Defence review - Battle tanks - any need for them?

[RizzoTheRat]

...and lead to rapid escalation. The Russians have a large supply of tactical nukes as well.

[Evanivitch]

yellowjack said:

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.

I forgot the Sappers were all SF recce!

Yours lovingly, a drop short.

[Evanivitch]

Ayahuasca said:

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.

And ATGM, and artillery and...

There's a few options before we go nuclear!

[WreckedGecko]

Ayahuasca said:

Need to factor in tactical nukes.

Yes, perhaps I should have said "in a conventional war" or similar. Once you throw tactical nukes into the mix then it becomes far more difficult to predict / guess how such things would pan out.

Remembering of course that both sides have them. As well as their larger cousins.

Russia, and Putin in particular, are known to have a lower bar to acceptable use of nukes than NATO or most Western nations. I still think you would have to be pretty confident that you would not end up looking at an awful lot of ICBM launches to use a tactical nuke in anger though.

That said, some of the Russian Thermobarics (ATBIP) are meant to be at tactical nuke levels of yield. Supposedly they are two or three times the blast yield of the US's MOABs. So perhaps they would throw some of them around...

[Ayahuasca]

yellowjack said:

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 ....

Back in the day I spent my spare time in the TA and our wartime role was apparently to be dropped into a West German village and ‘hold until relieved’.

At the time, as a guileless young man, I thought fair enough, no problem. Nowadays I would be ‘you expect me to do what?’

[yellowjack]

Evanivitch said:

yellowjack said:

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.

I forgot the Sappers were all SF recce!

Yours lovingly, a drop short.

I'm not claiming anything of the sort. But when it comes down to laying the bridge which carries the vanguard over a river, you can be pretty sure there's no-one friendly but the Hooligans on the other side. Ditto when firing GV/Python into a minefield. No-one at that point is closer to the enemy, by virtue of the fact that it's us Sappers clearing the way. We might have been a rum old bunch, and we could put away the pies too, in the "good old days". I used to enjoy the spectacle of the MLRS battery firing from behind us onto targets ahead of us. It was always good to know you were there somewhere in the rear...

Rudyard Kipling said:

We build 'em nice barracks -- they swear they are bad,
That our Colonels are Methodist, married or mad,
Insultin' Her Majesty's Engineers,
Her Majesty's Royal Engineers,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

They haven't no manners nor gratitude too,
For the more that we help 'em, the less will they do,
But mock at Her Majesty's Engineers,
Her Majesty's Royal Engineers,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

Now the Line's but a man with a gun in his hand,
An' Cavalry's only what horses can stand,
When helped by Her Majesty's Engineers,
Her Majesty's Royal Engineers,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

Artillery moves by the leave o' the ground,
But we are the men that do something all round,
For we are Her Majesty's Engineers,
Her Majesty's Royal Engineers,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

I have stated it plain, an' my argument's thus
("It's all one," says the Sapper),
There's only one Corps which is perfect -- that's us;
An' they call us Her Majesty's Engineers,
Her Majesty's Royal Engineers,
With the rank and pay of a Sapper!

You mustn't feel when you read this spiel that the Sapper's a jealous Knave,
That joined the ranks for a vote of thanks in search of a hero's grave,
No your mechanised cavalry's quite alright and your Tommy has darned few Peers,
But where in Hell would the lot of them be if it weren't for the Engineers?
For the slamming, damning, toiling, boiling, Muddy Old Engineers

They look like tramps but they build your camps and sometimes lead the advance,
And they sweat red blood to bridge the flood to give you a fighting chance,
Who stays behind when it gets too hot to blow up your roads in the rear?
Just tell your wife that she owes your life to some Muddy Old Engineers,
Some dusty, crusty, croaking, joking, Muddy Old Engineers.

[yellowjack]

Ayahuasca said:

yellowjack said:

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 ....

Back in the day I spent my spare time in the TA and our wartime role was apparently to be dropped into a West German village and ‘hold until relieved’.

At the time, as a guileless young man, I thought fair enough, no problem. Nowadays I would be ‘you expect me to do what?’

And that's the key thing right there. Young men get offered a combat trade, and jump at the chance to "play with the big, greasy toys". And off they go to Bovington, splashing through the mud, getting dirty, and learning the ropes on cronky old Chieftain tanks. Then we head back to our barracks in Germany, do a few practice/test 'Active Edge' roll-outs, and shrug it all off as a bit of fun when we're in town eating Gyros and drinking in the Onion Bar in the Altstadt. Even when they tell us we're first in line as targets when the Frogfoot squadrons come swarming, we still shrug it all off because we're living the dream. Now, fast approaching 50 with a wife and two sons, I'm left wondering "what the bloody hell was I thinking back then?" I was lucky in so far as the Berlin wall fell within about a year of me reporting to my first field unit from training. But no sooner had the Berlin Wall been dismantled than we were loading our kit onto ships at Emden, and preparing for war in the Middle East by going to Canada in November to participate in Exercise Medicine Man 7 in temperatures down to -40ºc. Although to be fair the permafrost on the prairy that year was good practice for the ground in the Iraqi desert, which at times resembled solid concrete below the loose sand top layer. Knowing what I do now, I'd probably have taken Construction Materials Technician or Surveyor as my trade, and spent my career in a lab somewhere in Berkshire or Nottinghamshire... I'd certainly have stayed the heck away from Armoured Engineering!

[Evanivitch]

yellowjack said:

Evanivitch said:

yellowjack said:

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.

I forgot the Sappers were all SF recce!

Yours lovingly, a drop short.

I'm not claiming anything of the sort. But when it comes down to laying the bridge which carries the vanguard over a river, you can be pretty sure there's no-one friendly but the Hooligans on the other side. Ditto when firing GV/Python into a minefield. No-one at that point is closer to the enemy, by virtue of the fact that it's us Sappers clearing the way. We might have been a rum old bunch, and we could put away the pies too, in the "good old days". I used to enjoy the spectacle of the MLRS battery firing from behind us onto targets ahead of us. It was always good to know you were there somewhere in the rear...

Lets leave the poor lads in divisional fires out of this, they're about as front line as Dover!

Sort of disagree, there are plenty of recce elements that don't need a bridge to cross before the main force.

That said, there was an AJAX variant at DSEI with a bridge, and that seems like an obvious answer to "how the hell do we get a 40 ton vehicle across without calling for the 60 ton vehicle first."

[Yertis]

yellowjack said:

Knowing what I do now, I'd probably have taken Construction Materials Technician or Surveyor as my trade, and spent my career in a lab somewhere in Berkshire or Nottinghamshire... I'd certainly have stayed the heck away from Armoured Engineering!

Yeah but imagine how boring your posts on PH would be.

[yellowjack]

Evanivitch said:

Lets leave the poor lads in divisional fires out of this, they're about as front line as Dover!

Sort of disagree, there are plenty of recce elements that don't need a bridge to cross before the main force.

That said, there was an AJAX variant at DSEI with a bridge, and that seems like an obvious answer to "how the hell do we get a 40 ton vehicle across without calling for the 60 ton vehicle first."

As was always so, I can't see any reference in the ordered vehicles to any sort of Engineer variant other than the Argus Engineer Recce version. So the Sappers will still be tooling about in Titan/Trojan, and that requires the spares support package for CR2 to continue.

Going back to Gulf War (91) I can't believe how poor the support was for our Chieftains. Op Granby was meant to be two consecutive deployments, first of 7 Bde for 6 months, then we (4 Bde) were supposed to deploy as RIP for them, being called Granby 2. To that end, we were told to send a great deal of our "fit" tanks up to 32 Armd Engr Regt in Munsterlager, along with spares and bodies, to get 32 fully operational prior to deployment. Then we had to make the best of their VOR crap when it came down to us. After 6 weeks or so in Canada it became apparent that 7 Bde wouldn't be coming home when we went out, so it wouldn't be a RIP, meaning that we'd need to get all our vehicles "fit" for deployment too. It was at that point that parts and assemblies started coming out of war reserve instead of waiting on Base Workshops and Trade to supply stuff, but it was a proper PITA and a race against time to get stuff ready for the boats. In fact I recall the boat party that accompanied the vehicles was still working on them to some extent afloat.

And when the Chieftain AVRE was developed, then built by the RE Workshops in Willich, there were plenty of Chieftain MBT chassis knocking about to be converted. That won't be the case with Ajax, etc, where fewer units are being ordered/built. So any conversion to a scaled down AVRE/AVLB will only happen after Ajax/Argus/etc is slated for replacement down the line, leaving us with the same issue - Sappers tooling about in older generation vehicles with a separate supply chain for parts and assemblies from their Infantry/Cavalry counterparts. Which has been proven not to work very well in the past. For it was lessons learned from this issue in the Gulf and the Balkans among other Ops that led to the co-development of Trojan/Titan alongside CR2, using many of the same components and assemblies bolted into a different hull but the same basic chassis platform. Any reduction in the use of MBTs without the creation of a platform-sharing Combat/Armoured Engineer variant of Ajax sounds to me like a retrograde step that will reintroduce problems that the Titan/Trojan and CR2 platform-sharing was meant to iron out.

Then again, i'm just a butt-fk ex-Sapper, not a highly trained MOD analyst/strategist. What the blazes do i know...?

[yellowjack]

Yertis said:

yellowjack said:

Knowing what I do now, I'd probably have taken Construction Materials Technician or Surveyor as my trade, and spent my career in a lab somewhere in Berkshire or Nottinghamshire... I'd certainly have stayed the heck away from Armoured Engineering!

Yeah but imagine how boring your posts on PH would be.

It's lucky I'm a highly experienced RE Search operator, with eyes like a st-house rat, otherwise I might have missed your booby-trap and fallen into it...

[yellowjack]

Colour me cynical, but the claim in this video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMdHvfUDPV4

...that the CT-40 cannon on Ajax could fire a 'Smart Fire' burst consisting of a point detonating round to defeat up to 8.3" of reinforced concrete, followed by two air burst rounds through the same hole sounds fanciful at the very least!

Can any vehicle mounted (unguided) weapon system ever be quite that accurate? Or does the point-detonating round just make a massive hole in the target?

[Evanivitch]

yellowjack said:

As was always so, I can't see any reference in the ordered vehicles to any sort of Engineer variant other than the Argus Engineer Recce version. So the Sappers will still be tooling about in Titan/Trojan, and that requires the spares support package for CR2 to continue.

Google Terrier. It's pretty gucci.

[Evanivitch]

yellowjack said:

Colour me cynical, but the claim in this video...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hMdHvfUDPV4

...that the CT-40 cannon on Ajax could fire a 'Smart Fire' burst consisting of a point detonating round to defeat up to 8.3" of reinforced concrete, followed by two air burst rounds through the same hole sounds fanciful at the very least!

Can any vehicle mounted (unguided) weapon system ever be quite that accurate? Or does the point-detonating round just make a massive hole in the target?

Most modern gun systems would do that in ideal conditions, good met data, good round temperature, good boresight.

Will it do it in real-world conditions? By fluke probably.

The CT40 airburst is a nifty round, be interesting to see it used in a ground role and an aerial role.

[yellowjack]

Evanivitch said:

yellowjack said:

As was always so, I can't see any reference in the ordered vehicles to any sort of Engineer variant other than the Argus Engineer Recce version. So the Sappers will still be tooling about in Titan/Trojan, and that requires the spares support package for CR2 to continue.

Google Terrier. It's pretty gucci.

There's a Terrier sat outside Gibraltar Barracks as a kind of "gate guardian". been there a good while too. I love that Wiki says it's "faster and more mobile" than a CET. Given how (un)reliable CET was toward the end of it's service, Westminster Abbey was faster and more mobile than a CET.

I've seen Terrier at work. It's OK, but being portable by air was an overriding requirement for the design, and so it is necessarily compromised in many areas to achieve that. Crews I spoke to weren't overly excited by it when it arrived in service, I know that much. It had a great many problems and reliability issues in development and trials vehicles...

In June 2008 the House Of Commons Select Committee on Defence Seventh Special Report said:

TERRIER

Terrier is an armoured earthmoving vehicle and will replace the current in-service Combat Engineer Tractor. In testing, the prototype vehicle achieved 73 per cent anticipated reliability. This is the single largest contributing factor to the project delay. Another major contributor was the lower than expected availability of the prototype caused by a high incidence of quality problems and a major failure of the steering system. These quality problems were compounded by a lack of effective processes for controlling quality within BAES' supplier base. The delays to the project are therefore primarily due to technical problems.

A thorough review of the Terrier programme is being undertaken, including a re-assessment of risk and uncertainty to ensure that the forward programme will be realistic. The results will be subject to independent review within DE&S and the wider Department, including independent reliability engineering experts. Furthermore, a series of confidence-building measures are being developed to assure the MOD that BAES can deliver against the revised plan. These measures should provide confidence that the enabling activities, such as the establishment of new working practices, necessary for completion of the project will be in place and will provide early warning of potential issues. These confidence-building measures will be updated on a rolling basis to provide a continuous and joint MOD/BAES measure of progress. Further key performance milestones will be added to the contract to ensure that progress is being made in line with the revised plan and that BAES is incentivised to deliver.

[NJH]

WreckedGecko said:

Ayahuasca said:

Need to factor in tactical nukes.

Yes, perhaps I should have said "in a conventional war" or similar. Once you throw tactical nukes into the mix then it becomes far more difficult to predict / guess how such things would pan out.

Remembering of course that both sides have them. As well as their larger cousins.

Russia, and Putin in particular, are known to have a lower bar to acceptable use of nukes than NATO or most Western nations. I still think you would have to be pretty confident that you would not end up looking at an awful lot of ICBM launches to use a tactical nuke in anger though.

That said, some of the Russian Thermobarics (ATBIP) are meant to be at tactical nuke levels of yield. Supposedly they are two or three times the blast yield of the US's MOABs. So perhaps they would throw some of them around...

It is an infamous war game scenario, Russians 'deploy' a tactical nuke against a minor but allied nation. There was a terrifying TV programme about this several years ago. The group of experts they had to play out the scenario ended up despite their best efforts in all out nuclear conflict.

There is a good reason why we don't have tactical nukes, one would only ever use them against a non-nuclear nation which is frankly immoral in all but the most extreme set of circumstances that don't really exist any more.

[famfarrow]

The difficulty with armoured formations is one of mass for which we just don't have and will not have.

Money invested in lighter ATGM, surface to air missiles and a lighter footprint overall would be more effective for the UK.

One mustn't forget we've got to be able to get the tanks there in the first place.... And keep them sustained. It's a long way to the front for a tank.

Much less long for missiles with a distinctly lesser footprint without endangering lives and requiring a vulnerable footprint.

If we can't afford it all we are better not half arsing it. Invest in limited capabilities which hold the adversely at risk and can deliver effect at minimal cost to ourselves and maximum to them.

Rolling ( small) numbers of tanks across Europe for a tank battle is less escalatory (if that is still our worry at that point) than launching missiles to wipe out the enemies tanks soon after they cross a border at less cost and burden to ourselves. Whilst we deliver other effects elsewhere where we have comparative advantage

[DocJock]

yellowjack said:

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..?

Re the bold, back in the early '80s I went on my first major exercise with HQ 1BAOR and was informed that it would be regarded as a success if we slowed the Soviets enough that it took them six days to reach Calais.

[Macron]

So it's now an "Integrated Review" with half the Government involved, running in parallel with the Comprehensive Spending Review, which fills me with joy.

Can't help but feel the insistence we "must be a Tier 1 player" being responded to with "why" and "what is a Tier 1 player anyway?" Could have saved a lot of pain had there been answers, rather than some well-fed chaps in red trousers just blurting out "oh, err, because we must".

ETA linky- https://www.gov.uk/government/news/pm-outlines-new...

Edited by Macron on Tuesday 3rd March 11:50

[deadtom]

hidetheelephants said:

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.

is it possible the Americans wanted to preserve commonality with other NATO forces using the same gun (centurion, Leo 1) while also being able to use left over stock for the M60 that the M1 replaced? Admittedly by the early 80s the 105 was a bit outdated, but it would still have been a formidable weapon against what the potential enemies of the US had at the time (lots and lots of T72 variants, I guess?)