Time To Scrap The Tank? Should The British Army Sunset The Challenger MBT?

 

The British Government will be donating 14 Challenger 2 Main Battle Tanks (MBTs) to Ukraine to assist in the ongoing fight against Russian fascist invaders. This is the latest donation by the UK and forms part of a wider package likely to also include AS90 howitzers. Over the past year, there has been an enormous influx of military support from Britain to Ukraine, arguably second only to the USA in terms of mass and capability. It has made a significant difference in the ability of Ukraine to defend against Russian hostility and help turn the battle around, and will, in time, likely help play a part in their well deserved victory against the unspeakable evil that is the Russian armed forces. 

To deliver this support has come at a price of both stockpiles, vehicles and financial support to Ukraine, reducing British (and wider NATO) holdings as they send more support to the front line. In the short term this will make a real difference, but it comes at the price of drawing down war stocks and reserves and reducing overall vehicle fleet numbers in the medium to longer term as a result, reducing availability and military capability. Is this a price worth paying, and does it represent an opportunity, or a problem for the UK?

The supply of Challengers to Ukraine has to be seen in the context of both the opportunities and limitations the move poses. From a practical perspective 14 tanks is a relatively small amount and will pose a not inconsiderable training and logistic challenge for the Ukrainians, who will need to integrate them into their armed forces. It isn’t yet clear what wider support package is coming with the tanks (e.g. spares, ammunition, transporters, recovery vehicles, wider logistical assets etc) as this will be a constraint on their use. The likelihood is that this relatively small force will require a not inconsiderable amount of support to be effective, but depending on where it is used, it could potentially be very useful. Whether the Ukrainians want to deploy them on the front line or as a means of easing pressure elsewhere is also a good question – the Russians will eagerly want to capture a CR2, and the propaganda value of ex-British Army tanks being paraded by Russian forces would be considerable.

For Ukraine the real goal is likely to be to get their hands on large numbers of Leopard 2 tanks, one of the most capable MBT’s in use today and one that exists in large numbers with a well established supply chain. The donation of a few hundred Leopard 2’s with associated ammunition and spare parts would make a massive difference to the war. The UK here is using political pressure to try to force Germany into acting to approve the donation of Leopards, something which as the original equipment manufacturer, it has to approve regardless of which nation donates them. Whether this is sufficient to move the needle on challenging internal German political debates isn’t yet clear though.

In the UK though the cost of this donation is not inconsiderable. The British Army has over the last year donated a very significant amount of supplies, vehicles and ammunition to the Ukrainian armed forces, at the cost of depleting its own reserves. To add both 14 Challengers and potentially 30 AS90s’ is a huge reduction in UK capability (representing not far off 10% of the planned future UK tank fleet and about 30% of the active AS90 force). While the vehicles donated may come from storage, they will need to draw down on the existing supply chain of spare parts and ammunition to be operationally useful. It is likely that there will be both considerable cannibalisation of other vehicles (in storage and active service) and a reduction of spare vehicles and parts for UK use, as a result. In the short term this is unlikely to be a major issue, but in the medium term it raises serious questions about the stability and credibility of the British Army and its ability to deploy as a ‘heavy army’.

Every vehicle donated to Ukraine and every spare part provided for ongoing support is both good in that it helps contribute to more dead Russians and improves the chances of Ukrainian victory, but also not so good in that it reduces the British Army’s ability to carry out a similar operation for the foreseeable future. The lesson that is being painfully relearned again in Ukraine is that wartime losses are significant and that for any armoured force to remain viable requires a steady flow of replacement vehicles and bodies to ensure a force can hold its ground and go on the offensive when needed. With the UK committed to an ongoing and open ended support to Ukraine, its likely that until the war is done, the need to provide spare parts and support to UK derived weapon systems in country will make it extremely difficult to deploy our own Army on an offensive mission in a similar way elsewhere. Does this pose an opportunity though?

It isn’t exactly a state secret to say that the British Army is not in a great place at the moment. Ostensibly designed to deploy an armoured division on operations, either in Europe or potentially more widely, the Army is struggling with a current mixture of vehicles that could be politely described as ‘ block obsolescent’ or more accurately described as ‘ancient vehicles which in the unlikely event that they could be made serviceable are potential death-traps for their occupants’. The planned arrival into service of replacements like the Ajax is slipping further and further left, with full Ajax operational capability not likely for about another decade (assuming no further delays emerge), while Challenger 3 is unlikely to achieve FOC until the very end of the 2020s (again assuming no delays emerge). The heavy artillery force is reliant on AS90 without any clear plan or funding seemingly in place to replace it, while the wider extremely ‘unsexy’ but utterly critical communications systems enabling the force to talk to each other and commanders to exercise control is equally in serious danger. The British Army in the early 2030s will still be reliant on vehicles that are between 40 – 70 years old to carry out many duties. This isn’t just blogging hyperbole – take this statement for example by the Secretary of State for Defence, given to the House of Lords Defence Committee:

“If I look on paper at the current armoured division we have, it is lacking in all sorts of areas. It is lacking in deep fires, in medium-range air defence, in its electronic warfare and signals intelligence capability, in its modern digital and sensor-to-shooter capability. On top of that, it is probably lacking in weapons stocks”

The planned commitments to Ukraine will only make the current situation even more challenging, with stocks being drawn down on, and no new funding in place for replacement capability. In other words the British Army is rapidly becoming an organ donor for another Army at the cost of its own health.  Is this an opportunity in disguise or is it possibly too late for the Army and its long term aspirations for being a ‘reference Army’

The question has to be whether it is better to try to put the current construct out of its misery and start again from scratch, or to continue with the current plans. One opportunity could be to look at whether, rather than relying on half measures of a few vehicles here, a few vehicles there and suddenly that’s 30-50% of your 155mm artillery gone, whether the time is right to declare an operational ‘time out’. In other words should the UK go long on supporting Ukraine, committing almost the entirety of its armoured capability and heavy artillery to Ukrainian forces, enabling the proper access to warstocks, ammunition, spare parts and give them everything we have in order to defeat Russia, and accept that for the next few years, the role of the British Army is to be the supporting force?

This may sound hyperbolic, but there is some logic to it. As noted the bulk of UK spares are likely to be committed to Ukraine, meaning any future deployment of UK forces while the war is ongoing would either reduce the supply to Ukraine, or reduce the amount of vehicles the UK could deploy and sustain on operations. Neither is likely to be politically palatable as an option. But maintaining an Army that on paper is able to deploy a Division sends misleading signals to NATO partners about the scale of commitment that the UK can make to NATO in the event of conflict. However given Russian forces are being chewed up in considerable numbers in Ukraine, along with significant degradation of their own warstocks and resources, it could be argued that for some years to come the Russians are not an Army of concern when it comes to threatening the territorial integrity of NATO members.

At the same time it seems exceptionally unlikely that the UK or other allies would deploy heavy armoured forces to the Middle East, while any other potential conflict location is going to be a war which requires light troops for by the time the UK (or other Western ally) could ship out, train and deploy a worked up armoured force, the conflict is likely to be over. This means we have a window of opportunity to both significantly step up support to Ukraine, going all in on provision of capabilities, while also looking to ‘sunset’ older capabilities and free up funding to accelerate replacements sooner than may otherwise have been thought possible. Such a move raises interesting questions about what matters more for UK defence priorities – is it sovereignty or is it operational capability?

British defence policy has long prioritised ensuring that the sovereign industrial base is able to design, manufacture, support and upgrade a variety of highly capable military products capable of meeting some very demanding requirements. Ranging from nuclear warheads, cryptographic equipment, certain types of armour and ammunition and major warships, the ability to ensure that something has a ‘union flag on it’ drives much decision making in Whitehall. The British Army has long insisted on operating British designed tanks, and historically the UK has been a designer, manufacturer and exporter of a series of very good tanks, including Chieftain, Challenger and Challenger 2, all of which have been exported to other nations.  But the days when a British Army order would be for several hundred, potentially into the thousands, of tanks is gone forever.

Under current plans the Challenger 3 update, which will take the existing Challenger 2 chassis and parts and be upgraded with a new gun, updates across the platform and attempts made to ensure that it is credible as a ‘peer level’ main battle tank alongside the Leopard and Abrams for years to come. The programme is now on contract for a total cost of around £1.3bn, and the existing force of 227 hulls will reduce to 148 updated Challenger 3 tanks. This means that assuming a rough allowance for training, repairs and a small maintenance reserve, the future British Army will probably be able to deploy about 50 tanks maximum on any future operation – a significant decrease from the days of BAOR when hundreds stood ready to move into operations at very short notice.

What Challenger 3 gives the UK is a sovereign tank that it has complete control over and which it can export / update or do as it wishes without foreign intervention. As Ukraine has shown, the ability of a third party to refuse exports can be problematic and reduces national control over a sovereign defence capability.  But this sovereignty comes at an ever increasing cost – Challenger 3 will take vehicles that are nearly 40 years old and run them for another 15-20 years before they need replacement. Even if the vehicle is totally refurbished, you are still relying on a nearly 60 year old hull as the basis of your tank force by the end of its life, which isn’t ideal. The market for sales of the Challenger 3 will be probably non-existent given that no new hulls are being produced – at best some small orders may be placed by Oman or maybe Ukraine post war for upgraded tanks, but its unlikely to amount to much. This means that in the late 2030s (e.g. no more than 15 years time) the UK needs to have some serious discussions about what Challenger 3 replacement looks like, and if its even possible.  There is a strong argument in favour of taking steps to maintain a sovereign design and manufacturing capability of heavy armour, but the UK no longer has an indigenous ability to manufacture MBT’s, with the last plant having closed some years ago. As such any new design would be extremely expensive and reduce even further the number of hulls that could be afforded. Given this, is it better for UK policy makers to ask whether what matters more is the ability to deploy an armoured division en masse that can keep up with its peers, or to sustain the industrial base of the nation to give control over our capabilities?

The counter argument for stepping away from Challenger 3 and AS90 is that the hulls can instead be fully given over to Ukraine, ensuring maximum support is offered. This also allows a once in a generation opportunity to reset training and bring an entirely new capability into service (perhaps retaining a small MBT training unit in the UK to keep skills alive). There seems to be two main options, either the Abrams or the Leopard. The French have gone down the British route of upgrading their own Leclerc MBT (some 200 are being upgraded now), while the others remain available in large numbers and through a variety of licenced manufacturers.

The benefit of looking to buy foreign is firstly that any company approached would potentially be prepared to make the UK an extremely attractive offer to do so – for example building an indigenous manufacturing factory in the UK that could also complete other orders (and generate a long term industrial skills base for future orders and replacements). It would also increase the availability of spare parts and ammunition, as these could be drawn from allies and would be far cheaper when bought in bulk than just for a UK derived design. The savings would be potentially enormous and allow more to be purchased, giving the UK significantly expanded reserves for wartime use if required. It would also improve interoperability, either with the US or NATO peers who already use either design, and position the UK well to participate in future replacements on a multi-national basis (e.g. work with US or Germany to help design and build the next generation of tank).

The downside is that the UK would no longer operate its own tank design and would have to take a vehicle not intended for UK use, and which has no track record of usage in UK forces and integrate it. The result may be less than optimal and require extensive trials and redesign to make usable (the old adage, there is no such thing as ‘off the shelf’ remains true to this day). Additionally the UK would no longer be able to exert the same level of control over its armoured forces disposition, or use them as a tool of foreign policy in the same way. Gifting to Ukraine or others becomes a multilateral lengthy debate, not a unilateral means of leading the debate.

There are two questions that need to be asked – firstly, to what extent does it matter that British troops have access to a British designed and built tank? Secondly, where will they be used and why? The answer to the first question is ‘possibly not’ – after all in WW2 extensive use was made of US designed Grants and Shermans as a stop gap and vital means of putting large numbers of tanks into service quickly.  The UK needs tanks that can be used, and lost, and replaced quickly – in the armoured battle mass matters a great deal more than at sea where fewer but more capable naval vessels will usually significantly overmatch a larger number of less capable ships. Is it time to buy an interim capability now to help support Ukraine, provide a bigger number of working and supported platforms as part of a deal with HM Treasury to fund a once in a generation ‘new model army’ that buys a large number of cheaper equipment to utterly reequip the military for the next 15-20 years, which would in turn buy time to take longer term decisions on how the UK can work with allies to develop the next generation of MBTs and other platforms as needed. Or does it make more sense to retain a sovereign army now, able to deploy in a crisis if required, but accepting that to retain this means compromises in both the scale of what can be deployed and the credibility of its sustainability and support?

The second question of where they will operate is also hard to answer. The most likely place that the UK will operate heavy armour in the foreseeable future is in NATO, most likely in the Baltic States as a means of deterring Russia from doing something stupid. The need is for a force that can operate with peers and allies, be quickly reinforced with meaningful capabilities and in turn help make a credible contribution to defending NATO allies from attack. It seems exceptionally unlikely given the current international climate, the strain on resources across allies and the difficulty of deploying large formations at distance that the UK would send a major armoured force into the Gulf again. Given this, any MBT capability is best seen as a NATO asset, not a global one. In the context of NATO the UK is still unclear if it sees its contribution as that of a predominantly maritime/air power with some limited supporting land assets, or if it wants to make the investment to see the land contribution be on a par with the other two. If the answer is that the Army needs tanks to turn up and operate with NATO ‘on the day’ then is it better to invest in tanks and other platforms that can easily work with NATO allies and provide both mass and well understood capabilities, helping reinforce the UK claim to leadership, or is it better to try and retain a purely national capability to demonstrate the UK’s claim to be a leading military power?

There isn’t an easy answer to these questions, but the current Integrated Review refresh provides an opportunity to ask them. What is it that the Army should be capable of doing, how much ambition should it have and is its role to be a modern highly advanced force with robots / drones and cyber that is cutting edge and nationally owned, or is its role to be a subordinate formation within a US or German led force that can hold ground and take the fight to a very capable peer enemy? If the former then the focus needs to be on sovereignty and capability over numbers, while if the latter, then the time is probably right to focus away from the idea of a British designed tank and far more on the British designed bits of kit that are bolted onto the tank. The situation as it currently stands though isn’t good enough. In the words of the current Chief of the Defence Staff:

“the division that we want to put out [will be] a much better one in five to 10 years’ time … we can throw out a division now but it is not the division that we would want, and I do not think it would be of the quality that the US would expect alongside it”

The question for policy makers now is whether that much better division in 5-10 years’ time is one that is regenerating after a capability holiday taken to ensure Ukraine can properly defeat Russia, and derived from new equipment and capabilities that are already in service elsewhere, or one that is more mixed in its equipment from the very old to the very new. Whatever outcome is chosen, it is vital that the right decision is made to support the women and men who volunteer to serve on the front line and give them the best possible chances of success in war.