Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land has said its Challenger 3 trial tanks have been put through a fresh batch of Battlefield Mission serials, covering cross-country running, road work, gunnery and full crew drills, in what the company is describing as an important step forward for the British Army’s new main battle tank programme, the company said.
The trials, run in what RBSL has called representative operating conditions, have seen the platforms driven across country and on the road, with the crews exercising the gunnery equipment and working their way through the full set of drills the army will eventually expect on a finished tank.
The company says the serials are designed to build up insight into how the platform performs and to validate the procedures, instrumentation and methods that will be used in the formal trials still to come, with data and observations from the runs being fed back into the engineering baseline as the design continues to mature.
The programme’s verification lead at RBSL, identified only as Nick, said the activity was “generating exactly the kind of learning” the team wants at this stage, with every serial helping to sharpen processes and build confidence as the programme heads towards its formal trials phase.
Challenger 3 is the British Army’s next-generation main battle tank, being delivered by RBSL, the Telford-based joint venture between Rheinmetall and BAE Systems set up in 2019 to handle land vehicles for the United Kingdom. The programme is taking the existing Challenger 2 hulls and rebuilding them around a new turret carrying a 120-millimetre L55A1 smoothbore gun in place of the older rifled L30, bringing the British fleet onto the same ammunition standard as most of NATO and clearing the way for the latest generation of tank rounds.
Beyond the gun, the upgrade brings new optronics, a new fire-control system, modular armour and the Trophy active protection system designed to defeat incoming anti-tank munitions in flight, alongside a host of crew and survivability improvements drawn from operational experience over the past two decades.
The programme is sized at 148 tanks, with initial operating capability targeted for 2027 and full operating capability later in the decade, while the Strategic Defence Review published last year reaffirmed the British Army’s commitment to keeping armoured firepower at the heart of its land force.
I have to say I think it’s very wise to have undertaken this programme to get a present generation MBT for only 5 million a pop.. I get the feeling that at some point in the next decade design paradigms for firepower, armour and mobility are going to shift dramatically and I think they my even move from the old concept of a pyramid that needs balance to something like square that needs balance.. firepower, protection, speed and say awareness.. with massive investment in awareness.
Back on my hobbyhorse about remote MBTs working alongside crewed CH3s. What if the remaining CH2 tanks are converted into drones and retain their 120mm rifle guns? The prime use of these vehicles would be to work with crewed units or independently, enabling the manned units to operate in less vulnerable locations yet penetrate hostile theatres using CH2 drones. The idea would be to increase the UK’s MBT footprint without purchasing additional CH3 and utilising the redundant CH2 hulls.
Still think we need a minimum of 300.
A one for one replacement of the current 227 would suit me fine. I think the RAC have played their cards right this time down sizing from Type 56 Regt to Type 44 ( I for one have been in service long enough to remember the Type 64 lol) in order to retain the current 3 x MBT Regts orbat , KRH, QRH and RTR. Of course the current ‘Micky Mouse’ way we organise our two surviving Armd Bde’s makes no sense at all 20 Bde with 2 x Armd Inf Bns and 1 x MBT while 12 Bde now have 2 x MBT and 2 x Armd Inf , no.one at all seems to have thought it through – or care. Of course we finalised ( until now ) on Type 56 for a reason as it allowed four Squadrons of three Troops each plus 2 x CH2 in Squadron HQ and 2 x CH2 in RHQ , CO and RSM. A Type 44 Regt ( inline with most of NATO and certainly the Germans ) still packs a lot of punch, 3 x Sqn of 14 CH3 and still with 2 x CH3 in RHQ allows us to sit within our 148 CH3 limit and still field 3 x Regt of MBT so I can live with that.
Sounds very positive, we need some of the new / refurbished hardware in the hands of the British Army so an issues can be addressed.
I think RBSL should just tell us “don’t call us, we’ll call you!”
Why not just top up, with Leopard to make up the numbers, especially now the ammunition is the same it just means extra spares and crew training. In the meantime we must decide whether to go ahead with a design for the next generation battle tank !
Agree about designing next generation MBT but can we please leave the Germans out of it?
Can we really call it new though? Its essentially just an upgraded Challenger 2, not a brand new tank.
Case and point, the Leopard 2 was made from the ground up to be a replacement and not just an upgrade on the existing Leopard 1 chassis.
The Challenger 3 may as well have called the Challenger 2 Mark 2 or something