The British Army currently operates four armoured regiments equipped with the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank (MBT), according to a response from Lord Coaker, Minister of State for Defence, in a written parliamentary question from Earl Attlee.
The British Army maintains two armoured brigades:
- 12 Armoured Brigade Combat Team (12 ABCT)
- 20 Armoured Brigade Combat Team (20 ABCT)
These formations each contain Challenger 2-equipped regiments. Coaker confirmed:
“There are currently four armoured regiments in the British Army that are equipped with the Challenger 2 Main Battle Tank. They are The Queen’s Royal Hussars (QRH), The King’s Royal Hussars (KRH), The Royal Tank Regiment (RTR), and the Reserve armoured regiment, The Royal Wessex Yeomanry (RWxY).”
Regimental Assignments
The Challenger 2 regiments are split between the Army’s two armoured brigades:
12 Armoured Brigade Combat Team (12 ABCT)
- The King’s Royal Hussars (KRH)
- The Royal Tank Regiment (RTR)
- The Royal Wessex Yeomanry (RWxY) (Reserve)
20 Armoured Brigade Combat Team (20 ABCT)
- The Queen’s Royal Hussars (QRH)
Transition to Challenger 3
While Challenger 2 remains in service, the Army is in the process of transitioning to the Challenger 3 as part of its modernisation plans. The upgraded platform will replace Challenger 2 in frontline units, with the first Challenger 3s expected to enter service by 2027.
For now, the four regiments continue to operate Challenger 2 tanks within the Army’s two armoured brigades, forming the core of Britain’s heavy armour capability.
Four.
They’re inflating the figures somewhat.
The RWY, as I understand it, is not “Equipped” with Tanks.
It provides crews as BCR?
The 3 longstanding Regiments equipped with CH2 from 2010 on have been scheduled since 2015 to reduce to 2.
Another gift from General Carter.
But 4 sounds SO MUCH better than 2, doesn’t it.
Absolutely Daniele. We don’t have enough tanks in running order to equip.two regiments. To equip three, the number per regt would need to reduce from 66 to 44. Which is a pretty flimsy complement for a so-called ‘armoured’ brigade.
The Royal Wessex Yeomanry doesn’t have any tanks. They would normally be issued from reserve on mobilisatione, but it doesn’t sound like we have any runners in reserve, as they were struggling to find 148 serviceable ones for the Challenger 3 upgrade.
Anyway, as you say, the RWXY’s role is to provide trained battlefield casualty replacements, not act as an additional tank regt.
A lot of the stuff that comes out of the MOD’s PR department is deliberately misleading to the point of verging on dishonesty. It seeks to present a rosy picture to the House and public..I suppose Lord Croker can hardly say;
‘I wish to apologise to their noble lordships today for the run-down state of our main battle tank fleet, which we have inherited from the previous administration. Of our total stock of 213 Challenger tanks, under 150 are in serviceable order. We currently have three tank regiments, but have had to reduce the complement of tanks per regiment from 56 to, at most,.44. There are no operational Challengers in reserve to replace any lost in conflict.
The result is that our warfighting division is weak and ill-equipped in armour. The Ministry has no plans at the present time to remedy this weakness in numbers. The 148 serviceable Challengers are being upgraded to Challenger 3 standard and the number of tank regiments is planned to reduce from three to two….’
What a kicking he would get from his noble chums if they were aware of the real.picture behind the MOD’s rosy, deliberately misleading PR.
We are here, so the readership who may not be so clued up on the orbat and what it does and does not comprise, may be given the reality, and not HMG MoD SPIN.
I will always call HMG out.
They are past masters at it.
Your post on the true state is excellent.
So, from Cripes’ post, ” ….. 213 Challenger tanks, under 150 are in serviceable order”. So, this must mean the difference; 63 C2s are right-offs, are they? Is there anyway the C3 project can bring these back to life, or would they just be too expensive to do so? Awful that we have nothing in reserve (nothing declared anyway).
Some will be beyond repair, yes, such as some of those stored rotting away at Ashchurch due to the state of the buildings there.
DP. No. An unservicable tank is not necessarily a write off, fit for the scrap yard. A tank can be U/S for very trivial reasons – it may need a radiator changing or a track changed or just tightened. It may need the drivers seat or a periscope replacing. Some U/S tanks will of course need more than a few hours work.
I do not understand the comment that we have nothing in reserve. We have Atrrition Reserve tanks with current CR2. If we have three regiments of CR2 and they are all Type 58, then 174 tanks are assigned to the Field Army. With 213 tanks on the active list then there are 39 tanks split between the Trg Org, Repair Pool and Attrition Reserve. I do not know the split – this info is not published.
In the CR3 era, then there are just 32 tanks split between the Trg Org, Repair Pool and Attrition Reserve. I suspect that RP and AR will be rolled together, given the small numbers.
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Cripes, it is very rare for availability figures for army equipment to be released by MoD to the media. Last time it happened for tanks was last year – about April. MoD reported to HCDC that we had 157 CR2s available (or nearly so) out of 213. Around 70%, which is what I would expect.
If it were still about 157 now, then we would have enough to equip two regiments with operational tanks.
How is it that you say we have an establishment of 66 tanks per regiment. I thought it had gone from 56 to 58 in recent years (I seem to recall that Dern said that), which would be 4 sabre sqns of 14 plus 2 for RHQ.
I am not aware what the Platform Presentation Standard for CR2s offered up to the CR3 programme amounted to…but I doubt they all had to be fully servicable, with the army ‘struggling to find 148 servicable ones’. An entirely new turret and gun is fitted by the contractor so that might mean that a donor CR2 could lack a turret and still be acceptable for conversion.
It is inconceivable that there would be no Attrition Reserve CR3s. We have always had Attrition Reserve AFVs. But it won’t be many. If we have two Type 58 regiments under FS, then 32 tanks will be split between the Trg Org, Repair Pool and Attrition Reserve. If I were still an ESM in TSS IPT, then I would be forced to do some double hatting ie to merge the RP and Attrition Reserve stocks.
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Perhaps he did not even know that Daniele – When it comes to the reserve element. Me being sarcastic, but can you blame me..
Kings Royal Hussars will lose its tanks and re role to Ajax next year also, and there are plans for RWY to lose a squadron
Indeed. That has been delayed from years back. I hope it’s cancelled, and MBT Regs stay at 3, and Armoured Cavalry Regs stay at 3, as was the original A2020 plan before Strike wrecked the lot.
I didn’t know about the RWY Sqn loss. Do you know which?
Hi Daniele, the ‘elephant in the room’ is what would you equip the third armoured regiment with if it were retained? Not enough CR3s!
All you could do is go back to Type 44 or Type 38 regiments.
I’d settle for that, if the CH3 number isn’t increased. I don’t know how many that are not due for updating could be?
NATO want us to field 6 “Proper” Brigades, not the 4 plus 2 paper ones currently.
I’m hoping a 3rd Bde is reconstituted as Armoured, with that third Regiment.
The RWxY has already lost the Sqn. It was Y Squadron (formerly the Royal Wiltshire Yeomanry). However, this was an amalgamation rather than a loss, as they were absorbed into C (Royal Gloucestershire Hussars) sqn. So in theory, there is no real loss here in terms of number of troopers.
Thanks.
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The message is still not getting through! You could accuse me of alarmism but the international situation is dire and 2027 for CH3 is too bloody slow along with the obvious lack of a long therm increased fleet. Let us hope CH3 ISD will be speeded up and additional vehicles added to the fleet (from current CH2 hulls) at the end of the planned run of 148.
Maurice, we are where we are. If the balloon went up today, we would deploy with CR2s, albeit some or many have been lost to the upgrade line. CR3 FOC is 2030, by the way. 2027 is the IOC date.
As Daniele says, this is literally lying and essentially pig swill..I do hate weasel words. The royal Wessex are not a deployable formation, they are only there to provide reserve tank crew replacements to the 3 actual challenger regiments.
It would be a very good idea if they could actually fully deploy as a reserve regiment, but that is not how the British army does reserves and they don’t have the MBT numbers to do it anyway.
And soon we will only have 2 type 56 regiments and only enough challenger 3s to equip 2 regiments even if HMG saw sense and changed their minds.
In reality 2 regiments is not even enough for a sustained deployment of 1 regiment as part of an armoured brigade, it essentially means the British army is giving up the ability to sustain the deployment of an armoured brigade and surge some sort of armoured division.
From an effective army contribution to a European battlefield point of view converting all the challenger 2s to threes and keeping 3 MBT regiments is crucial and considering a challenger 3 costs around 5 million vs the almost 25 million of any other modern MBT its insane not to convert them all.
I believe the German army did this under Ursula Vande Lying not every regiment had tanks and they reputedly had broomsticks for machine guns for a while. Only once mad Vlad has actually taken some NATO territory will people wake up. Germany has taken a huge step forward today but again the devil is in detail as 500 billion Euro is for defence, roads bridges solar farms etc
As a retired quartermaster infantry officer ammunition reserves and vehicles held in BAOR before the wall came down only existed on paper.
Brian, you cannot be serious. That was not my understanding. I did 4 tours in BAOR. All BAOR/BFG units held their PE of vehs (no WFM in those days). Veh Depots at Monchengladbach and Viersen were full. Ammunition depots at Sennelager and Pombsen etc were full. Not saying there was a strong amount of stuff behind them, though.
I’m actually getting very nervous about the upcoming SDR, common sense says it has to come after the spending review which is delayed till June. You can’t announce anything until you know you have the budget for it and a solid line of payments from the Treasury.
Starmer has committed to 2.5% of GDP by 2027 which is a great soundbite but what can they actually do in just 18 months.
I’m willing to bet that any extra available money will be just swallowed up by the existing shortfalls, or at best add a few extra items to existing contracts.
So maybe they tag on all the rest of the CR2 to the CR3 upgrade, 24 new Typhoons and the 2 MIA E7 and a couple more frigates.
And that’s it really !
However I have in the darkest part of my mind another theory for the SDR delay, if Trump gets a peace agreement then it all gets quietly shelved and U.K / Europe go back to sleep ! Pessimism is rapidly setting in.
That and no more cuts I’d happily take mate, as a start.
To be honest if we had a 220 challenger 3s for three regiments, 24 more typhoons so they can realistically run 7 front line squadrons and have 9 T 26 and 6 T31 on order as well as 5 AEW aircraft that would be a good start for 2027..
You never know they could probably fit in 300 life extended warriors to keep the AI battalions. As that’s probably only 600 million.
I was at Sandhurst on Saturday, there’s an old Centurion tank parked up there, throw that in as an extra and get it working again 😁
I’ll say it again just because I can – and even more so now given the current international situation and reliabilities: The UK needs to start the design and production of the CH4. i.e. Re-kindle UK heavy armour industry (possibly with CAN/AUS). Dump RHEINMETALL, LOCKHEED M, and THALES (who also produce sights for the Russians). Yes it will cost but we have it before and at least all the benefits would go to the UK, and we are capable of producing a world-beating MBT fit for the 21st Century.
Agree. I personally think uk should design a modular chassis to be used for all the main heavy medium variants capabilities such as tanks , artilery , ifv . The tech in the uk still exists . Challenger chassis can still be built in uk if required . And we could use these vehicles to equip all the reserve units and if any good the frontline units, all with the same kit . The ukrainian war has shown that standardisation on mass is the way to go. And really more medium light weight vehicles by the thousands
There is no doubt that inefficiency in areas like Health, Welfare and Defence need to be addressed. But, in my view, they can only go so far and the reality is that we need to accept that taxes across the board need to rise in order to pay for the level of service we expect and in the current climate need, with regard to Defence. There has never been a clearer time when Si Vis Pacem Parabellum was more apt.
Not sure where all the talk of serviceable challenger tanks comes from maybe MoD spin again as I am told only 25 are actually serviceable.
Brian, where do you get this info from? Who is it who tells you?
Only 25 tanks serviceable? That would be a shocking indictment on all our Chally crews, Regimental MT staffs, their REME support at First and Second Line and the Equipment Support Manager.
The army’s equipment availability stats very rarely get into the public domain. The last time was about April 2024 when MoD declared to the HCDC that 157 tanks out of 213 were operational or very nearly so (ie need a small amount of User or REME work).
Enough already, looks like we will be deploying thousands of troops on a high-risk enduring mission to Ukraine- lets just be done with this fiasco- all C2s to C3 standard, all fitted with Trophy APS sets from the word go and stop with the stupidity already.
Well there is a surprise Mr Putin has made Mr Trump look a bit of a prat. Maybe now the Reverend Starmer will drop his hilarious Blairite hubris and realise that Vlad is a deceitful liar and there will be no lasting peace in Europe so he had better start spending big and spending well FAST. His coalition of the willing is a really embarrassing mantra.