A Royal Air Force A400M delivered a Multiple Launch Rocket System to the British Army exercising in Estonia, working closely with Allies in a crisis response scenario.
Rapid Air Land (RAL) is vital for deployment at pace, says the Ministry of Defence.
A @RoyalAirForce A400M delivering a Multiple Launch Rocket System to the @BritishArmy @16AirAssltBCT exercising in Estonia, working closely with Allies is a crisis response scenario. Rapid Air Land (RAL) is vital for deployment at pace. #WeAreNato #SteadfastDefender pic.twitter.com/jGMpSPGd74
— Chief of Joint Operations (@LtGenStickland) May 29, 2024
Recently, the Ministry of Defence confirmed plans to upgrade and expand its Multiple Launch Rocket System (MLRS) fleet to 85 vehicles from around 40. The information, confirming earlier plans, came in response to a question from Conservative MP Mark Francois regarding the specifics of the current fleet and future enhancement strategies.
Minister of State for the Ministry of Defence, James Cartlidge, revealed that the Ministry manages an operational fleet of 26 MLRS units, with an additional 50 systems held in reserve. The upgrade plans encompass 69 of these systems at a projected cost of £481 million. Moreover, an additional £158 million has been earmarked for enhancing 16 further systems. This phase includes the acquisition of surplus units from international partners, aiming to expand the operational fleet to 85 systems.
The upgrade process, structured in four tranches, is scheduled to conclude by 2030.
Cartlidge said:
“The Ministry of Defence has an operational fleet of 26 multiple launch rocket systems (MLRS), comprising launcher and repair and recovery variants, and owns a further 50 MLRS, all of which will be upgraded.
To date, approval has been granted to upgrade 69 systems at an estimated capital cost of £481 million (using current exchange rate assumptions). Funding of £158 million has been allocated for the upgrade of a further 16 systems, which includes the purchase of surplus systems sourced from other nations. This will lead to a total operational fleet size of 85 systems.
The MLRS fleet is being upgraded in four tranches with the final deliveries estimated to be complete by 2030.”
The UK previously operated 4 of an M270A1 variant called M270B1, which includes an enhanced armour package.
I await the uplift of 26 RA and 3 Regiment RHA to reflect the increase.
Standing up a new Battery from each Regiment surely?
reform 39 regt, what idiot binned an MLRS Regt then stripped an AS90 Regt then gave them MLRS, its like musical chairs.
It is. The Army high command in their musical chairs shell game of cuts, and it takes an effort to keep up.
39 was cut, the MLRS batteries split between 3 AS90 Regiments.
Then when we came back from Germany and, later, 3 Armoured Infantry Bdes went to 2, they cut 26RAs AS90s as you say and rebrigaded the MLRS back together.
3 RHA had AS90, then cut them to Light Gun, now MLRS.
Total waste of time effort and money, what moron agreed to that? back were we started but with less SP Arty and far too many light guns. Too many MLRS as we will never have the stocks of rockets for them, blind leading the blind
Too many Light Guns? We have no more than we used to have. They support light forces, so what is the issue? Granted they are old and will need replacing sometime.
Not sure how much utility the 105mm has on the modern battlefield.
I’m starting to think we should go all 155mm and buy the M777 as the replacement. What they lack in mobility they make up in range.
155 need a lot more people to operate, at least 8 plus a large support tale for the provision of 155 shells.
It looks like a 120mm Mortar system will replace the light guns.
If its vehicle mounted on say a Supercat it will allow a far better shoot and scoot capability than a 105 or 155 has. Dusting off the plans for the 81 mm Merlin or something like a (smaller) trimode Brimstone seeker and you could start adding smart 120mm rounds as well.
Also 105 seems to have had a pretty good run of it in Ukraine.
Has Gunbuster says Jim it takes crew numbers up sadly. But your right good range ,still M777 very nice peace of kit wish we had them 👍
They are ideal for 3 Cdo and 16AA, as can be underslung easily.
Supplementing with a lighter precision fires would be good but why get rid of the LG.
The LG that are sitting with the likes of 7 Bde are the issue.
range, ammo types, great for jungle, mountains etc but may be a more *moble gun is needed with a heavy shell and range. Why do need so many light guns ? crew heavy, not fast in or out of action,
The thing is, we have “so many” because the more expensive systems like AS90 have been cut so much it makes the LG complement look decent. Also it equips the Army Reserve.
That is my whole point and what moron decided that? the same who disbanded MLRS Regts then had de equip AS90 Regts then re equip them with MLRS, the same idiots who turned MLRS in REME vehicles. The same idiots who gave our only A1/B1 MLRS to Ukraine.
The same ones who have given most of the AS90 away with only 14 replacements and a vague offer to buy some RCH 155
None of these are Moronic, and the people making the decisions aren’t morons. The only reason you are saying this is because you’re looking at it through a lens of not having to worry about a budget.
i dis agree, if it was about money yes I agree. but we all know for a fact many changes have been made on a whim, by some new in the job, someone making their mark. Those are the changes i am on about. I served under many changes some made sense, but most were because some wanted to change things rather than had to. We have given away most of AS90’s est 50plus why, we still need them and have no replacement for them apart from 14 FH77’s, Field regts were re rolled to Light gun, then MLRS while… Read more »
Martin, regiments are not disbanded on a whim. We have given away AS90’s to Ukraine, because Ukraine is in a war and we want them to win. That’s neither moronic, nor on a whim, that’s a solid foreign policy decision. We reduced from 3 to 2 AS90 regiments because we have an equipment budget black hole that is gigantic (And do keep up, they’re being replaced by RCH 155). 3rd Regiment RHA went from AS90 to Light guns as part of a cost cutting measure, it was not idiocy, again, it was because in the real world we live in… Read more »
oh dear, i do keep up, so we gave away AS90 not from reserve but from active units, we re rolled a Regt twice in under a few years. And yes we are getting RCH 155 but when? how many? and as you will know wheeled Arty has had problems in the mud in Ukraine. I’m no longer in the Army so you can stop talking down to me, hiding behind budget cuts for making an arse of things might cut in your world but in the units involved its sole destroy, effects retention and moral. Its not numbers on… Read more »
I love the insanity whitewashing the gutting of our defences by saying we always have allies. What alliance is helped by one of its major members year upon year bringing far less to the pact?
Seems like the slow suicide of western freedoms by design.
What allies has ever helped us since the 60’s? no one, the USA can not be trusted it does whats best for it and drags in wars.
Won’t argue with that one 👍
Well, every ally has actually Martin. Principally the Yanks. My point is that the UK is short changing every ally by becoming so much smaller militarily, as well as risking our future as an independant, free nation.
Which Allies helped us apart from in counter insurgency? and yes we are not carrying our own weight in some areas but we are not a world power like we were 60 years ago.
Time to step back and let other police the world, why waste our guys and money for the un lazy world who are happy to do nothing.
What do you think is the appropriate number of light guns? Because at the moment the Light Guns we have are: 1 Regiment to support 3 Cmdo, 1 Regiment to support 16AA and 1 Regiment to support 7 Light Brigade.
how many light gun Regts are there including Reserves? about the same as AS90 Regts. And oh we got lighter units, why? easy to move or cheaper to equip?
Light just means cheap and cheerful dressed up as an improvement. When really its because we can not afford to equip heavy Divisions, thats why we have one, just one full one
So you’re just waffling and not answering the question then? Good to know. Don’t see why I should bother to answer any of your diatribes if you can’t be bothered to answer a simple question.
What was the question?, have had your meds and nap? hate for you to be up set or angry its not good for the blood pressure.
3 Regts is ideal, but recently an AS90 regt lost its AS90 to go to light guns 3 RHA, smoke and mirrors as we gave those AS90 away, who in their right mind would bin AS90 for the light gun? shorter range, slower in and out of action, lack of modern types of Ammo. etc etc, What great idea, then re role 3RHA as an MLRS Regt after disbanding 39 which was an MLRS Regt.
As an ex-REME guy, my Corps did trickle posting and kept REME units unchanged in role. Restructuring of a REME unit was only done when forced by a high-level Orbat change and REME restructurng was generally minimal.
It always baffled and bewildered me at the amount of, and frequency of re-roleing done by some of the Combat Arms and Artillery units.
I guess the combat arms have things like tanks, SPG, and other armoured vehicles which have been salami sliced since around 2005.
Easier to totally change role due to loss of combat equipment, such as Tank regiments ending up with CVRT or Jackal.
Assume with CSS orgs like the REME the job only changes with the kit being supported. And as we will always have heavy, medium, and light forces, REME Bns, Wkshps and LADs remain tasked to suit?
The corps has at least raised 9 REME!
Same with the varied specialist regs of the RE, they remain.
It is fair to say that REME units at first line or second line rarely get salami sliced. But the issue with REME is that as more complex kit is fielded by the army then REME finds it impossible to expand its numbers – there is a ‘rule of thumb’ that REME should never exceed 10% of the armys headcount. Also, as you have said, some brigades in FS have no REME or have no regular REME at second line. Equipment Support is very complex so when a combat arms unit, CS unit or RLC unit re-roles or is re-equipped… Read more »
Changing with times or new equipment is fine but change for the sake of it and that often erode moral, makes people leave and as always we never get more with change. it happens far too often almost as often as the head of the Army changes
all 2 of them
Michael, please explain. Two of what?
I was waiting for a complaint about just 1 MLRS or such.
It’s an exercise, it doesn’t need to be a whole regiment, which we wouldn’t have the airlift for anyway.
Good training for the gunners and the loadies.
Yes we should definitely fly in several dozen ballistic missile launchers into a country just a few dozen miles from Russia’s second biggest city. Rush them in on an exercise with no notice and start firing off long range ballistic missiles for show.
I think we stopped doing s**t like that after bake archer in 1983.
😀
Bake Archer? Able Archer you mean?!
Yes sorry, auto correct did that
So much for AI taking over the world 😀
Very true. We were demonstrating a capability (deploying rocket artillery and its support over distance) and giving good trg as you say.
So I might be missing something, but can anyone explain to me why we will have a tracked MLRS system, which has a long range and can be kept far back from front lines; but a wheeled conventional artillery system, with a shorter range and so will need to operate closer to front lines?
The point being that the closer to the front lines you are, the higher the likelihood that you’ll need off-road capability.
I can’t answer your question but perhaps the relative roles of 155mm guns and the MLRS system might not be as simple as you suggest. The gun is to help defend a front line, if it has 30km range then it can be 25km behind the front line to try and keep our of the way of drones. The MLRS is to attack rear areas if it has a range of 150km it needs to get within 5km of the front line to hit a target 145km behind the front line. Yes if the target is only 100km behind the… Read more »
MLRS systems use the exact same shoot and scoot tactics as 155 SPGs, so no, there isn’t much difference in the off road requirements between the two.
We may be able to deploy quickly, but deploying a division or two to fight in UKR or elsewhere in Eastern Europe or the far east will be beyond our tiny forces capabilities for a long time.
We have to withstand the onslaught of Russia/China etc to burn down democracy & freedom via the media & internet. Frankly I’m not confident about the existential future of the West.
We still have plenty of Challenger 2s and Warriors. The issue might be the planned retirement dates of many vehicles is 2030 and the timeline of lots of replacements might not be in time to cover it.
Army is in a poor state but we still have enough RN and RM to do a job.
With the state of ivans navy the RN will be alongside on a run ashore drinking vodka way before the army arrives😏😁
The RN has previous…HMS Somerset…St Petersburg 1998…It was by all accounts a truly epic run ashore…and subsequent Captains Table.
I’d argue this is the reason that we’re seeing wheeled vehicles come into play more. If we could only get across the channel to France, you’d have to road march the rest of the distance to eastern Europe. Way easier in wheeled vehicles with higher speeds and less wear on the tracks. The China issue is different, but there is the list of registered militarily useful ships so I guess we’d be going and borrowing a load of civilian RORO ships to get kit further afield like China. Although, with a war with China it’s going to be the US… Read more »
Actually you don’t have to road march, once across the channel moving heavy military equipment by rail has been the common practice. The issue is when you get to Poland you need to swap trains because the track gauge between Poland and Western Europe is different (btw a good reason for Rail Baltica to be expanded and build quickly, it will at least partially mitigate this problem).
Even wheeled armour suffers attrition when doing road moves, but a rail move? Not so much.
Fantastic that we have this capability.
I see on WIKI that we have 22 A400M’s.
Realistically, what is the maxiumum amound of these that we could deploy in this manner in one go? 10? I don’t fully understand aircraft maintenance rotation etc nor how in demand these planes would be for other activities if some form of war broke out, so hard to estimate acurately
I suppose bearing in mind its only a 3 hour ish flight, we could reasonably deploy all that we needed to within a 24hour window
Considering they have had to pick up the taskings of the Hercules due to some imbecile deciding to cut near 25% of our airlift fleet, and that we now have so few aircraft for all the tasks the military and HMG want them to do, even in peacetime, ( see the fracus recently re D Day aircraft ) then I think you know the answer!
As the World Parliament of Peace President Vitali Druzhinin I expect resolution on the battlefield more than any military Intelligence specifics on light armor which you are here discussing with highest level of military Intelligence professionalism. Any army needs a leader more than a commander in chief