Tanks for nothing - Why it does not matter if the British Army has fewer tanks than Cambodia.

The Times published an article last week focusing on the fact that under current MOD plans, the British Army will reduce its holdings of Challenger 2 (CR2) tanks from 227 to roughly 150 tanks. 

This will give the UK a total tank fleet that ranks 56^th in the world, down from the current position of 48^th (according to the IISS), giving it a force smaller than that of Burma, Cambodia or Serbia.

Is this reduction a sign that the British Army is now outgunned and unable to pose a credible military threat, or is it a pragmatic investment decision intended to keep the Army at the very front of global capability?

This article is intended to focus on the wider discussion around capability. It is emphatically not an article on technical details about the CR2 or wider tanks. Humphrey does not possess anywhere near enough experience to comment knowledgeably on the technical parameters of tanks. In these circumstances he would strongly recommend following highly experienced analysts like Nicholas Drummond, or accessing the commercial research at defence publishers such as Shepard Media. With that caveat in place, it is safe to proceed!

CR2 Livefiring- Image by Ministry of Defence; © Crown copyright

The Main Battle Tank (MBT) remains one of the most formidable components of any nations army, capable of advancing at speed, providing superb firepower and support to other teeth arms, or providing defensive support, the tank has been the centrepiece of most nations army’s ORBATS for decades.

Since WW2 the UK developed its armoured capability primarily as a deterrence against Russia. The presence in Germany of 3-4 armoured divisions as part of the British Army of the Rhine (BAOR), intended to be capable of stopping a Warsaw Pact offensive operation was a powerful symbol of British commitment to NATO. Throughout the Cold War period, roughly one third of the British Army was permanently based in Germany and the Low Countries ready to deploy at very short notice if called out on ‘Active Edge’.

More widely the UK deployed its armour in varying levels of commitment to Korea, Suez, the 1991 Gulf War, the Balkans and OP TELIC. The size of the force deployed varied from a small handful of tanks through to an entire armoured division. But, one constant though throughout this was that the UK has never deployed its MBT fleet in a purely national operation – the MBT force has always been used as part of a contribution to a wider coalition operation.

Under the 2015 Strategic Defence and Security Review the UK set out the aspiration of being able to sustain a brigade on operations on an enduring basis, or with sufficient notice, be able to deploy a Division sized force to participate in operations. The current plan under Army 2020 is for there to be three regiments of MBTs as part of the wider ‘Strike Brigade’ concept.

The sole UK MBT in service is the Challenger 2, which entered service in 1994 and is now, while still a capable unit, beginning to show its age.  The MOD has budgeted approximately £700m to upgrade the force to keep it relevant and future proofed well into the 2030s, and possibly beyond. This longevity is not unusual in MBT fleets – the German Leopard 2 design dates back to the 1970s and the initial M1 Abrams entered service in 1980.

Given all this, what exactly is the issue that people are concerned about, and does it matter? In practical terms the phrase ‘rankings’ is a meaningless concept – beloved of think tanks but in practical terms of little direct relevance to modern military operations and capability Counting the number of tanks a nation possesses and then determining its military standing from it is a singularly odd way to ascertain a national ability to wage war on others.

Some nations possess very large numbers of tanks indeed -  others barely any. Russia, China and North Korea are some of the worlds largest tank fleet operators, with thousands of tanks listed on their order of battle. Russia is a nation built for tank warfare – large open borders, and endless steppes that have over the last century played host to some of the biggest armoured battles ever seen. Having visited the Kursk salient many years ago, Humphrey can personally attest to the sheer size of the Eastern Front, and how a militarized society can make good use of armour.

Russia also benefits from an outstanding rail network able to quickly move tanks and other heavy elements of military power such as APCs and self-propelled guns around easily, and has the space and reserves of conscript manpower from previous generations to draw on to crew its simple but effective designs, such as the T64 and T72.

This is underpinned by a national philosophy which is best summed up as ‘don’t throw away any military asset that, no matter how old it is, could be used to kill an invader’. There are storehouses across Russia full of elderly tanks that with a bit of TLC could, probably function as a last gasp capability. Russia regularly exercises its armoured capability, mobilising forces and moving them around the country to test readiness against the theoretical threat of a NATO invasion.

Russia then is a nation intended for operating tanks, but only when supported by a logistics chain that can support the front. Start moving away from the Russian landmass and their ability to sustain a force at any distances is quickly called into doubt. While Russia may ‘rank’ as the largest tank operator in the world, much of this is only a threat to any nation foolish enough to invade Russia in the first place.

For many of the countries on the list though, it may be sensible to ask when you see statistics listing hundreds of tanks in service, how many of them are operational and how many are credible threats if they were a foe? For example many of the Gulf nations have extremely large holdings of tanks, buying them in significant quantities with scant regard for interoperability – for example some nations operate both US and Russian equipment, which are not renowned for working well together.

Some of these nations are high on starred officers, and low on working level manpower and track mileage. It is reasonable to assume that a great many of the vehicles held have not really been operated as part of a formed military unit, but instead form the physical part of an insurance deal designed to secure external support in an emergency from Western partners (e.g. buy enough equipment to ensure that someone wants to come and help in a crisis).

African Tank Graveyard

Other nations may have both elderly and poorly maintained tanks that are of little practical operational threat. One only has to look at armies in places like Africa to see theoretical ORBATs suggesting the existence of hundreds of tanks, when on the ground the reality is that many of these vehicles are either no longer working or perhaps no longer exist. Just because a trail of papers suggests that X years ago a country purchased 200 tanks does not mean that it necessarily has 200 operational tanks today. In some cases the answer could be closer to zero.

The other question that matters here is ‘who are these tanks intended to fight against’? China and the DPRK have exceptionally large holdings of tanks in part due to either clear perceived threats, or in part due to large borders that are threatened by nations with armoured capabilities. It makes perfect sense to have hundreds of tanks deployed on a border against a potential foe who may use them against you.

For the UK though, there is no similar sense of direct threat requiring large numbers of tanks to be held in service. At the risk of stating the obvious, as an island nation there is no nation on earth with the capability to conduct an amphibious landing into the UK which could put MBTs ashore in enough numbers as to pose an existential threat to the Kingdom.

During the Cold War there was a clear threat in the form of the Soviet 3^rd Shock Army, which was lined up, facing off against BAOR units. It made an enormous amount of sense to contribute to a NATO operation to deter Moscow from chancing their luck, and ensure that they could not force the border and take over Western Germany.

To that end generations of British soldiers were stationed there training for a war that they hoped would never come. To this day there are still serving Cold War veterans who even into the late 1980s knew where they would deploy to, and the likely exact spot in the field or woods where they would dig their trenches and realistically be killed.

This force though was essentially a static one, designed to operate defensively and underpinned by an enormous static logistical and support network stretching from the Inner German Border all the way back to Antwerp and then the UK. The British Army was able to sustain armour in large numbers in part because it had the threat to face, the space to operate and the support network in place to enable this to occur. To this day the subject of how well supported BAOR was through the extensive rear communications zone efforts, and the widespread workshops (such as in Belgium) designed to repair and support UK units is not widely known or told, but deserves much great recognition.

This matters because when people look back to the size of the British Army in 1990 and look at how many tanks we had then compared to now, they forget that the Army’s MBT capability was essentially a static garrison force waiting to conduct a defensive campaign against a peer threat where it expected to take heavy losses and probably operate very quickly in an NBC environment. It was not intended to be a deployable force capable of operating across the planet on an enduring basis.

This is why when people talk about how many tanks were deployed in 1991 to the Gulf War (some 220 Challenger 1’s were deployed) they forget that this was the first time since Suez that the UK had operated heavy armour overseas. It took many months to get this force into place, and it came at the cost of gutting the operational capability of the remaining BAOR units, who found their logistical support chains hammered in order to support the forces assigned to GRANBY.

The harsh, and perhaps slightly uncomfortable reality for the UK is that OP GRANBY required nearly 6 months of build up at the cost of gutting wider armoured warfare capability – proving that away from home, having 900 tanks is irrelevant if you are operating outside normal parameters and are having to effectively cannibalise or mothball most of them to keep 220 in the Gulf.

By contrast OP TELIC saw over 100 tanks deployed, but a significantly shorter lead in time for the deployment – testament to the significant investments made in the intervening period in logistical capabilities.

Under current plans while the Army may ‘only’ have around 150 modernised tanks, it will be able in a crisis to deploy the bulk of them again if required as part of the commitment to a deployable Division. It is better to look at the bigger picture and note that while there may be a smaller number of tanks overall in service, the numbers that can be deployed have remained relatively constant throughout this time.

The next issue to consider is the age-old question of quality versus quantity. It may be appealing to some people to have hundreds of tanks listed on your national order of battle, but if these are older tanks with lower capability and less able to operate in complex situations, or with coalition partners, then is this a help or a hindrance?

The UK is clear that it sees future large-scale military operations as a coalition affair, and that any contribution will involve UK forces working alongside other nations. Realistically, given that the UK has no real ability (or need) to launch an isolated amphibious assault against another country featuring tanks, any future major operation will involve working with, at the very least, host nation support.

The reality is that in these circumstances, is the UK a more useful partner nation if it can provide a modern force that can work alongside others, or a more dated (but numerically larger) force that is unable to keep up with other nations? At present part of the real appeal of the British Armed Forces to peer nations is their ability to work as part of a coalition. In both GW1 and 2 the UK was able to work as an integrated part of US efforts in an almost seamless manner.

In part this is due to the fact that the UK has chosen to invest in quality, not mass, and that its assets can deploy as a ‘day one’ peer alongside the US. This gives the UK the ability to influence US planning and operational decisions because they will be in the fight alongside each other. If the UK were to save cash by scrimping on upgrades to buy back mass, would this necessarily continue?

Right now a force of 150 tanks continues to help secure the UK position as a ‘day one’ partner of choice in a conflict. Given this force will be able to deploy roughly the same number of units as previous major conflicts, is it worth risking the wider benefits from a close operational partnership to have more (not necessarily deployable) tanks on the books?

The wider issue too is that tank numbers are just one part of the overall challenge. Tanks are an extremely effective tool to carry out military operations, but they also require a lot of support. One of the reasons why the UK continues to possess some of the worlds most capable armed forces is because of the decision to prioritise investment in areas like logistics, communications and other tail support – even at the cost of the ‘teeth’.

Investing in more tanks does not mean the UK magically becomes a more effective military power feared by its enemies overnight. Rather more tanks places pressure on the existing supply chain and associated engineering and support detachments from the REME and RLC.

Reading comments on this issue, you often see people casually throwing around numbers of tanks saying ‘oh 150 isn’t enough, we need at least 250 to be effective’ but then ignoring the many questions around how this would be supported or operated. It is important to not see tank numbers in isolation – an uplift only makes sense if you are investing much more widely to buy capability, able to deploy a coherent force rather than just one part of it. This is significantly more expensive, and would require a major change to plans for both equipment, and more critically, numbers of people.

Looking to the future, it is worth asking what role the tank has in UK defence planning and whether it continues to be worth the investment or not. For decades the British Army relied on tanks as the very heart of their deterrence posture – knowing that the existence of multiple armoured divisions in Germany presented a clear problem for Russia, who would need to tackle them. This in turn made for a clear case for investing in large numbers of tanks, and the associated permanent infrastructure to house and support them.

In the 21^st Century the role of tanks is subtly different. The existence of the CR2 provides planners with a number of options for operations. It can deploy in small forces optimised for supporting troops in the complex world of operations like TELIC and HERRICK – in those circumstances the existence of heavy armour can be invaluable in countering certain threats, or deterring potential aggressors. The role of the CR2 detachments on OP TELIC, particularly in its later years are a good example of this. 

Alternatively heavy armour remains a great ‘kick the door in’ capability in the form of a deployable division to help support coalition operations – such as TELIC or the Balkans.  

The former role does not require many tanks to be effective – only a relatively small batch of CR2s were converted for operations in the latter parts of TELIC (sometimes, apparently, called informally the ‘streetfighter’ variant), and this deployment was easily sustainable from the existing force, and would continues to be so even under existing force plans.

By contrast the requirement for a globally deployable division is something that would stretch the Army considerably. It would require the bulk of available forces to be deployed, and if done would probably disrupt the Army deployment plot for years to follow as a result due to the need to refocus a significant amount of units on a new task.

This sort of capability would realistically take some months to deploy, and also place pressure on the existing logistics and support force, which is structured to sustain two ‘strike’ brigades. Calls for more tanks may sound sensible, but the wider underpinning logistical numbers are not in place to sustain or repair them – in other words they would form an unsupportable force that could not deploy, or realistically operate without considerable wider uplifts across the Army as a whole – which would cost a significant amount of money.

The value of the deployable division is that it demonstrates a clear symbol of UK government commitment to resolving an issue – it is the steel fist at the heart of the wider glove of British power. A potential foe knows that if the UK is deploying this capability, it is serious about resolving a situation because it represents a ‘one use only’ force that cannot be replaced ‘in situ’ by another equivalent force. In these circumstances, it is again difficult to see the need for large numbers of additional MBTs outside of those attached to the Division because there is no means or ability to deploy them.

Consequently, while 150 tanks may sound low to some, it realistically represents a sensible compromise between the requirement to support small scale deployments and the ability to do a ‘one off’ big deployment.

While some people may not be happy that the number feels low, a better question to ask is how many of the nations in the rankings, how many can deploy a division anywhere in the world and operate it as part of an integrated force with the US in a coalition operation? Realistically the UK and US are the only nations that could deploy and sustain a division out there – saying the UK has less tanks than Cambodia is only an issue if the UK were taking decisions to cut capabilities that Cambodia is acquiring.

Too many people assume that numbers equate to capability – they do not. The UK has taken a pragmatic view that quality matters more than mass overall for defence planning purposes. It makes far more sense to invest heavily in a smaller number of good assets than spread the money across lots of less useful platforms. The nations that routinely rank higher with vast numbers of tanks are rarely ones that are global players.

It is also worth noting that many nations who aspire to work at the higher end of military operations have significantly reduced their MBT holdings in recent years –France, Spain and Germany now only have around 3-400 tanks, and also lack the ability to deploy them in large numbers. The trend is increasingly towards maintaining a relatively small core of tanks, supported by a more widely deployable medium range suite of vehicles.

This lack of deployability is perhaps the biggest restraint in effective use of tanks, primarily because they take so long to get anywhere. The most recent overseas exercise involving CR2 was in Oman, for Saif Sarrea 3, which represented the first time in years that the UK had deployed armour into the Middle East.

The sheer level of footprint required for exercising heavy armour is such that it is not terribly useful as a means of defence engagement. Unlike a warship which can ramp up and down defence activity very quickly, going from an exercise one day to steaming into contested waters a few days later, the heavy armour force requires a lot of time, effort and strategic sealift capability to move anywhere outside of Europe. In an era of global presence and engagement, MBTs are less valuable than many other tools available to the Army – much like the VANGUARD class of SSBN, the MBT is primarily a tool of ultimate deterrence, not a practical force for day to day engagement and exercising globally.

One of the main arguments for a larger holding of tanks is the mass required to absorb casualties against a peer level threat. This usually takes the form of a debate about how to protect the Baltic states from Russian aggression and whether the UK could do anything about it with an armoured force if Russia attacked, and how could we cope if heavy casualties were incurred?

It is first important to note that against most opponents the modern British MBT remains a highly survivable asset – since WW2 ended, Humphrey estimates a total of 7 British MBTs have been damaged or destroyed in combat. 5 in Korea (most of which returned to service), one CR2 was heavily damaged in Iraq (taking multiple RPG hits prior to eventually being penetrated) and CR2 was destroyed in a dreadful ‘friendly fire’ incident.  Against this, the tally of destroyed enemy armour is considerable – for instance over 300 Iraqi tanks destroyed without loss in OP GRANBY.

In the event of a ground combat with a peer enemy then there is definitely a risk of taking higher casualties. But the wider scenario of facing off against this sort of threat in the current structures is unlikely – the UK does not maintain large forces in the Baltic, and any invasion would risk triggering Article 5, bringing NATO into direct conflict with Russia- a war that would potentially quickly escalate into dangerous areas.

Facing off against this sort of highly specific threat requires an entirely different force posture built around deploying armour and other defensive capabilities long term in the Baltic in a manner similar to the BAOR of old. The reality is that any invasion there is likely to be over long before a large-scale division could reach the scene in a formed manner to defend the Baltics.

More widely, the loss of so many tanks in one campaign would be reflective of a much bloodier conflict against a peer threat. Do we as a nation wish to shift our defence posture and policy to prepare for this scenario, investing more heavily in the Army as a result, or is it better to assume that such an outcome is highly unlikely and continue to invest in armour as a fundamentally deployable capability in a different manner?

This is not to say that mass doesn’t matter, or that casualties are not likely – there is always a risk of casualties. But, what matters more than tank numbers are tank crew numbers – it doesn’t matter how many tanks you have if you don’t have enough crews, or supporting enablers to get them back into action quickly. More to the point, if we are preparing for another war with Russia where we expect to take casualties of this magnitude, what is the point where we stop and ask ourselves where the escalation threshold is?

Does it make sense to bring large conventional forces into the fore again, or do we have to assume that conventional deterrence in the Baltic will only work if backed up by tactical nuclear capability? There is a real risk of starting down a path of justifying heavy armour for the Army that ends up with a reconfiguration back to the policy and posture of the late 1980s of a force designed to hold off an invasion long enough for the nuclear weapons to be launched. This is not somewhere any sane planner wants to go to.

It is also worth noting that in terms of pure capability, the Army of today is vastly different from the one of 1990 – the Gulf War was fought with different artillery, ISTAR and aviation assets supporting the armoured forces. Today's Army has a vast range of new capabilities such as Apache helicopters armed with hellfire missiles, or the astonishingly capable Brimstone missile mounted on Typhoon jets to handle many of the threats that previously required a tank to solve. Just because the means of handling the problem have changed does not mean our ability to fix it hasn’t gone away.

There has been a significant investment in new equipment, such as a new generation of Apache helicopters ordered recently, or the introduction to service of Javelin missiles, that continue to enhance wider lethality. When coupled with the major investment in areas like strategic airlift and shipping, and the wider investment in logistics and other enablers, it is clear that the British Army remains one of the most deployable forces in the world.

Defence policy is about doing the most you can with the budget available to you. The MOD has a very generous budget settlement, but it needs to ruthlessly prioritise this against a range of requirements. Calls to buy more upgraded tanks not only place pressure on the system but would mean deprioritising something else instead. A good question to ask is what should be sacrificed in order to keep the Army at 227 CR2 and is this a price worth paying relative to the likely operational gains? Given the Army is in control of its equipment budget, this is a decision that the Generals, and not the politicians, can make – that they have chosen based on rigorous analysis to do this is a sign of where the Army thinks its priorities lie.

It is clear that heavy armour has an absolutely vital role to play at the heart of UK defence planning, but this is a capability game and not a numbers game. Worrying about whether we have more or less tanks than Cambodia takes attention away from the bigger issues about investing in the right mixture of forces to keep the UK relevant as a global player, and to ensure we retain an effective military capable of full spectrum operations. Tanks matter, but we must avoid being distracted by calls to buy more tanks to outrank someone when it doesn’t necessarily help the Army to do so.

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