Posted on 08/27/2020 11:06:26 AM PDT by RomanSoldier19
Did they axe their mother first?
Ace Hunter said the same thing, it all goes around.
Remember, after World War II, many in the military intelligentsia were saying that infantry would be forever obsolete because of the A-Bomb.
I remembered reading that that quite ironically as I crawled into a draw while trying to avoid grazing MG fire on the DMZ in Nam.....
They always seemed to have one or two ready when Top Gear needed some...
Despite coming up with the first tank, Britain never has had a competitive tank.
Putting the entire 227 vehicle tank corps in to storage! And what do that use to train new tankers? Or are they just going to replace the tanks and artillery as well with archers equipped with long bow’s that were successful during the middle ages. And will they reinstate the Royal Orders for every Englishman and Welshman to train for several hours every Sunday after attending Mass?
A lot of modern tank training takes place in simulators, FYI.
True enough. But here at home it’s one hellacious platform.
Tanks for the memories!
The British Army literally has more Generals than tanks today.
There are plenty of places it’s very very useful. But we no longer fight wars to win. Now we nation build. So we need far fewer tanks and almost no artillery.
The most important tool now is a ramp on a cargo plane for unloading cash to bribe locals to pretend they are friendly.
“I remembered reading that that quite ironically as I crawled into a draw while trying to avoid grazing MG fire on the DMZ in Nam.....”
You must have been very embarrassed that you were not intelligentsia enough to understand you were actually obsolete. That was really kinda cold of you to ruin their theory. /s
As even current US armor officers are pointing out, the Abrams is still among the best tanks in the world - but many don’t think it is *the* best and there’s work to be done. The proposal to make the thing a hybrid drive, for example, is very interesting.
I know that it does, but the “proof of the simulator pudding” is when the crew has to get into the tank and head out to live fire training and to perform the maintenance to keep it running. I spent 2 years on M-60A2’s during my first tour in Germany and a simulator would have been nice. And I recall spending a couple of days at Ft. Lewis watching the Stryker crews leaning to operate its gunnery systems in simulators.
Hi.
IMHO, to take and hold real estate you must have Tread heads.
But you also need air dominance.
YMMV.
5.56mm
They have a few problems with continuing to run the Challenger 2 - first problem is that it is unique in NATO tanks in having a rifled main gun and therefore does not perform well with some of the more modern rounds. It is a very accurate, very powerful gun, but the British gotta have their HESH rounds and now it’s kind of biting them in the arse.
Second problem: The war in Syria has made it ridiculously obvious that even front line NATO composite armor is horrifically vulnerable (at a “why did you bother bringing tanks” level) to Russian tandem-warhead missiles. It’s why the US Army finally told Raytheon they could keep their vaporware Quickkill system and are hastily slapping Israeli Trophy APS on every Abrams we can get into the rebuild depots. Well, the Brits don’t have the political option of buying the system from the Israelis, the Russians won’t sell them the other battle tested APS out there, there’s no British APS that works and the only other option right now is the Germans and their systems haven’t worked out well in their limited real world experience. It’s also reportedly questionable if the Challenger 2 could even *take* a Trophy APS due to some issues with the turret drive and other features of the vehicle.
Third problem: Challenger 2 isn’t completely compatible with a lot of their battle network because they haven’t updated the electronics in forever. It’s also not compatible with our Blue Force Tracker and successors. So it needs a complete electronics refit.
Fourth problem: The Brits don’t have the sealift or airlift for more than a handful of their tanks. When they came to play in the Sandbox, they had to hire Russian air transport.
Fifth problem: The Brits are basically broke and there have been at least five plans to fix/update Challenger 2 and the rest of the armored force in the past decades, none of which went anywhere significant. The only thing that got through was their Streetfighter upfit, which was their equivalent of TUSK.
When Challenger first came out, it was competitive. The problem is, it was actually rejected by the British Army and was to be sold to the Iranians...
“Well, the Brits don’t have the political option of buying the system from the Israelis” not true. The British army has bought th BMC41 system from Israel that the latter uses in its iron dome system to integrate the new land ceptor air defence system. There wouldn’t be any political issue buying Israeli military equipment because we already do it.
As for scrapping the tanks, I say that it’s a good idea. Britain has never been a land power, we are a maritime one. If we need a heavily equipped army to defend Britain it’s because the Navy and the Air force have failed and we are already in deeper sht than we can handle. What Britain needs is a strong navy, a capable air force and a small but well equipped army and marines to be able to perform raids and then get out again without getting bogged down in long term occupations. We should focus on the navy and the airforce and let other allies focus on the large scale ground stuff.
You guys bought the BMC4I through Lockheed, though, IIRC. Not direct from Israel.
You do not want to be in a tank.
The Day We Took Out 23 Tanks
https://www.airspacemag.com/airspacemag/day-we-killed-23-tanks-180975619/
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