is of the essence.
Britain’s history of tanks Up until the end of the Cold War, the British Army enjoyed one of Europe’s most impressive armoured forces. If nothing else, this is clear from the statistics. In 1990, as the Soviet Union tottered and the Gulf War began, the military had around 1,200 main battle tanks. And as Nicholas Drummond explains, this scale can fundamentally be understood by the strategy of the age. “At that time it was all about mass,” emphasises Drummond, a tank expert who himself served as a British officer in the 1970s and 1980s. “You just couldn’t do anything without having sufficient numbers of force. And you couldn’t move without having protected mobility.” That is understandable – with at least 30,000 Warsaw Pact tanks massed on the
edge of western Europe, Nato needed enough firepower to shoot back. This was similarly reflected in the types of tanks the UK invested in. Entering service in 1983, Challenger 1 was initially designed to defeat communist armour in central Europe. Among other things, it had anti-tank rounds capable of smashing the hulls of the Soviet T-64s. Yet, with the collapse of the Soviet Union, and the US temporarily bestriding the world in its unipolar moment, consecutive British governments have slashed their country’s armoured capabilities. While Challenger 1 was replaced by Challenger 2 during the Thatcher administration – though it would not enter service until 1998, under Blair – by 2001, a British military report indicated that the army would not be procuring an updated version given the “lack of conventional military threats” the country faced. By 2010, officials had announced that the Challenger 2 fleet would be slashed by around 40%. A few years later, with severe budget cuts continuing, the Ministry of Defence even admitted that the army had more horses than tanks – four-legged warfighters outnumbering their steel colleagues by over 150. To be fair, these cuts were not totally unreasonable. As that 2001 report implies, after all, many in Whitehall thought the wars of tomorrow would be fought against less conventional militants – just as the British Army would indeed face in Afghanistan and Iraq. And to their credit, officials did try to offer troops protection more suited to the backstreets of Basra than the fields of Pomerania, especially when it came to procuring mine-resistant vehicles. However, as Drummond notes, this pivot towards counterinsurgency operations drained the kitty for armoured spending yet further, a fact starkly illustrated by comparing the UK to its neighbours. “We basically plan to have four deployable brigades,” Drummond explains. “Two of those will be what we call ‘armoured brigades’.” To put that into perspective, Italy, France and Germany each boast between seven and ten armoured
Defence & Security Systems International /
www.defence-and-security.com
1983
Challenger 1 enters service in UK armed forces.
1990
UK armed forces possess around 1,200 battle tanks.
1998
The Challenger 2 replaces its predecessor.
2001 2010
British Army report show lack of
interest in replacing Challenger 2.
Challenger 2 fleet is slashed by roughly 40%.
Jan 2021
UK MOD show interest in French and German
MGCS programme. 15
Martin Hibberd/
Shutterstock.com
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