Dozens of tanks to be scrapped in‘redesign’ for army of the future
Larisa Brown, Defence Editor
Wednesday February 24 2021, 12.01am GMT, The Times
Armed Forces
Defence
UK politics
It is understood that the army will spend £1.2 billion on upgrading 150 Challenger 2 tanks
It is understood that the army will spend £1.2 billion on upgrading 150 Challenger 2 tanks
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Dozens of tanks will be scrapped and the remainder upgraded to make them “battle proof for future conflicts” under proposals put forward by the army, sources have told The Times.
The army’s 758 Warrior infantry fighting vehicles could also be retired and replaced by 500 new armoured personnel carriers ahead of schedule.
The “redesign” of the army was discussed during a meeting with ministers at the Ministry of Defence on Monday. Plans are expected to be signed off within days and will be outlined in a “defence command” white paper, due to be published after a wider “integrated” review is published next month.
Sources said some “pretty painful” decisions needed to be made to plug a hole in the budget, despite Boris Johnson having given the military a further £16.5 billion last year to pay for new kit.
It is understood that the army will spend £1.2 billion on upgrading 150 Challenger 2 tanks to a new Challenger 3 specification, with new turrets and a Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore gun used by other Nato forces.
A defence source said that the upgrades would turn “this relic from the Gulf war. . . into something that can fight the next war”. The army’s remaining 77 Challenger 2s will be scrapped to save hundreds of millions of pounds.
The Warrior, which came into service in 1988, will be retired early rather than upgraded as planned, sources said.
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More than 500 Boxer armoured vehicles could be brought into service early
“Is it worth investing in legacy platforms that will go out of service anyway?” a source working on the integrated review of the armed forces said. “Why limp it on when you have the opportunity to invest in new capabilities?”
Ben Wallace, the defence secretary, wants to bring forward the 2023 deployment of the eight-wheel Mechanised Infantry Vehicle, known as the Boxer. The MoD has 523 on order at a cost of £1.5 billion.
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The Boxer is modular vehicle that can be adapted to be a command post, an ambulance, a troop carrier and an infantry fighting vehicle. The vehicles also fit the army’s push for a lighter, more mobile force: Boxers can be deployed to emergencies in a matter of days — compared with the weeks it can take for Warriors and Challengers to arrive by tank transporter — and then hold their own supported by air power, drones and artillery as they wait for the Challengers to arrive.
General Sir Richard Barrons, former chief of what is now Strategic Command, said: “The army recognises they are in the foothills of a profound transformation. This will be an evolution from their way of working to a manned, unmanned and autonomous mix. The army is not in good shape and has been told to get smaller, all of this could make sense so long as we see the rest of the plan. Without that, this is just financially driven stupidity.”
Brigadier Ben Barry, a senior fellow for land warfare at the International Institute for Strategic Studies, said: “If the Challenger tanks are not supported by an infantry fighting vehicle you will have a much less effective force.”
Brigadier John Clark, the army’s head of strategy, said that in history “emerging technology has enabled smaller forces to deliver the same, if not greater, effects on the battlefield”. He told The Times: “We are clear on the requirement for hard power and the warfighting division lies at the heart of that capability, but the way in which we fight is changing all the time and the army’s structures, equipment and way of operating must change accordingly.”
The integrated review of the UK’s defence and foreign policy has been billed as the most radical re-evaluation of Britain’s place in the world since the Cold War.
General Sir Mark Carleton-Smith, the chief of the general staff, failed last year to come up with drastic enough modernisation proposals and was sent away to think again. As one source put it: “The army has to look different at the end of this.”
Under the current plans, the size of the army will be reduced by nearly 10,000 personnel over a decade and as many as four battalions will be axed as the focus shifts to robots and automated machines.
Fighting between Armenia and Azerbaijan over Nagorno-Karabakh has shown the defence secretary the effectiveness of cheap, unmanned air assets against costly tanks — the Ministry of Defence has studied footage of Turkish-made TB2 drones, which cost as little as $1 million, destroying Armenian armour.
However, no one knows what threats the West will face, and in a Nato context, retaining heavy armour is a vital part of being taken seriously.
While the army is about to spend £1.2 billion on upgrading 150 of its ageing Challenger 2 tanks, 77 others are to be retired, saving millions.
The Warrior infantry fighting vehicle, meanwhile, is to be retired early to make way for the Boxer armoured personnel carrier.
This is not a like-for-like swap, however. The vehicles are missing the Warrior’s 30mm cannon and the Boxer may be adapted to ensure infantry are protected in battle.
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