Excellent comments by the thinpinstripped line.
Usual comments about fixing the URL or doing a search.
https://thinpinstripedline.blogsp*t .com/2020/08/tanks-for-nothing-british-army-and.html
Tanks For Nothing? The British Army and the Integrated Review
The Times has revealed that the MOD is considering plans to scrap or mothball the entirety of the British Army’s Challenger 2 force of main battle tanks and possibly its Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicles as well. These cuts form part of options under consideration for the current Defence Review, and if accepted would be arguably one of the most fundamental changes to the British Army in the last 100 years......
What is so interesting about this particular set of options is the scale of the changes under consideration though. Heavy Armour and mechanised infantry sits at the very heart of the Army psyche, and has done for decades. The challenge is that the force is getting a lot older, and the Army, bluntly, doesn’t seem particularly good at buying replacements for it in a timely manner. This has led to the perfect storm where delayed upgrades, descoped life extension programmes and a sense that ‘we can fix this in the next planning round’ has come home to roost in a big way. Suddenly the Army finds itself looking pretty exposed in defence review terms, as it pushes for the continued existence of the deployable division capability, but with a fairly challenging shopping list needed to properly deliver it.......
The biggest question has got to be, what is it that heavy armour offers the UK in a world of coalition operations and is it the right thing to offer? By this, what are the benefits accrued by the UK of maintaining an armoured force and could it be done differently?
We are an island nation, and by definition our armoured capability needs to be sent abroad to fight. This immediately means we must assume that any operation involving our armour is going to require allies prepared to host and support us, and give permission for military equipment to be used as a launch pad on their soil, or in defence of it. Is the UK realistically and credibly going to be in a position to want to take part in an invasion of a foreign nation in the near future? If the answer is yes, do we need heavy armour for this? Alternatively, if we are doing policing actions, could we look to get support from allies to contribute to our forces by providing the armour instead?
One of the intriguing comments in the article was around how UK staff are sounding out NATO partners about the impact of options like this on their perspective about the UK’s commitment to the Alliance.
Trying to get countries to commit to alliances and bring mutually complementary kit and capabilities is always a challenge. Everyone wants to have and send Special Forces or Gucci stuff, but trying to persuade nations to support with logs, infra, signals and cyber and so on is more difficult – the less glamour involved, the harder it is to get interest. If the UK took an intentional policy decision that in future it would step back from providing the teeth of a deployable division, but instead focused on funding the enabling assets (e.g. the Divisional HQ, comms, ISTAR, logs and so on) then it would arguably be in a credible position with NATO partners to offer itself as a valuable player – essentially asking those nations with armoured capability to deploy in return for the enabling services offered by UK forces........
Stepping away from fighting at the highest levels of land armoured warfare may be deemed a politically acceptable outcome. There is seemingly little appetite across Westminster to go and engage in lengthy ground wars in the Middle East, and any operations in the Asia Pacific region do not seem to lend themselves naturally to heavy armour. This leaves the NATO eastern frontier as the main area of risk, and the question is perhaps whether the British Army should resume the BAOR mantle, but further east, providing a strong deterrence capability to deter Russian aggression, or if instead this can be provided via other means (e.g. enhanced infantry, more artillery, and better close air support to name but a few).
Are Challenger 2 tanks and Warrior IFV’s going to deter Russia from attacking the Baltic? Probably not by themselves, but step away from that commitment and NATO as a whole is weakened. Perhaps what is needed is something like the old Berlin Brigade – a force expected to exist in order to be wiped out, and in the process prove a point of allied unity. A small force with limited but useful capabilities and intended to hold until wiped out.......
Are UK national security interests better served by choosing to invest money that could be spent on armour and instead sinking it into more cyber defence? Stepping away from physical security and into digital security will not be popular – it is hard to show on an ORBAT table the cumulative effect of good cyber security measures in the way that an armoured division can denote industrial and offensive capability. Much easier to rank nations on what they possess in terms of hardware, not their PCs and software.
Striking this balance is going to be essential – the spectre of high intensity armoured operations may be at the more unlikely end of conflicts that the UK will be involved in. But if we are, then the absence of armour will be sorely noted, particularly if this is a move to save money and not enhance spending in other areas.
But equally if we don’t spend money on all the enabling issues like updated artillery (
as Jack Watling of the RUSI pointed out last year), or we don’t invest in sealift, logistics, comms and so on, then having the best heavy armour in the world is no good if it is open to destruction or cannot reach and be supported in its operational theatre.......