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.
If it was a case of buying new MBTs at 25 million a pop I would agree other requirements may top it from a point of view of cost effectiveness… but we know they are getting the 140 converted at a price of 5.4 million each which is peanut money.. even if an extra 50 or so cost a bit more.. say a 10% premium that’s still only 5.9 million a pop….
They are so cheap its insane not to order as many as we can..
Depends on the material state of the remainder, I assume the best have been used.
Some I understand have been allowed to get into a pretty poor state.
From my reading the number was pretty arbitrary.. essentially it was how many can you do for this amount..and by the nature of the beast they will not be able to gain to a lot of the last runners… as the will be in service with the regiments right up until they transition over to The 3s.. they are not going to take away the the challenge 2s from the last sabre squadrons to convert and hold them without any tanks until they turn those 2s into 3s.. they will convert the squadrons to 3s and then bin those running 2s.
Hi Daniele, Some thorough RUSI work in very recent times established that a ‘credible’ armoured division that would have success in warfighting against a peer opponent should have anywhere from 170 to over 300 tanks and around 110 to 220 artillery pieces. Then as we know there are also the equipments required for the Training Org, Repair pool and Attrition Reserve! Clearly the Treasury has not read the RUSI work!
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.
Indeed. A valid argument for re-organising armoured regiments – say, reducing to 44 MBTs (14 in each of 3 sabre squadrons +2 RHQ) and increasing recce and AA/anti-UAV capability.
I would be much more worried about how their HQ is going to survive a ballistic missile strike than using sky rangers to guard the tanks against drones. We have drone defence solutions coming out of our ears yet the British army has zero ability to intercept even short range scud like ballistic missiles.
These guys want to spend £650 million on 50 tanks using the expert argument of “we had 56 tanks before in a regiment and we can’t possible get buy with 44” but that same £650 million would be enough to purchase a SAMP/T NG battery from Italy allowing the British army to actually fight on a modern a battlefield.
Lesson from Ukraine is you can have as many tanks and infantry as you like. If you can’t stop SRBM’s then you can’t have logistics depots or HQ’s with in 300 miles of the front line.
Latest prices for a SAMP-T NG battery, I can find, are between $700m to $1,1billion, depending on how many spare missiles/reloads you order.
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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The reality mate is that the British Army is configured to fight at Brigade levels, the last SDSR certainly hasn’t changed that either, perhaps SDSR30 will??
However you try and cut it, 148 tanks, 60 Trophy systems, make a single deployable Regiment, as the same old rules will obviously apply, I.e, starved of spares and logistical backup support to save money.
Any Divisional aspirations are simply utter bollox, only existing in the minds of delusional politicians and generals, unless we intend to piece together a ragtag wartime emergency Division, stuffed with obsolete equipment, precious little artillery, virtually no GBAD, a handful of Apache, no offensive drones, little to no recce and soon not to have a single IFV!
Do we send the troops in on horseback, after all, no shortage of bloody horses!
It would be smashed to pieces and swept aside in days on tne modern battlefield.
It’s absolutely piss poor and an outrageous way to treat the British Army.
“The point about the 60 Trophy systems completely gives the game away. It proves that even within our tiny, elite fleet of 148 hulls, we are still rationing basic survivability tech to save money on a spreadsheet. Maintaining the political fiction of a deployable ‘Division’ while failing to provide the organic artillery, GBAD, and IFV mass required to let that Division survive is worse than anachronistic—it is actively dangerous. We have spent decades underfunding the boring but critical aspects of warfare like logistical tail, spare parts, and ammunition stockpiles. If the upcoming review doesn’t ruthlessly choose between funding a proper, fully-formed heavy capability or abandoning the Divisional pretence entirely, we are just waiting for a catastrophic wake-up call on the battlefield.
Apologies for the stray quotation mark in my last post, fat fingers and a rushed keyboard!The reality is that pointing out things like rationing 60 Trophy systems across 148 tanks isn’t about being defeatist—it is about demanding basic strategic sanity. The House of Commons Defence Committee has highlighted these exact hollowing-out issues for years. Demanding proper industrial mass, robust logistical tails, and genuine crew survivability for the British Army is the exact opposite of what an adversary wants. They want us complacent, hiding behind political fictions of empty ‘Divisions’ while our frontline troops are left under-equipped. Wanting our heavy brigades to actually have the armour, artillery, and parts to fight and win is just common sense.
What absolutely boils my piss dry is senior political figures and top Army brass talking about a ‘deployable division’ with a straight face, knowing full well we can’t and haven’t been able to for years.
Whats worse is there isn’t the ‘slightest’ intention of changing that either.
They simply won’t finance it…
Hit the nail on the head, John. It’s the gap between political rhetoric and fiscal reality. Saying we have a deployable division when we only buy 60 Trophy systems for 148 tanks is like buying a fleet of fire engines but only paying for ladders on half of them. It’s a spreadsheet fiction that puts lives at risk.
I think you have nailed one of the key problems. Which is that the Defence Select Committee is a toothless tiger. It can rip into Ministers and the Brass as much as it likes. Asking difficult questions about current materiel states and force structures. But all they can do is make recommendations and publish a report. Which may or may not be picked up by the press and tabloids. They can’t really hold the Government to account, as the Government has jurisdictional sovereignty. I don’t feel this is ever going to change, nor do I feel that Government is willing to make Defence multi-party governed. Sadly it will always be governed by the the latest whims of the incumbent Government and spiral ever downwards through continual boom and bust.
Damn that sounded depressing, need to have a serious word with myself on being too pessimistic and doom mongering.
You aren’t doom mongering, you are just looking at the constitutional reality. The Committee can’t force the government’s hand, but what it does do is strip away their plausible deniability. When a peer conflict kicks off and the hollowing-out leads to preventable losses, ministers can’t claim ‘nobody told us.’ The value of those reports is that they anchor the debate in hard facts, making it harder for the government to hide behind empty public relations spin.
Is the logistical backup bit correct. There are 72 CRARRV on the books, 99+ HET’S and 350+ Tankers + tractor units
The question is Simon, how much of that kit is actually operational?
True, 92 of HET’s are operated by FastTrax so should be operational. The tankers have just been upgraded, so hopefully ok. Tractor units , not sure . CRARRV again not sure. There were be refitted with new engines
Those 350 tankers and tractor units are prime targets on the new battlefield – see Ukraines mid range strike operations. Tankers lead short but very exciting lives and now need mobile air defence units escorts to bring them forwards.
Part of the equation really should be; not only what size force is planned for deployment, but also how long does that force need to be sustained and what size attrition reserve would be needed at an expected rate of attrition against a peer force, while replacements are sourced or manufactured. This would not be quick for the U.K. without an active production line and other countries will likely be looking after their own interests/forces.
I think we know the answer to that is ‘a Brigade’ and very limited time, if it was fighting a high intensity situation.
Saying that, its hard to see us doing that unilaterally these days.
A Brigade deployed on a peace keeping mission could be sustainable for a while, but it would limit our ability to act elsewhere, should it be needed.
It’s a pity that the engine will only give the same horsepower as the C2
Perkins CV12-6A being upgraded to Perkins CV12-9A (rebuilt)
The 9A has potential for 1500 BHP, but is de-rated to aid reliability, better fuel consumption, and cooling
Why not have a word with JCB? They are producing tracked vehicles up to 52 tonnes. The requirement is for a small fast armoured vehicle with an unmanned 120/130/140mm turret. Get them to write the spec., no gold plating, and then compete it.
Apologies. I must have typed that while dreaming…
No Gold plating, ask JCB, oh no, that won’t do, it just won’t do at all sir!!
Simply not cricket.
Explain how the MIC will be able to take piss and turn that into a muti billion pound fiasco Monro??
It simply wont do!!!
Indeed.
There is a marvellous cartoon (can’t put it on here) of managers looking at a plunging sales chart and saying: ‘I don’t get it. We had all those meetings…’
We have plenty of good, even great, manufacturing companies. We have a still relatively modern armoured vehicle manufacturing facility in Newcastle. What we do not have is a government that realises exactly how much peril the country, Europe, is in.
Absolutely, tne SDSR made no mention of rebuilding the Army in any real way, not in numbers, or equipment needed.
The best that I could find beyond all the new ISTAR kit, Drones, deckchair moves and doctrinal stuff was an aspiration to add 3k post 2030.
Morning mate, yep, an aspiration to add 3 thousand, so nothing really.
Same with drones, a handful here a handful there. It’s as if politicians and top brass ‘haven’t’ had a front row seat to the war in Ukraine.
They simply dont want to hear it, see it, or finance it.
Easy to say there should be more C3s. Difficult to say where they will get the hulls to be converted from.
The Warrior 40CTC [potential] upgrade is also fairly interesting.
Convert all the remaining hulls so we have some reserves.
Challenger is a great piece of kit, the MOD should not be so hasty to reduce its numbers.
The remaining hulls are not worth upgrading AFAIA, unless there is a hidden reserve somewhere.
Simple fact is we are converting enough Challenger 3s to fill a full sized armoured divisions and it would be very difficult to fit a division with 148 tanks into a NATO set up – and that ignores the fact that we need training vehicles, replacements and spares as well… 148 is ridiculous.
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The math in this report completely exposes the smoke-and-mirrors nature of modern British land procurement. You cannot field three viable armoured regiments with 148 hulls when the basic structural math demands 190 just to cover frontline deployments and baseline training pipelines. Operating with a 42-tank shortfall means we have absolutely zero attrition reserve, zero depth for deeper overhaul cycles, and zero capability to absorb peer-to-peer combat losses. We are essentially purchasing a ‘use-once’ boutique tank fleet that looks respectable on a spreadsheet but lacks the industrial mass to survive the first week of a high-intensity European conflict.
the estonia nato exercise hedgehog 2025 gave us something to think about for uk tank strategy /doctrine.
CH3 should really be a stop gap, it seems like it would be unrealistic to convert many more hulls considering the supposed state of the remaining hulls, it has been discussed on here before that even the 148 could be a hard number to meet. CH3 is also looking extremely heavy and a reduced weight solution may be needed considering the conditions in Eastern Europe.
Instead a new hull (CH4 ?) should be designed to work with the CH3 turret and then like the Leopard MBTs have iterative upgraded turrets over time to meet battlefield demands overtime. This would allow increased numbers in the longer run as funding conditions improve, but also provide the manufacturing base again for MBTs in the U.K. Even if production is kept low rate, over time tanks could be upgraded, numbers increased and replacements provided if needed, along with an active line of spare parts which CH2 has been lacking and CH3 will likely have the same issue. It is easier/quicker to expand production rather than have to start production from scratch in the event of war.
Don’t let MIC have a crack at Chally4, with such a tiny fleet, it would simply reinvent the wheel at vast eye watering expense.
The moment we slipped down to 148 tanks, we wrote ourselves out of the play.
We are an MBT buyer pushing forward, not a builder, that’s assuming we replace them with anything.
One area where I think buying off the shelf product would be more cost effective and also allows us to fit in better with European allies.
Whatever number of tanks they all will surely need APS kits?
How can you send more than 60 into battle if needed and it might well be needed!? It’ll be money well spent. Don’t the CR3s all need a C-UAS RWS too?
They won’t, they dont have the slightest intention to ever deploy more than 60, one Regiment plus a small reserve.
148 total will mean at least 30 odd of them will be sat about awaiting parts, one Regiment will be high readiness (with the trophy kit etc) one low readiness, without.
It’s now a niche capability, probably cut by SDSR35.
AFAIK the number of C3s is the number of C2 hulls that were in any sort of state that could be upgraded.
C3 is cheap to do (like everything in the MOD) but it’s ultimately a flawed idea beyond a stop gap in that there are no new hulls being produced, so it’s not possible to just “order more”
Thats not correct. Engineering firms like Pearson have stated clearly they can build more. They are working with what they have on this project due of course to cost. At no point has it ever been stated they couldn’t build new hulls. The hull is by far the least technical bit.
They can order new hulls for assembly easy peasy but this will increase the costs of the product.
So it’s probably not possible to simply “order more” C3s, at the same price as before at least.
Also I don’t think there is much appetite for it; ordering hulls to assemble. As other people have commented elsewhere, at this point they might as well buy off-the-shelf complete units if they are going to buy.
And even then I don’t believe there is an emphasis on expansion of the fleet. It’s one proposition for the treasury to upgrade existing Challenger 2 tanks for 5.5 million a pop. It’s another ballgame; buying a set of brand new tanks (inc. hulls) for what-would-be approx. 25 million each.
You can see why the treasury was swayed on the C2 upgrade proposition but might be less keen on buying brand new tanks, either to assemble or as a complete asset.
Best bet is to go round begging different countries if they have any old tanks that they can upgraded and/or scavenge the hulls from if looking to expand. But still, I don’t think the appetite is there for the actual expansion itself.
Theres no apetite or money for it, and im pretty sure it will never happen, outside of a big war.
The point is though many people have said in the past it isn’t possible, which isn’t true. Its very possible if the will is there, just unlikely to be needed.
Just read a report on Estonia exercise hedgehog, blimey! Didn’t realise. Thanks for info
Why is this site becoming a click-bait mouthpiece for that bunch of Neo-christian crackpots 858?
What?
We need to buy around 10000 Challenger 3s at about £3k a pop. Made in China by the people who make small boats they might be even cheaper. That will put a dent in Ivans drone stocks for a while. Who knows plywood Ajax might actually be an improvement?
The MoD needs to purchase enough active protection kits to go along with the 148 CH3 on order and then look increasing the fleet to just shy of 200.