Ares armoured personnel carrier and mech infantry plans

Why would it be bizarre? It doesn’t require any major work or redesign of the vehicle itself. In fact, you could quite easily modify already built Ares vehicles into IFVs at the factory. I think you’re overestimating how much work it is. All that needs doing is removing the equipment racks from the right-hand side of the crew compartment and replacing them with 3 extra seats for dismounts and a gunners position, followed by mounting an unmanned turret to the roof which doesn’t require a turret basket and therefore no major hull modifications. A manned turret would be unreasonable and probably require a complete redesign. Whether it was worth converting ASCOD into Ajax originally is moot at this point, but suggesting we then go back and buy the vehicle Ajax is loosely based on and yet shares almost nothing in common with is utterly bonkers when refitting Ares into an IFV is a relatively easy and cheap option.

Hi D, I always appreciate your posts. Although I served throughout the period (to 2009 anyway) I was not keeping close tabs on the entirety of this. Such a mess – Orbats being chopped and changed very frequently and often without underpinning doctrine or logic…combined with massive gaffes on AFV procurements, and very poor political decisions and defence cuts over many years.

Certainly the RN and RAF has experienced much of the above, but seemed to have fewer ‘own goals’.

Cripes, surely each armd bde will have 2 x Boxer battalions. Estonia BG will surely be one of those 4 battalions and will so one day will swap Warriors for Boxers? Simples!

So had I until I read otherwise.

Sorry, double post. Last one is the right one.

I think we’re conversing in two separate threads here which is getting rather confusing. GDLS UK and the Army have publicly shown their IFV drawings alongside other potential variants such as the MCCO Brimstone carrier and the bridge layer, both of which they’ve actually built prototypes of. They’ve also spoken at defence shows about ambulances, C-UAS, mortar carriers, and a whole host of other potential variants.

And yes, of course IFVs are expensive, whether it’s Ares, Bradley, CV90, Puma, or whatever. That’s the price you pay for modern armour, weapons, optics, sensors, and survivability. There is no cheap option for an IFV unless you’re willing to compromise.

The design and development work for mounting an unmanned turret to the roof of an existing vehicle is not that extreme. Trials for the weapon and the vehicle itself have already been carried out so you’re basically just testing a relatively low risk conversion and the new turret. The vehicle doesn’t need any major redesign work, it’s just a weapon station added to the roof and replacing equipment racks with seats. It took the US 2.5 years to do something similar with their Strykers, and they had to modify the roof and suspension of the vehicle, neither of which is needed for Ares as they were built for far heavier loads.

I’m sure GDLS would be willing to ramp up production if they received an order for a second batch of vehicles from the Army, especially as they’ve been pushing it pretty hard at defence shows and trying to secure export orders.

Warrior is ancient and clapped out. A new turret and gun only gets you so far. And more importantly, we don’t have the ability to produce new hulls as WCSP was only ever a stopgap. Not that it would even be particularly desirable to restart production considering it was designed in the 70s. The only hulls we’re manufacturing for the foreseeable future are Boxers and Ajax so take your pick from those 2.

As for buying off the shelf, we could do that. But we get no say on the design spec, none of the manufacturing outside of a few minor local suppliers, and a whole new logistics chain that we now have to cater for that is located almost entirely overseas. And it would almost certainly be more expensive to buy a whole new vehicle than sticking a remote weapon station onto an existing one and building more of them.

Any turret fitted would by necessity be an unmanned one. Options are basically a more conventional unmanned turret from GDLS, LM, or Nexter. Or Moog’s RIwP which is basically an RWS on steroids. Cheaper, lighter, and more flexible, but less capable 1:1 and probably not able to handle the whole ammunition handling system for CT40 so limited to the Bushmaster 30mm or any belt-fed weapon.

Isn’t part of the point of CTA that the gun and ammunition take up less space in the turret?
That’s why it has the funny side loading breech, and the rounds are shorter.

You can fit a cannon to a RWS. Should be no reason why that would exclude a 40mm CTAS cannon.
Also, I have heard nothing definite about Boxer carrying more than a MG.

Disagree on the space a CT40 takes up, there is a very small volume of turret intrusion, the AHS is necessarily large but is almost non crew interfacing so can be mounted in various configurations.

I believe the CTA 40 upgrade of Warrior led to a reduction in the number of dismounts to 5/6. I assume the same would happen with Ares which has similar internal dimensions. If the army was happy to accept that reduction with one vehicle, why not with its successor?
What happened to the CTA turrets LM manufactured for Warrior? Could they be fitted to Ares?

Hard to see how organisationally they could justify not putting CTA on. Not only do we have a shed full of them somewhere, but its use would standardise the ammunition requirements in units with Ajax and Ares IFV.

Steve, the ARES conversion to IFV will cost a lot. Probably more than buying a proper IFV in the first place. It will also take several years from Concept to FOC, whether or not the MoD messes about. I am rather shocked by your allegation of backhanders. There has been very little history of bribery and corruption between Industry and MoD over the years. I can only think of one or two examples in the last 40 years.

I know, mate.

Mate I think you will find Daniele is one of the biggest advocates of getting both CS and CSS back to pre 2010 levels! The support which is not there at this moment could and should be if the Divisional level formations are back to real combat strength!

Of course the CS CSS are not there for formations that no longer exist…

Using that argument means you will never get what you need and can only decay..a cut is for ever no matter the change or new need. That is like saying I need an accident and emergency department in this town but I don’t have an X-ray department so I cannot have the ED where it’s needed. It’s a crappy negative cycle argument . Of course the CS and CSS are not there. You develop those at that same time as the deployable brigade ..if I’m planning for an ED I plan of all the services required, I don’t even need to make that’s statement when I have the discussion..support services and infrastructure are built into the discussion.

The same arguments are used to denude the RN of ships and not return the fleet to appropriate levels ..”well we don’t have the crews, so we cannot increase the fleet size”…of course you don’t have the crews for ships we don’t have yet..the point is you look at the formations you need then you plan how you get the people and services in place to support and develop them at the same time as you stand up the formation.

Do you really hand on heart believe that an army with a head count of close to 75,000 could not have 6 deployable brigades with full CS, CCS ?

Jonathan, we have around 20,500 deployable combat troops, whatever that means. Could we pad that out to 6 deployable combat brigades? I think so.

The Army website is useless, telling me that 3-5 brigades of 700 troops make up a brigade of 5000 (and that 3 brigades of 5000 make up a division of 10000). They bring a whole new meaning to irrational numbers. So I’m going to make a few irrational assumptions of my own, to see where I get to. Shred it if you like. I might learn something.

Let’s say a combat brigade has elements of 10 battalions and regiments, of which maybe 7 are combat and 3 support. So I’ll guess that 70% of a brigade is made up of combat troops. Let me further guess that we’d want say 4000 troops in the brigade, so 2,800 combat troops. So if we assume that Gurkhas count among combat troop numbers, but special forces and psy ops don’t, and that ARRC and Field HQ have none either, there about enough deployable combat troops for 7 deployable combat brigades to be divvied up between the 1st and 3rd division.

I’ll quote Think Defence: “The Future Soldier ORBAT is a masterpiece of complexity, duplicative activities and organisations, no single part of it is the same as the next, and many specialist units.” So I think you’d probably need to lose a brigade or two to the inefficiency of British Army organisation.

@Jon

A combat Brigade with 7 Combat formations is unbelievably huge. 4-5 is much more normal.
I know you won’t take any UK orbat, so the US:
An American Army Armoured Brigade Combat Team consists of 3 Combined Arms Battalions
A Striker Brigade Combat Team is 3 Striker Battalions and 1 Striker Cavalry Battalion
Light Brigade Combat Teams have 3 Infantry Battalions.
Division then holds Artillery in it’s own brigade but habitually attaches them, so each of those is 4-5 Battalions.

The numbers on the army’s website are not irrational, because they’re guidelines. A Brigade will have 3-5 battalions, and a few attached regiments, it’ll be around 5,000 troops. Divisions generally start at 10,000 men, although some are a bit smaller.
Don’t count Gurkhas as combat troop numbers because they’re a mix. 1 and 2 RGR are combat troops. QOGLRs, QGSR, QGE, and arguably GAARCS are not.

Anyway the problem with doing assumptions like that is that a Brigade is not a fixed thing. A Armoured Brigade is a different beast from a Light Infantry Brigade, which is a very different beast to a SFAB brigad. Then you add in that if you are working with a theoretical headcount and doing broad generalisations and it gets very difficult. TD might scoff at specialist units and organisations, but they generally exist for a reason.

@Dern. Thanks. Unfortunately the guidelines as to numbers are very hard to understand when the don’t add up. I’d be very happy for you to reference the UK ORBAT as that’s what I’m failing to understand. (Throwing US formations into the mix is an additional complication.)

For example 20th Armoured nominally has
– Royal Dragoons
– Queens Royal Hussars
– 1st Royal Fusiliers
– 1st Prince of Wales Royals
– 5th Rifles
– 1st Regiment RLC
– 3rd battalion REME
– 1 medical Reg
Plus reserves:
– 3rd Princess of Wales Royals
– 7th Rifles
– 5th Royal Regiment of Fusiliers
(I missed the fact that two of them were reserves first time I looked at it, hence my overestimate.)

So if we say 5 combat plus 3 non-combat batallions/regiments, can we even say they are of roughly the same size? I’d have guessed that REME and medical regiments were far smaller, but I don’t know. I don’t even know if the formation shown in something like 1st Medical is the only deployable one. Are there similar numbers in infantry and cavalry?

There must be some idea of what proportion of a combat brigade is made up of combat troops. Is there a publication I can read that gives numbers/breakdown of soldiers and professions in the British Army rather than things like where they are based or regimental battle honours?

Janes, 22 Nov.

Quentin, how sensible of Latvia. I wonder why they didn’t take an ASCOD with a cannon in a penetrating turret, which is more usual. Still, no matter, the main thing is they have a cannon.

And when you run out of chassis’ the modules sit on the shelf? Why not have enough chassis’ in the first place and even some spare as they’re probably going to get worn out first? Sounds like treating Boxer parts like Lego.

Hi Graham.
Of course, in all these CS CSS discussions I so enjoy having, regards REME, I always have the second line in mind, not the attendant REME LAD integral to the parent formation.

Well I hope you persevere, mate.
I ( finally ) caught up to the reality yesterday that 6 Div is no more, and 77 and ASOB are “now with FA” so I assume that means they are part of FAT.
So whatever happened to the LSOF. I know you hinted all this but could not say several months back.
The changes make sense, I did not see the need for 6 Div to oversee a few specialist Brigades?

@ Daniele

Yes, it’s a bit of a complicated situation and if I where to draw an orbat of it there’d be a lot of dotted lines. I think the easiest way to put it is that ASOB is part of Field Army Troops, but doesn’t work for Field Army Troops.

6 Div was less about overseeing the Brigades and giving Divisional HQ assets to those brigades tbh. As far as I understand it from my lowly position LSOF still exists.

Hi J
Good post, and an enjoyable read. I support the overall 6 Bde plan as you know, but I don’t recognise all of those figures as accurate.
A few observations:
“11 brigade, because a brigade with Four 500 establishment light infantry bns”
I believe the Battalions of 11 SFAB are far smaller than that figure, more like 250, but I am not certain.

“You can then move one of the 4 cav regiments from 1st to 12 armoured brigade as well as an armoured fires regiment ( which has no cav or fires at present, bit of a CS oversight in one of our two armoured brigades).”

I don’t follow. Both 12 and 20 ABCT have a supporting Artillery Regiment already, in the form of 1 RHA and 19 RA. They have virtually no guns, mind!! 1 Bde would need a third CS Artillery Regiment forming.

“This would give you 3 armoured brigades of 1 MBT regiment, 2 armoured infantry battalions, 1 mec battalion and full CS ( including armoued cav regiment and armoured fires regiment) although CSS especially in 20th would need work.”

20 ABCT has CSS, so does 12 ABCT. It is 1 DRSB Bde that lacks it. I assume you are just taking 20 Bdes CS and CSS and putting them in 1 Bde then saying 20 Bde lacks these formations, but it still bugs me!

“That would then mean 1st division would have 3 brigades not 4 but you still need to find 2 artillery regiments if you are at least ensure each of those brigades have fires and cav CS.”

Yes, the new 1 ABCT in 3 Division and 4 Bde in 1 Division are the formations that lack their own regular CS artillery.

On the table, many of those figures are generalisations and also quite wrong. I assume you lifted that from some official publication? There are far too many “Regiments” listed, and seem to be lumping other formations into the figures and calling them Regiments. Just two examples –

Intelligence Corps 9 9 9 9 9 9 9 9
Regular Army Regiments 4 4 4 4 4 4 4 4
They are indeed Battalions, not Regiments. I’m aware of 3 regular Intelligence Corps Battalions, not 4. There are indeed several other Int Corps formations but not Bn sized, unless they include such things as the DHU as a Battalion and have lumped it in the figures. Such things as DHU are highly specialised and I suspect are included in such figures to make the available deployable Field Army formations look a lot more numerous than they are.
Royal Military Police 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
Regular Army Regiments 6 6 6 6 6 6 6 6
There are 2 RMP Regiments, not 6, plus various support units. The SIB Reg is now the tri service DSCU and the RMP S Ops Reg I think is broken up. Even if they include these then that makes 4, not 6! Knowing the way MoD massages figures to inflate, they probably included MCTC/MPS as a “Regiment”…..

But the bottom line of your post remains, the CS CSS area MUST take priority before posters are calling for more Tanks, Infantry, and other areas of the Combat Arms. There are too few CSS to support existing, let alone building more.

Hi Daniele, sorry I could not reply directly for some reason..yes the spread sheet figures are interesting…more interesting is that’ it’s directly from the MODs HMG government portal published in 2023 Uk armed forces equipment and formations 2023. It’s actually got some remarkably interesting stuff on it including a complete breakdown of type and number of merchant hull’s available to to the military for strategic sea lift, diver and seabed support etc…it’s a brilliant spreadsheet and gives you in some cases the picture since 2010..

To be honest I’m not clear on the OBAT of some of the brigades as the British army seems to have changed a lot of the published. Information..so at present it’s really hard to track which artillery regiments are supporting which brigades…so it looks like some of the brigades no longer have attached artillery regiments…not sure if that’s because they are in the middle of changing the ORBATs around CS. If you now look up the information available the 12th has its full CS CCS but the 20th is completely denuded and no longer has attached artillery or much else..infact all that is listed for the 20th is now QRH, 1st Bn Royal regiment of fusiliers, the Mercian regiment and the rifles and that’s it no CS listed at all..it’s a bit odd.

Re the size of the battalions in in 11th brigade, I suspect you are correct..but they are listed as light role and should have the annual funding for the full 560 establishment even if they have huge numbers of gaps..( the budget is the budget, even if they have held vacancies and spent the money elsewhere in year).

In principle though I think 11 needs to go as there is simply no CS CSS for it…and the infantry it has can be used in potentially deployable formations.

What is really interesting is that I’ve just noticed 11 brigade has disappeared from the 1st division ORBAT on the British army website…you can still find 11 brigades web page..but it’s listed on 1st Divisions page….possibly the CS removed from 20 brigade and removal of 11 brigade from 1st divisions web page are an early indicator of plans….

Personally I think it’s pretty indicative of the problem when even the official MOD data is so much BS and no one can track the ORBAT (especially CS and CSS) of the brigades.

@Jonathan

The Army has gone back to largely keeping Artillery under Artillery formations and detaching them to support Manuever Brigades as required or directed by higher. It tends to give the divisional HQ more flexibility with regards to fires.

SFAB might have the full funding for a Light Role Battalion, but they are not light role battalions, they operate in a very different space and a very different role (which is why they don’t have CS or CSS, it’s not required for their current role, and generally supplied by host nation or contractor support). I really caution against arguing for the disbandment of a formation whose role and purpose you don’t understand (happy to discuss if you want).

& Dern, to be honest I think this is where we will probably disagree on the whole paradigm that supports the idea of 11 brigade. I simply believe the entire concept behind the security force assistant brigade is flawed and not something we want our regular forces to be engaged in. I understand the why, I just don’t agree with it, some of the very worst mistakes first world militaries have made in the modern age involves using and deploying regular troops to support stability and security in second and third word nations.

It almost invariably feeds escalation of tension and increased instability as there is one thing guaranteed to enflame a security situation and that is the sight of western or major power regular troops in someone’s country when it’s going through civil strife. That either leads to escalation and greater troop numbers on the ground, the vilification and loss of influence when the present regime falls or the present regime turning against the first world nations and uses them as a common enemy ( as has happened to the French in Africa).

The role of security and stability especially in much of the third and second world should be very niche and not seen if at all possible..it’s a case of see no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil ( but just possibly for the sake of national interests do evil). Interventions should allow for moral ambiguity to come into play and be ignored or denied, it should be unseen, such as weapon supply, money, intelligence etc, possibly with special forces intervention if there is a specific goal for them or Highly specialised small units that remain unseen.

The great power that is seen and has regularly forces on the group invariably losses to other great power nation that stays unseen…Russias loss vs the west in Afghanistan, the US in Vietnam, French army in Africa in the 2020s vs Russia

This whole concept of security force assistance brigades came out of the war on terror and the profoundly bad idea of nation building, itself an offshoot of the whole “ end of history and the last man “ BS that has dogged the west since the end of the Cold War..and the fact we forget we won that one by playing dirty geopolitics and massing a huge military deterrent.

Personally I feel that’s four light role battalions that would be better of being part of deployable brigades and battle groups that can be shown off as part of a deterrent to prevent a major peer war or if the worst occurred fight that war.

@ Jonathan,

This tells me you don’t really get what they are doing. I think you think you know what they are doing, but the second paragraph gives away that you don’t get it. “It almost invariably feeds escalation of tension and increased instability.” Except it doesn’t. The general public gets whatever the opposite of confirmation bias is with these kinds of things because the times that security assistance works, you never hear about it (it literally doesn’t make the news). When it goes wrong it ends up all over the news (all the more reason why it should be handled by people whose military focus is it).

The fact you mention the French in Africa kind of gives away your misunderstanding of their role; as the French Army in Africa acted much more like ISAF in the 2000’s, being a direct action combat force rather than SFAB. (The irony being that you mention that intervention should be done by small units that remain unseen, which is very much what SFAB’s do; Small units that deploy for a light touch to provide requested aid, especially in the real of MA to friendly powers, they are generally not covert or discreet, that’s an escalation level, but the deployments are generally not headline catching.

SFA Brigades in their AMERICAN form are a product of the War on Terror, but the SFAB mission is nothing new, and has been constantly exercised by the British Army since at least the 1950’s (and side note the American ConOps for their SFA Brigades and the British SFA Battalions is very different, certainly “nation building” is far from the only use of SFA Battalions). The difference being the job has consistently fallen on units that do not specialise in it, and therefore aren’t particularly good at it, and have little interest in being good at it, and with the loss of the SpecInf group the Army wanted to retain the specialised assistance role within it’s orbat.

It’s, as has been said repeatedly by multiple people here, not four light role battalions, and ironically, they probably spend more time deployed and working on conflict prevention and peer competition than any armoured infantry battalions. As I said, you seem to have a very skewed view of what the SFAB battalions are, and what they do, so your off handed call to scrap them just seems misinformed.

Point being: These aren’t formed Light Infantry Battalions deploying to Africa to man FOB’s and run checkpoints for African Warlords, they’re collections of small teams that deploy in small numbers to provide advice and training to friendly African governments who might otherwise turn, for example, to Russian or Chinese militaries for services. As I said, it is one of the very few ways we actively combat their influence in Africa these days (and while it’s limited, it tends to work, combined with Sandhurst graduates there is a marked tendency in the areas the British Army is active for governments to prefer our training over Russian, I’d argue the French inability to offer the same is part of what caused their downfall in Mali).

Now I’m not here to read the tea leaves for 2025 and the SDF in general, but while I don’t think the 11 SFA should be cut, it is in a precarious position, as to many, like yourself, don’t understand what they do, and just see “4 Light Infantry Battalions without CS or CSS” (despite not really needing that in their role with an asterisk). The issues are not utility or the headcount being better used elsewhere (as has been repeatedly said to you the headcount isn’t that high, and you’re not cutting the Irish Guards any time soon, and they’re actually useful), but with publicity, identity and lobbying.

I’ll leave two final thoughst:
1) I have seen and worked with SFA type units that where thrown together ad-hoc, as they where pre-SpecInf and would be if SFAB was disbanded, and I’ve worked with SFA type units that where permanent, and the latter almost universally preformed better than the former.
2) If SFA goes away the burden of their deployments will in part fall back to the wider field army, but a large portion of them will probably end up going to SOF and SF, which already have more than enough on their plate without the lower level stuff they can hand over to SFA taking up their bandwidth.

@ Dern

I Dern my point is these major western interventions in third and second world countries that end in geostrategic failure generally start as a small security intervention, generally training. The French intervention in the Central African Republic is a classic example. Pre Operation Sangaris the French army had a couple of training companies in the CAR to provide long term training and support, this had been a pretty standard security intervention, but as the security situation deteriorated so the French launched op Sangaris, they got the job because essentially the French army was a
Ready in place with more and more troops flowing in until it topped of at a couple of thousand. In the end the leadership of the nation and population just blamed the French for the security situation turned against them and by 2022 Russia had the regime in its pocket and the friend army was gone.

The US Vietnam intervention started with 900 advisors and trainers..

@ Jonathan.

True, but as I said: That’s because there is a selection bias. You only hear about the interventions that grow legs and become strategic failures. The interventions that are a small number of advisors go in, the problem gets resolved (or even there never is a problem and it just means closer ties are built between host nation and the UK instead of host nation and Russia) will always be forgotten and never remembered. (And frankly I’d argue that for every Operation Sangaris that becomes a huge deployment and ultimately ends in failure, there are 10 operations that succeed).

Think of it like this: If a SFA deployment goes well, you’ll never read about it, and they’ll carry on. If it goes badly the government will either pull out, in which case you’ll never read about it because withdrawing 20 odd advisors from a country doesn’t garner headlines, or the government will try to reinforce failure by sending in conventional forces, at which point you hear about it.

1 Armoured Infantry would need: A new RLC reg, a New AMS Regiment, a 155 Regiment and a Divisional MLRS regiment to cover the increased frontage for deep fires (4 new regiments)
4 would require a new RLC and new AMS Regiment (6 new Regiments) and ideally an REME Regiment if it ever will be mobile (7)

You then would probably want 2nd Line RLC regiments for the increased supply burden if you where deploying the 2 divisions, (9). You’d need more if you wanted to leave the Cmdo Units with UK CF.

The reason I accounted for 12,20,7 and 16 is because you can easily provide those 7-9 Support Regiments if you strip them from 12, 20, 7 and 16….

GM. Not saying they’re not expensive but so is ARES and everything else in that space ( and changing ARES to an IFV/APC to carry more dismounts is just not worth the cost – it will be overspend again). Personsally I’d have been happy to have retained Mastiff to carry a 3rd inf brigade in a division ( other two would each be made up of Chally and Boxer) but they’ve been gifted to Ukraine I gather.

The Warrior LIFEX was of course the WCSP programme; that was for the armoured infnatry.
The Boxer was for Mech Inf.
It was never one or the other.
The problem was bringing the hugely expensive Boxer programme forward, so the army had to fund CR3, Boxer, WCSP and MFP all at about the same time. There was not the money to do it all at once.

Exactly and that is why tracked APCs were replaced by tracked IFVs some time ago.

In fact in Ukraine APC’s have actually been used as IFV’s as well, just using DShK’s and the like in the fire support role instead of cannons.

Peter, absolutely everything on the battlefield from the tank to the truck to the dismounted soldier is vulnerable to a counter or counters. Does not mean we scrap the tank or that shoot and scoot SPGs or IFVs no longer make sense.

I think the British Army has always been clear about what kit it needs, just not clear about the Orbat.

Warrior won’t be upgraded. It will cost@ £200m to keep some in service until @2030 when Boxer replaces it. The timing of the decision to abandon the upgrade at the very point when it seemed the technical challenges had been solved was odd, especially after £400+m had been spent. I understand that continuing to full production would have cost £1.5b or around £4m per unit. That is about the same price as a brand new Boxer. Whilst cost was a factor, I believe the key driver was a change to a wheeled vehicle to better fit with first Strike then Future Soldier.

The cost-effective LIFEX to Warrior for the AI Bns was of course the WCSP. Boxer was for the Mech Inf.
Trouble is that there was not enough money to do those 2 programmes plus CR3 plus MFP, more or less at the same time.

Perhaps Mastiff could have been kept and upgraded, and fewer Boxer ordered.