Sebastien Roblin
Over a century ago, as trench warfare imposed a seemingly perpetual blood-soaked stalemate in World War I, a commission in the United Kingdom made military history. It adapted technology from ‘Creeping Grip” treaded tractors imported from Chicago into armored war machines that could negotiate mud-soaked battlefields and trenches, seemingly impervious to bullets and shrapnel, and blast enemies with their own sponson-mounted cannons and machine guns.
These breakdown-prone, rhombus-shaped “land ships” are considered to be the world’s first tanks.
Today, the UK may make history again as an integrated review of defense and foreign policy mulls retiring the British Army’s fleet of Challenger 2 main battle tanks in favor of more funding for satellites and cyber-warfare. That could make the UK potentially the first major military power to give up on the main battle tank entirely.
The fate of the British Army’s armored fighting vehicles is linked to fundamental questions as to what role the UK should play in NATO and future military coalitions.
Since 1990, the United Kingdom has progressively downsized its tank fleet to nearly one-quarter its former size. Today the British Army officially retains 227 Challengers 2s , but plans only to modernize 148.
These would be fielded in only two tank regiments (the Royal Lancers and Royal Tank Regiment) with 56 tanks each in the 3rd Mechanised Division, with the remainder set aside for training and reserve use. The Challengers fight alongside hundreds of 28-ton Warrior fighting vehicles used to transport infantry into battle and engage lighter vehicles and personnel targets with their 30-millimeter cannons.
A Warrior armoured fighting vehicle crew take shade from the searing heat of the Oman desert, where ... [+] PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES
With its heavy Chobham/Dorchester armor and unique 120-millimeter L30 rifled gun, the Challenger 2 and the preceding Challenger 1 were once considered slower but slightly better armored peers of the U.S. M1 Abrams tank. And for a good measures, the Challenger came equipped with their own tea boiler.
Challengers steam-rolled Iraqi tanks in wars in 1991 and 2003 with not a single one being lost to enemy fire. In the 1991 Gulf War, Challenger 1 were credited with destroying 300 Soviet-built tanks, including one knocked out from nearly 3 miles, the longest-range tank-on-tank kill in history. In 2003 , some Challenger 2s sustained over a dozen hits from anti-tank rockets without being knocked out.
An Iraqi Sentry Post that was booby trapped is blown up near a Challenger Tank as 40 Commando Royal ... [+] PA IMAGES VIA GETTY IMAGES
However, both the Challenger 2 and Warrior have not received the upgrades of their American and German peers, and now badly need them if they are to remain viable through 2035-2040. For the Challenger 2, that includes a new engine uprated from 1,200 to 1,500 horsepower, modern fire control systems, sensors and computers, and a more conventional 120-millimeter smoothbore gun that can use the same ammunition as the Abrams and German Leopard 2 tank.
The UK may award a contract to a BAE-Rheinmetall joint-venture, but the projected cost has risen from £400 million to £1.5 billion just as the British economy enters a new period of decline due to Brexit and the Covid pandemic.
This context has undoubtedly helped energize the opinion that the British Army would be better of doing away with the expense of both the shrinking Challenger and Warriors fleets and their upgrades entirely.
Broadly, the critique is that tanks are both too difficult to transport to the battlefield, and too vulnerable to modern guided anti-tank weapons.
Army chief Sir Mark Carlton Smith recently characterized tanks as a “sunset” capability versus “sunrise” technologies such as cyber and electronic warfare. Military historian Max Hastings argued in an editorial in the Sunday Times against feeling “sentimental” about a weapon of war he says is just as much past its prime as horse cavalry in the World Wars. He could point to the fact that the U.S. Marine Corps too is retiring its tank units despite the major contributions they made in prior conflicts.
However, the tank retirement concept is receiving push back from some senior officers, even from outside of the Army. Air Chief Marshal Stirrup told The Times described the cuts as “eviscerating” and “dressing up financial pressures as a capability source.” Another senior officer told The Week that a British Army without tanks would be seen as “not credible” by fellow NATO countries.
To be fair, defense spending cuts have drastically shrunk nearly every sector of the British military since the 2008 economic recession. It’s also uncertain whether the UK will be able to afford a next-generation stealth jet or airplanes for its second aircraft carrier.
Armored fighting vehicles remain much cheaper than jet fighters but are harder to employ. That’s because it’s very difficult to transport dozens of 70- to 80-ton vehicles to distant warzones and supply the gas-guzzling beasts with monstrous amounts of fuel. And tanks simply aren’t applicable to the kind of stand-off-range strikes and light-footprint special operations warfare Western militaries have favored in the Middle East and North Africa.
For low-intensity conflicts, lighter armored vehicles often bring adequate firepower to bear and are more practical in terms of cost and logistics. That said, NATO tank units have enjoyed some combat successes in deployments to Afghanistan and Bosnia.
HELMAND PROVINCE, AFGHANISTAN - MAY 19: British Soldiers from the B Squadron of The Light Dragoons ... [+] GETTY IMAGES
Still, critics of the tank argue the UK’s shrinking main battle tank fleet is a sensible sacrifice to free up funding for more readily useable forms of military power, such as F-35 stealth jets, anti-submarine frigates, lighter Ajax and Boxer armored vehicles, and especially more satellite, air defense and cyberwarfare units.
However, there is one arena where main battle tanks are pretty tough to replace: helping NATO hold Russia’s larger, tank-heavy army at bay in the Baltics. And that at a time when tensions between Europe and Russia, and particularly the UK and Russia, remain high for reasons ranging from election interference to a deadly botched assassination attempts.
Indeed, according to The Times the British military has been sounding out its European partners as to their attitude about such a change. Likely, they are less than thrilled.
Currently, Russian is estimated to field 2,700 tanks in active-duty units, including 760 in the area around the Baltic states. While Western tanks retain qualitative advantages over Russian armor and would benefit from better air support, the quantity disparity still risks growing too great—particularly as NATO cannot, by agreement with Russia, permanently deploy forces to the Baltics.
SALISBURY, ENGLAND - JULY 03: Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank during a training exercise on Salisbury ... [+] GETTY IMAGES
Currently, Challenger 2 tanks are deployed in the rotating Enhanced Forward Presence in Estonia. Should a conflict erupt in the Baltics, the roughly 130 NATO tanks rotating in the sector would face the unenviable task of attempting to delay an overwhelming assault long enough for air power and reinforcements to arrive.
King of the Battlefield No More?
Even without tanks, the UK would still retain a variety of armored fighting vehicles including forthcoming Boxer 8x8 wheeled personnel carriers, Scimitar and Ajax armored reconnaissance vehicles, and AS90 self-propelled howitzers. But these are not designed to engage in prolonged, close fights against enemy heavy mechanized forces.
The main battle tank is an apex predator of land warfare designed to combine high levels of protection, firepower and mobility to over-match potential adversaries, notably including enemy tanks. Tanks can provide survivable and cost-effective direct fire support in tough fights, spearhead offensives seeking to rapidly penetrate deep into enemy lines, and rapidly counter-attack such offensives by enemy mechanized forces.
GOLAN HEIGHTS, ISRAEL - 1973/10/17: Destroyed tank in the foreground. Soldiers in working tanks in ... [+] LIGHTROCKET VIA GETTY IMAGES
Since the 1973 Yom Kippur War it has been fashionable to argue that guided anti-tank missiles render the tank obsolete. Most recently, analysts can point to conflicts in Lebanon, Syria and Yemen in which both older M60 Patton and Russian-built tanks, as well as more heavily armored Abrams, Merkava and Leopard 2 tanks suffered heavy losses to anti-tank missiles and rockets.
But, effective and affordable anti-tank weapons have existed nearly as long as the tank and inflicted significant losses—and yet did not prevent tanks from playing decisive roles in both World Wars, Arab-Israeli and Indo-Pakistani conflicts.
Indeed, starting in the 1980s tank defenses against missiles began improving radically thanks to technologies including composite armor, explosive-reactive armor bricks, and active protection systems that may decoy or even shoot down incoming projectiles. However, these innovations also contribute to the inflating cost and weight of main battle tanks.
The logistical problems inherent to bringing main battle tanks to the frontline haven’t change the fact that they remain highly in demand wherever there is a possibility of intense land warfare. And while NATO may hope to lean on its superior air power to neutralize more numerous mechanized forces, likely only limited air support could be provided in the early days of a conflict until enemy fighters and air defense units are suppressed.
A decision to retire the British tank fleet would essentially be an admission by London that it can no longer afford to a maintain a full spectrum of military capabilities, and would prefer to specialize in air-, naval- and electronic-warfare domains which it sees as more relevant in the 21st century.
That may make sense given the poor economy of scale inherent to the UK’s shrinking tank fleet, but the risk remains that once institutional knowledge and capacity is shelved entirely, it can be difficult to reacquire if needed.
It’s been a long and bumpy ride for British tanks in the decades since they debuted on the battlefields of World War I. When the integrated review issues its report in November, we may soon find out if their era is about to come to an abrupt end.
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