Defence review - Battle tanks - any need for them?

[DuncsGTi]

hidetheelephants said:

hallenger was the only MBT of its generation(Gen3?) to have a rifled gun, everyone else went smoothbore which was a pain as it meant we had to design all our own ammo and it cost a fortune. I suspect we no longer have the knowledge or manufacturing base to do all that, so even if we could afford it we couldn't.

The last time (around 2016ish) I fired live HESH rather than training rounds (SH/P), the boxes were date stamped 1986 but they still made a decent bang
Not sure how much of a stock we hold of them.

Evanivitch said:

Pull up the big boy pants, 130 CR3 with 130mm gun. But we need the French/German to agree to use the same gun their next gen.

This or abandon the challenger and get in on the action with Rhinemettal on Leo 3 with 130mm. The extra KE available from that 10mm extra and going smoothbore has to be worth it.

[DMN]

RizzoTheRat said:

Didn't Rheinmetall create their own demonstrator when the gun upgrade got dropped from the Life Extension Programme?

Yes, and there is info here:
https://www.edrmagazine.eu/rbsl-unveils-comprehens...

[rxe]

I’ve never been in the army, but can you use tanks where you don’t have air superiority? You couldn’t in WWII, and I suspect you can’t today. If the Russians started driving tanks across into Germany, would we attack them with our own tanks or anti tank missiles from the sky?

You only need to keep up in the MBT arms race if you’re fighting other countries who’ve kept up. If we’re planning on fighting Russians, Americans or Germans with tanks, then we need the best tanks.

If you’re planning on fighting Argentinians or Iranians with tanks, then the current gear will do.

If you’re planning on fighting Al-quaeda, then you probably don’t want tanks.

All seems to hinge on whether we’d fight another superpower with tanks.

[Evanivitch]

rxe said:

I’ve never been in the army, but can you use tanks where you don’t have air superiority? You couldn’t in WWII, and I suspect you can’t today. If the Russians started driving tanks across into Germany, would we attack them with our own tanks or anti tank missiles from the sky?

There are many shades of grey between air superiority and having no aerial defence.

MBT with APS and suitable air defence assets in the area can and will operate without complete air superiority.

[RizzoTheRat]

rxe said:

You only need to keep up in the MBT arms race if you’re fighting other countries who’ve kept up.

Which is why you need a mix of capabilities. The way high level planning works is you have a range of scenarios you might expect to face, from low intensity peace keeping to full on conflict with a well equipped state, and then look at what equipment you need to do that range of jobs.
Where you find you don't have kit good enough for an on-going operation you get Urgent Operational Requirements for new equipment, eg Foxhound when Snatch proved not to be up to the job. The trouble is these UORs eat in to the budgets so longer term equipment programmes suffer at the expense of short term needs.

[hidetheelephants]

Evanivitch said:

Pedantic, but early Abrams were 105 rifled.

More or less an L7 wasn't it? RARDE and the boffins knew their onions. I've wondered why they ended up with the 105 when everyone else went 120mm, the only obvious explanation is they had spent all their pennies and were trying to reuse the turret and weapon from MBT70 or similar to save money.

[GroundZero]

I would find comfort if the government took advice from numerous experts in military tactics in the modern world, with a forward looking robust strategy that will protect the UK at home and its interest abroad.

If that turns out to mean that the tank has had its day and has become irrelevant in modern warfare then so be it, but if the tank does have a valuable role for what the UK may need to get involved in in the future then we must surely retain such assets and develop them so that they can be effective at their intended role.

If it happens that its just Cummings or other MPs acting on their own personal agendas then I would be appalled.

[Macron]

Even though Amyas Morse, briefly, and catastrophically Head of all things Commercial at MOD has left the NAO, those he left behind are well trained to put the boot in at appropriate times. F35 in over budget shocker.

Not sure you needed to be an accountant to predict that...

https://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/2019/02/01/uk-may...

[RizzoTheRat]

GroundZero said:

I would find comfort if the government took advice from numerous experts in military tactics in the modern world, with a forward looking robust strategy that will protect the UK at home and its interest abroad

That should be the point of the SDSR https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Strategic_Defence_an...

[WreckedGecko]

rxe said:

I’ve never been in the army, but can you use tanks where you don’t have air superiority? You couldn’t in WWII, and I suspect you can’t today. If the Russians started driving tanks across into Germany, would we attack them with our own tanks or anti tank missiles from the sky?

Quite apart from the air superiority conversation, there are a few other factors when we are talking about "peer competitors" as our American friends like to call them.

Lets take a European war with Russia as an example.


Warning: sweeping generalisations ahead.



Russia nominally has something like 15,000 MBTs. I say nominally because god knows how many of those are actually working or would make it to the border.

But the point is, even if they only brought half of them, that's an awful lot of air strikes. At £175,000 per missile too, that's £1,312,000,000 just in ordnance cost. Irrelevant, but I thought interesting.

NATO has something like 3,200 fighter bombers of various types available to it. 2,100 of those are American and spread all over the world. Lets assume that in an all out scrap the Yanks would pull at least half of their air assets into the European theater.

That gives us 2,150 fighter bombers of mixed ages and capabilities.

Typhoon / Tonka can carry 12-18 Brimstone, depending on range requirements etc. Lets call it 14 for the sake of the argument and to account for the variation mentioned above. That's 31,000 or so Brimstones.

For context we fired about 230 in the entirety of our time in Syria. That was about all we had too. Other Anti-Armour missiles are available of course...

Regardless, plenty to stop the Russian armour, yes?

Assuming a 100% kill rate and minimal to no anti-air / air assets on the Russian side, as well as 100% efficiency in our air asset use, it would take 536 air strikes to stop half the Russian MBT force turning up in Berlin.

The Russians have a lot of anti-air kit. Russia has around 3,000 interceptor capable aircraft (a lot are pretty poor). No air strike is 100% efficient. Brimstone is good kit and its kill rate is high 70s to mid 80s.

With a bit of back of fag packet maths, we would actually be looking at committing fully 75-80% of the total available fighter bombers in the entirety of NATO to stop the nominal available Russian MBTs alone.

That's assuming the Americans turn up in force immediately. If they don't, then its the entirety of the European theaters fighter bombers for an extended period.

Forgetting of course that Russia has many times that number of AFVs and APC types etc. Which are pretty useful in and of themselves.

Its all possible, in Op Granby we took out 1,500 MBTs in 10 days. The hold outs being those that were heavily dug in with Anti-Air cover. But its a massive ask.

Put that against a force that can go toe to toe with heavy armour, stay in the field, in position for the duration, can happily keep throwing serious KE at the enemy for an extended period, whilst supporting infantry and holding ground...

Ultimately, Russia wouldn't stand a chance in a land war. Or an air war. Or at sea. But, if you are ever going to go up against a proper developed military, being reliant on airstrikes alone does not work. Its a key component, but doesn't stack up alone.

Whilst I admit to being biased, there will always be a place for heavily armed and armoured mobile bunkers on the battlefield. Until drone tech gets significantly better anyway.

[rxe]

Fighting the Russians in Germany is a big ask full stop!

Surely if theRussians throw everything they have at Germany, then in the short term at least, Germany will get flattened. The airstrike numbers are one thing, but how will a group of 500 tanks (no idea how may we have) stop thousands? They’re not exactly speedy, so you’d guess that air strikes would be doing most of the work anyway

[DuncsGTi]

rxe said:

Fighting the Russians in Germany is a big ask full stop!

Surely if theRussians throw everything they have at Germany, then in the short term at least, Germany will get flattened. The airstrike numbers are one thing, but how will a group of 500 tanks (no idea how may we have) stop thousands? They’re not exactly speedy, so you’d guess that air strikes would be doing most of the work anyway

We have 224!!!!

[yellowjack]

I don't know about fighting the Russians nowadays, but back when it was the Soviets, and they were that much closer, occupying the Eastern part of Germany, I was lined up to be in the forefront of any operations against them. And we were under no illusions back then that we'd be doing anything but holding them back for a while.

As a Royal Engineer driving either an AVRE or a bridgelaying AVLB, I'd have been the furthest forward vehicle in any assault, and possibly the last to withdraw in a retreat. Plus we were stuck in 1960s era Chieftains when all around us the RAC units were living it up in the Challenger 1s. So Any armoured advance was always going to stall while they waited for their obstacle crossing assets to catch up, and in any retreat scenario us Sappers would be left behind, unable to keep up with our Battle Group.

I've no idea where the number came from, but we were once informed that "in the event of the Cold War turning hot, your life expectancy is 22 minutes in the field". I think that was based on us being the priority target for Soviet attack aircraft, as "battle winning assets", and the time it would take the Soviets to get to us. Finding us was never going to be an issue. Have you seen the size of an AVLB mounting a scissor bridge, ffs!


Big enough in the stowed position...


During launch. At "Top Dead centre" this thing is as difficult to find in the landscape as Salisbury Cathedral!

As a former Armoured Engineer I'd say that if MBTs become a thing of the past, the RE mobility callsigns like Trojan and Titan will swiftly become outdated. Without an MBT chassis upon which to base them, we either suffer a return to the age-old issue the Sappers had whereby they were clanking around in tanks a generation or more out of date, or we have to cut our coat to suit our cloth, and the current kit will have to be scaled down to fit whatever is chosen as the next-gen combat vehicle chassis.

As a Gulf War veteran who lined up behind the Challenger 1s of the 14th/20th King's Hussars, I can say that I would never consider serving in an Armoured Engineer unit without the (apparent/supposed/presumed) protection of a RAC unit of MBTs behind which I could hide. I have watched a British Armoured Regiment take apart a defensive formation of enemy MBTs and other AFVs through my night vision kit, and it is an incredibly impressive thing to witness. I can't speak for the effectiveness of CR2, but by Christ it's accurate to say that anyone who witnessed what a riled-up armoured regiment can do will be thinking "Thank the Good Lord these things are on our side..."

Another thing that always strikes me about "Strategic Defence Reviews" is the way they only ever result in cuts. Cuts to budgets, and cuts to capability. Has there ever been a SDR that concluded that we've hit capability rock bottom, and if we are to take our place in the NATO orbat then we need to get our collective wallet out and start splashing the cash? If it's only ever going to result in cuts, why not call a spade a spade, instead of pretending it's a shovel..?

[hidetheelephants]

The poles have a decent number of modern tanks and they don't like the russians much; a neo-3rd shock army has to start several hundred miles further east than their fathers/grandfathers would have.

[RizzoTheRat]

DuncsGTi said:

We have 224!!!!

That's 224 physical vehicles, including those used for training, in maintenance etc.

3 Type 56 regiments gives 168 actually in use, of which 6 would be in the headquarters.

[RizzoTheRat]

yellowjack said:

Another thing that always strikes me about "Strategic Defence Reviews" is the way they only ever result in cuts. Cuts to budgets, and cuts to capability. Has there ever been a SDR that concluded that we've hit capability rock bottom, and if we are to take our place in the NATO orbat then we need to get our collective wallet out and start splashing the cash? If it's only ever going to result in cuts, why not call a spade a spade, instead of pretending it's a shovel..?

That's partly because it's only the cuts that tend to make the press,

SDSR15 put a lot more money in to Cyber, including forming 77 Bde, and agreed to buy the Dreadnought subs, P8, Ajax, and form 2 more typhoon squadrons.

[Evanivitch]

RizzoTheRat said:

That's partly because it's only the cuts that tend to make the press,

SDSR15 put a lot more money in to Cyber, including forming 77 Bde, and agreed to buy the Dreadnought subs, P8, Ajax, and form 2 more typhoon squadrons.

Depends how you spin it.

77 Bde was long overdue but welcome. P8 was filling a capability gap that had long existed since Nimrod, and with fewer airframes. AJAX order for 589 was a massive reduction on the CVRT fleet it was meant to replace and did not include several variants that formed part of the wider group (notably ambulance, but also overwatch and direct fire, and the Typhoon squadrons were formed by keeping T1 and reducing airframes in other squadrons.

[RizzoTheRat]

Yeah it's all about the spin

The simple fact though is there's a limited amount of money and lots of expensive things to buy. Carriers took a big chunk of the budget for several years (not helped but continually slowing the programme to save money in year but increase the cost overall), most programmes end up way over budget (poor controls in placing contracts?), and the weak pound the last few years really hasn't helped either.

When did Trident get incorporated in to the Defence budget rather than a separate treasury owned one? That meant that the Dreadnought program must be sapping quite a bit of MoD funds despite the extra contingency for it.

[stevesingo]

There has been a recent announcement of a review of UK foreign policy which may well influence the future construct of the armed forces.

That aside, Defence is re-focussing on counter Russian aggressing-what that looks like is difficult to assess. Given Gerasmov's doctrine https://kkrva.se/wp-content/uploads/2014/09/Bild11... and the escalation which can be predicted it may be that countering the Russian interests may sit in the lower end of the spectrum, Phases 1&2, which would not specifically imply the need for large scale full capability conventional forces. But that is a gamble, in that if we (the UK and it's allies) were unsuccessful in countering the Ph1&2, the deterrent effect for Ph3 onwards is not there and Russian belligerence would likely mean they would continue.

Modern peer on peer conflict is likely to occur over a broad spectrum and not having the tools to deal with the full spectrum would imply great risk of failing to defeat the adversary. A fully capable conventional force is one of those tools. Modern manoeuverist approach to warfare focusses in exploiting weakness and without the conventional deterrent, the adversary will use that to their advantage.

[Ayahuasca]

WreckedGecko said:

... good stuff about the Russian hordes pouring over the border...

Need to factor in tactical nukes.




That small orange thing is a B61-12 tactical nuclear bomb. Quite small as nuclear weapons go, but 50,000 tons of TNT would make a mess of a Russian tank regiment.