A new 878 Institute paper puts 3rd Division 42 tanks short of its own requirement, and wants the Challenger 3 order raised from 148 to 198 at a cost of around £650mn.
The arithmetic in the paper is straightforward, three tank regiments sit under 3rd Division’s brigades, the Queen’s Royal Hussars, the Royal Tank Regiment and the King’s Royal Hussars. Each comprises 56 main battle tanks, or 168 across the three. Add the 22 held at the Armour Centre and other training grounds and a full fleet, excluding reserves, comes to 190.
Challenger 3 will deliver 148, “Therefore at current force levels the 3rd Division will be under-strength by 42 MBTs”, Robert Clark writes.
His third recommendation is to buy 50 more, taking the order to 198. That would keep the three regiments at full capacity, cover the training fleet and leave eight spare, at roughly £650mn. It would also, he argues, “give the Army a fully digitalised, fifth-generation MBT capability”.
Without it, the paper says, the Army’s tank capability will shortly be “reduced by over one third”, “denying 3rd Division its crucial heavy armour mobility” and undermining both combined arms manoeuvre and conventional deterrence by punishment against a peer adversary.
Initial Operating Capability for Challenger 3 is scheduled for 2027 after engineering delays, with the full fleet expected in service by the end of 2030. General The Lord Dannatt, in the foreword, lists “insufficient CHALLENGER 3 main battle tanks on order” among the shortfalls facing the division NATO has charged with retaking ground.
Britain’s Military Deterrence Gaps by Robert Clark is available in full from the 878 Institute.
At least it’s now openly established the ORBAT remains with three MBT Regiments, for a long time it was due to reduce to two, when Ajax Regiments stood at four and the KRH was to convert.
Even when it became known that three were to remain, doubts persisted.
T56 Regiments are clearly going down to T44 as well, with one Squadron of each Regiment reportedly with a find and strike Drone role.
200 should be minimum I feel, but as we discussed on the earlier article, there are other competing priorities and possibly more valid areas of the Army that need expansion.
Look, I would love to see C3 numbers rise to 186/190/198, but they also need to be protected by Boxer Skyranger 30 or something similar. Tanks are vital on a modern battlefield, but they need protecting from drones & attack helicopters.
The dilemma is simple: the British Army needed to replace CH2, but two factors may have caused the issue of just 148 CH3. No. 1, the debate that continued from the start of the century, is the MBT dead debate, where many postulated on the argument that their time was up. No. 2, costs of modifying CH2 hulls with an all-new turret, which the Treasury placed strict limits on the programme’s budget, so much so that the number 148 was agreed. With pressure on to get the MBT fleet up to date, the MOD had no option but to agree and the situation hasn’t changed. Today, 148 has become the elephant in the room, with many experts saying the numbers are inadequate. Interestingly, Germany, France, Poland and the USA are actively designing MBTs to replace their current fleets, and all will be more than the CH3; need I say more?
Will Healy now give the MOD the funds he wanted as Defence Minister, or will he be ‘hoist by his own petard’ as Chancellor?
44 tanks per regiment seems to be a standard number among several NATO armies. I would much prefer the previous 56 figure, giving 3 Arm Div 168 main battle tanks, which is not a big number to enter a peer war with.
But if it has been decided that we can get by with 3 regts of 44, so 132 in total, the flaw in the maths is that there is no wartime reserve allowed for. 132 issued to the three regiments plus 16 for trials and Phase 2 training adds up to 148, which is the number on order. Reserves should be a much higher order than 25%, but even at that minimalist figure, we will be 33 short.
The Reserve Regt, R Wessex Yeo, doesn’t have any tanks, it would just supply BCRs to the front line. This is a hopeless arrangement really, they should be able to take to the field after a spell of unit training, as their predecessors did in WW2. It is essential to have a reinforcement regt on hand, as task regts can take heavy losses and need to be replaced in the front line.
We also need forward EFP tank squadrons in Estonia and probably Finland too. The Challengers were ostensibly withdrawn from Estonia because they were needed for the conversion line at Reinmetall, but who knows what is planned.
Anyway, that adds up to 288 tanks, which would mean that we will be short of 140. There is about that number in reserve, in various states of repair, but some of them would likely need significant work and 3D parts to be made operational.
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