What NATO wants

While the publication of the Strategic Defence Review is some time away still and surprises are the only thing that is always to be expected in British policy for Defence, we actually have a pretty clear idea of what NATO is asking of the UK and what the UK, in broad terms, has committed to. 

Top of the list, for importance and cost both, is the Nuclear Deterrent. 

The traditional UK role in the North Atlantic area and ideally up into the Arctic follows, because regardless of how often this fact is overlooked, the UK’s vital frontline is in the north. That’s where the UK mainland and Russia are virtually “in touch”, across the sea. That’s the direction from which Russian submarine and surface threats and their long range aviation and missiles would be coming from. The UK is expected to have a lead role in controlling this sea front. 

This commitment is multi-faceted and goes from Anti-Submarine Warfare to Carrier Strike to the historic yet so often overlooked commitment to sustain northern Norway from the sea through the UK-Netherlands joint amphibious force. 

Always remember that the world actually looks like this. The UK's geography is an inescapable fact. 

Carrier Strike used to be a key component of the NATO North Flank plans in the Cold War (HMS Ark Royal IV ended her days working with US and French carriers in the Northern Strike Group) and regardless of how hard Army and RAF-inspired lobbies try to deny this, it remains a factor. 

It increasingly means delivering seafloor surveillance and protection of key underwater and surface infrastructure, too, in the North Sea and into the Baltic, where a specific NATO mission has just launched after repeated “incidents” of submarine cables being cut. 

On land, the UK and NATO have agreed, already under the previous government, that the British Army’s main role within the Alliance’s New Force Model is to resource a “multidomain Corps” as SACEUR’s “go-to” Strategic Reserve. Specifically, in the New Force Model, SACEUR is to have two highly-responsive Reserve Corps, one from France and one from the UK. The new Secretary, John Healey, reaffirmed this “multidomain Corps” commitment in his speech at the RUSI Land Warfare conference in July last year, soon after the Election. While the speech itself does not add further detail, it had been reported that during the event he further specified that the “ambition” is for a British Corps of 2 Divisions with 6 brigades”. 

The Corps is of course the Allied Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC), which has started the transition towards the new role as soon as its latest turn leading the NATO Response Force (NRF) concluded (1 Jan 2024 – 1 July 2024). It was indeed an important date for NATO as a whole as the NRF became the new and restructured Allied Reaction Force (ARF), which will be led, for the first 3 years, by the NATO Rapid Deployable Corps Italy (NRDC-ITA). 

The Divisions are obviously 1st Div and 3rd Div. 1st Division has only recently gotten the uplift needed to resume some credibility as a deployable 2-star HQ and has immediately been trusted into a key high-readiness role, covering the transition from the old to the new Reaction Force. 1st Division has been the lead ARF component since 1st July 2024, mainly through 7th Light Mechanised BCT, an aviation task force and an integral operational sustainment brigade supported by elements of 11th Security Force Assistance Brigade. 

The ARRC’s “evolution” towards the new role has in the meanwhile seen the resubordination under its command of key formations including 7th Air Defence Group and 1st Aviation Brigade. De-facto, in order to deliver the Corps as described, all major formations will eventually have to report to the ARRC. 

NATO also wants to see the UK acquire more credible air defence options. This is an increasingly urgent gap to fill and it is historically particularly bad for the UK which, in terms of Ground Based Air Defence, essentially only deals in SHORAD and has for decades, completely avoiding any investment in longer range missiles and any real anti-ballistic capability. 

In theory, the UK is, already since the SDSR 2015, committed to contributing to NATO-wide Missile Defence efforts with a new anti-ballistic radar to be built on British soil. This commitment is known internally as Project LEWIS (possibly from the name of the island, where the radar might be sited) and led to a request filed to the US State Department for acquisition of a Long Range Discrimination Radar. Authorization to procure it arrived in March 2022 but no evident progress has been made since, with Project LEWIS operational capability officially delayed until 2029. 

The UK has been authorized to procure a Long Range Discrimination Radar set for Project LEWIS 

NATO has also made increasingly clear and public that the Atlantic and Indo-Pacific security are indivisible. This is something that has been made clear at the SDR table, along with one simple, albeit perhaps unwelcome reality: there is not an “Indo-Pacific tilt” that can be cut to free up substantial resources, no matter how many times the Foreign Secretary and Defence Secretary have claimed otherwise during their pre-Election speeches. It would be both strategically illiterate and financially useless to cut what little the UK has committed to the “East of Suez”, and this point at least seems to have been understood by government: Lammy and Healey have both long ceased to attack the “Indo-Pacific tilt”, indeed changing tune entirely. Their most recent speeches invariably underline the indivisibility of the two major regions of concern. 

NATO is also going to increasingly make clear that, as far as it is concerned, “3 (% of GDP) is the new 2”, but it doesn’t look likely the UK will be among the eager proponents of this new target, this time around. We are unfortunately still far from sure that even just the 2.5% target will be reached before this Parliament ends. 

What does it all mean in practice? 

Again, only assumptions can be made because the fact both logic and NATO are asking for some actions do not in any way imply the British government will follow those directions. 

In theory, Carrier Strike is safe and sound. NATO continues to value the commitment to provide Carrier Strike in the North Flank context and beyond, and the carriers are paid for. In general, no matter how some lobbies in the UK continue to campaign for it, NATO is not going to ask for existing capability to be cut in favour of dubious savings and even more dubious investments to follow in something else. The government’s confirmation of the Fleet Solid Support procurement with all 3 vessels confirmed through the new deal with Navantia also logically suggest Carrier Strike remains very much central.

ASW, including submarines (SSN-AUKUS) also remains critical and thus, again in theory “safe”. 

The amphibious role in Norway remains in demand and is part of some of the oldest multi-national commitments the UK has in place (with the Netherlands and with Norway) but this has not been enough to spare the ALBION-class LPDs from early removal from service, again confirming that logic can only ever go so far when it comes to British plans for Defence. 

Again in theory, the expectation is that we will see plans for a second, purpose-built Multi Role Ocean Surveillance ship confirmed. This vessel is planned with a very specific role in mind: “Deep Sea Data Gathering”. It will be more complex, more specialized and more expensive than RFA PROTEUS and will replace HMS SCOTT, the critical deep-sea survey vessel that is fundamental to ASW and the Deterrent. Between the subsea surveillance needs, NATO-wide, and the critical relevance of that survey capability to the Deterrent and the ASW mission, the construction of this vessel should be a certainty but, i can never stress this enough, British defence plans are a weird and mysterious world apart. 

It is no mystery that, whatever the difficulties RAF and Royal Navy face (which we can summarize primarily with the single word “personnel”), the most uncertainty, risk and trouble is to be found on Land given the absolutely horrible shape the British Army self-mutilated into through the STRIKE Brigade disaster. NATO is understanding and knows it will take time to recover, and understands the “British Corps” will (probably?) never be quite a Corps like the Alliance intends. 

What NATO will invariably demand is that the ARRC and its assigned combat units are properly enabled. This means they need to have credible artillery, air defence, ISR, logistics, engineering, EW, CBRN and medical capability. What NATO expects from the Reserve Corps is clearly a “self-contained” force that, when directed into action by SACEUR, is able to adapt to the situation and the terrain and act “independently”, without needing all sorts of backfill from other Allies to plug capability gaps. 

What the UK is being asked to provide is, indicatively, the 8th largest land component in NATO. It’s a substantial ask, but should not in any way be seen as something beyond the realms of the possible. The brigades, to some extent, already exist. 

In case some of the readers are not familiar with the British Army’s current structures, there are currently 2 armoured infantry brigades (12 and 20), a Light Mechanized brigade (7th) and an Air Assault brigade (16th) which, while not without problems and shortcomings, have a full roster of capabilities including key enablers. One major, major exception is proper artillery for the armoured brigades because at present the British Army has just 14 ARCHER 155 mm self-propelled howitzers, ex-Sweden, after accelerating the withdrawal of AS90 to pass the whole fleet to Ukraine. This is however supposed to be fixed in the coming years procuring BOXER RCH155s (Mobile Fires Platform project). 

The Divisions as they emerged from Future Soldier. Some things have changed since as some units have re-subordinated (most notaly 16 Air Assault has come under 1st Division, while 8th Engineer Bde and 7th Air Defence Group have moved directly under ARRC), but the lack of enablers has remained.

The Army also fields a small Army Special Operations Brigade (ASOB) with 4 Ranger “battalions” (not really battalion-sized at all), which in NATO context will have a stay-behind / deep reconnaissance and target acquisition focus. The UK is to lead NATO’s Special Forces component and the ASOB will be fundamental in providing the lead SOF component in 2026 as part of NATO’s regular rotations. 

4 Brigade at present is a “bag” of regular infantry battalions with dubious access to Reserve-manned enablers (artillery, logistics, engineer). This is not credible and would need fixing by building the missing enabler battalions. It would also need, in time, to be given appropriate vehicles: most realistically, a mixture of FOXHOUND and the future Land Mobility Medium – Troop Carrier Vehicle that is supposed to be procured. 4 and 7 could thus both serve as “Light Mechanized” formations. 

Another brigade that won’t count as a manoeuvre brigade in NATO’s eyes (in everyone’s eyes, really) is 1st Deep Recconnaissance and Strike Brigade (DRS). This is really a glorified, super-sized Divisional Artillery Group with organic recce Cavalry at present, devoid of infantry, engineers and logistics. It has fantastic firepower thanks to 2 regiments of GMLRS (3 Royal Horse Artillery and 26 Royal Artillery) and at least for now also controls the ARCHER / RCH155 regiments (1 RHA and 19 RA) which however are, de facto, there to support 12 and 20 Bdes, but the absence of organic Logistic regiments makes its useability doubtful. The artillery component, particularly the GMLRS launchers, would consume fantastic amounts of ammunition and its not clear, to say it charitably, how the Army believes that ammunition will be moved. 

ARRC has since taken under direct control 7th Air Defence Group, 8th Engineer Bde and 1st Aviation Bde as well 

1st DRS could be turned into an acceptable manoeuvre formation relatively easily. At present it is planned to have 2 Cavalry regiments with AJAX. If 2 BOXER-mounted infantry battalions were moved into the formation, it would assume the structure that had been imagined for the abortive STRIKE brigades. It would need the addition of a Close Support engineering battalion, a dedicate Close Support Logistic regiment and, realistically given the Army’s intention to compensate its other weaknesses through increased reliance on deep strike means such as GMLRS, a dedicate Logistic regiment to move the rocket pods for reloading the M270s. 

Last of the “non-brigades” is currently 11th Security Force Assistance Brigade, a formation made up by 4 “non-battalions” (they are less than half the size of a real infantry battalion) specialized in delivering training and mentoring. This is not, by all means, a useless service, but it’s clear that it counts for nothing at all against the main “design driver” of building up a “credible” Corps. 

Unsurprisingly, all rumours agree on the fact that 11 Brigade will change shape and role. I’m insistently hearing whispers of 11 Brigade being transformed into a sort of lightweight counterpart to 1st DRS (which is of course part of 3rd Division, the heavy one) to, presumably, serve as 1st Division’s own “eyes” and “hammer”. 

This is interesting, but raises concerns on what exactly the Army is attempting to do. The hints point to a structure in which 3 Div fields 12, 20 and 1 DRS brigades while 1 Div would have 4, 7 and 11 DRS, with 16 Air Assault presumably leaving 1st Division and resuming her previous “independence” as a high readiness force. Depending on how this was done in detail, it would be either a more ambitious plan (with 7 rather than 6 “credible” brigades) or less ambitious one in which, at beast, 5 brigades would be credible as ground combat formations (12, 20, 4, 7 and 16) with the two DRSs being artillery brigades by any other name. 

With the (unjustifiably late, it was always exceedingly unlikely) realization that the Armed Forces manpower totals will not grow, the Army’s only hope of making its brigades “credible” and finding personnel to man increased numbers of M270 GMLRS and new Air Defence batteries (possibly a 3rd regiment to be added in the role) will come from ruthlessly cutting everything that does not help fill the gaps. Not munching words: in order to create additional artillery, logistics and engineer battalions, infantry battalions numbers will have to decrease. 

The attempt to hold on to 7 "brigades" through reconfiguration of 11 is highly unlikely (euphemism) to include the measures of painful realism needed to redistribute manpower and rebuild the missing enablers. 

The current 32 regular infantry “battalions” (as mentioned earlier, many already are much smaller than true battalions) are unsustainable and (largely) unjustified. The desired 6 brigades force, plus ASOB and standing tasks (2 battalions in Cyprus, 1 committed to Public Duties, 1 in Brunei, 1 experimental unit and 1 UK Special Forces Support Group) require no more than 26. It’s tight, unpleasant, difficult and will require years to build new units and manage the progressive redistribution of manpower, but if the total headcount stays at circa 73K there is simply no alternative. 

NATO will not be fooled into calling brigades formations that have no hope of actually going into the field as one. While the UK government strenuously refuses to release even a “curated” version of the regular NATO Defence Planning Capability Review reports, those will keep coming and will keep pointing out every area in which promises are not being kept. Elsewhere, the Netherlands Defence Planning Capability Review has been released in curated, unclassified form, showing planning assumptions and the areas where NATO identified shortcomings. The Netherlands have since enacted a number of procurement programs to cure those issues. 

Observation of what is happening in the Netherlands and elsewhere leaves us in no doubt at all about NATO being very explicit about the need for Brigades and Divisions and Corps to have their own enablers. Sweden, Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Italy are all busy building or re-building the missing enablers of their brigades and divisions and there are zero reasons to believe the UK is not being given the exact same instructions. 

This, by the way, quietly but surely involves also “details” such as ensuring mechanized infantry battalions have appropriate firepower. The Netherlands, again, have visibly responded by initiating procurement efforts to put turreted BOXERs with 30 mm guns in their formations. Do we believe for one second the UK isn’t being told the same things...? 

As of the Major Projects report 2023/24 (current to last march), the Army’s 2 main AFV programs (AJAX and BOXER) have a combined cost of just short of 14 billion pounds, with a combined total of 1212 vehicles in production. That this veritable treasure doesn’t yet contain any proper “battalion set” of infantry carriers with suitable armament, mortar vehicles and anti-tank solutions is the measure of the failure of the Army to plan a sensible structure for itself. 

It is time to fix both the sclerotic AFV plan and the equally confused Army structure. I understand the Army’s preferred way out of the mess it has created for itself would be adding a tail of ARES infantry carriers, fitted with a suitable crewless, non-hull penetrating turret, to the AJAX production to equip the 4 infantry battalions in 12 and 20 Brigades. This would, ideally, release a substantial number of BOXER hulls for other roles (mortar and recovery modules are supposed to be ordered “soon”) while, ideally, also delivering a couple of BOXER-mounted battalions for 1st DRS. This would be the most “logical” and overall not overly expensive, way out of the mess. Whether the SDR will give the green light to this approach or not, we don’t yet know. 

International Armoured Vehicles conference will be this week, but I’m not optimistic we’ll get an answer (yet). 

NATO would be equally fine with putting a turret on BOXER itself, but one solution or another will be needed. In one way or the other, AJAX and BOXER will have to coexist and, however sub-optimal that is, the Army needs to make this combo work. 

And regardless of how unpleasant it is, the Army also needs to re-balance its headcount to put manpower and resources towards much needed enablers. Make-believe plans are not going to get a pass from NATO, and the quiet and polite “displeasure” of the Alliance might eventually materialize with the British Army finding its role within the Alliance changed to properly reflect what it is and not what it would like to be. 

In a non-distant future we might well see the UK quietly pushed out of high prestige roles, most notably Deputy SACEUR, if the UK output quality keeps collapsing. 

What NATO wants is mostly clear. What the British Army and British government are able and willing to do is not.

The huge issues in the Integrated Review

 

F-35

Will the new Review provide an actual plan for the UK's F-35 purchase?

It is very much time to decide, because UK purchases are only planned out up to the 48^th airplane. Specifically, the UK is acquiring:

 

3 jets in LRIP 12 (Fiscal Year 2018; delivery this year)

6 in LRIP 13 (2019; delivery 2021)

8 in LRIP 14 (2020; delivery 2022)

7 in LRIP 15 (2021; delivery was to be in 2023 but got slowed down. Just 2 deliveries expected in 2023 now)

6 in LRIP 16 (2022; delivery was to be in 2024 but got slowed down. Just 4 now expected in 2024. A total of 7 jets will thus now only be delivered in 2025)

 

The delay to deliveries was reported by the National Audit Office: basically, the MOD decided to delay delivery to spread out the expenditure across more financial years.

 

Note that Lot 15 and 16 are expected to be part of a 3-lots Block Buy (15, 16 and 17). The final production contract for this Block Buy, which will be as always concluded by the US Department of Defense on behalf also of the international partners, has not yet been concluded but will be in the near future.

The UK currently has no known plan for what to do with Lot 17: will it contain any UK aircraft? Will it be a complete gap year?  

In practice, beginning in 2023, the UK F-35 purchase is all up in the air.

 

The "138" number is probably entirely unfeasible. Many observers have been aware of this for years now, and I’ve written and tweeted about it many times over. Lately, with reports in the Press, it has emerged that this awareness is becoming very much “official” with the Integrated Review discussion reportedly focusing on having 70 accepted as the “minimum credible fleet size” to be pursued.

To me, and to several other observers, this is no surprise and no shock. Arguably, it is merely a measure of realism.

 

For several years now, the number 138 has arguably had zero actual relevance in regard to what the operational fleet can aspire to be.

The infamous key phrase to hang on to the number 138 was “the aircraft will be purchased over the life of the programme”, means the numbers would be spread over many years. Thanks to the MOD’s usual vagueness and deliberate murkyness, nobody even knows how many years.

The annual Major Projects Report has the F-35 programme end date as 31 March 2035, but how this should be interpreted is open to debate. Would 2035 see the last delivery? If so, the last order would have to be placed 2 years earlier, in 2033. Or would 2035 see the last order placed?

According to other interpretations, “over the life of the programme” should be read as “out to the aircraft’s Out of Service Date”, which is tentatively scheduled for 2048 as of these days (with the understanding that this will move to the right by potentially decades, as always happens).

Clearly it would be spectacularly dumb to be purchasing jets just before removing the fleet from service, and there cannot be absolute certainty that the F-35 production line would still be open at all by then. There are fair chances that F-35s will still be in production, but it’s just an assumption.

Not knowing on how many years the purchases are going to be spread out obviously makes it impossible to gauge the relevance of the total number. If purchases are spread out over decades, the actual available fleet will never grow beyond a fraction of the total.

Purchases very late on in the life of the programme might well be replacement airframes to make up for operational losses, or new-build machines purchased instead of replacing early production lot aircraft on value-for-money considerations.

 

In short: 138 was never going to be the F-35’s in-service fleet size.

138 F-35 would suffice for 6 or 7 squadrons, maybe more, but there is no manpower and no infrastructure for that to happen. That's why the number is meaningless and has been for years.

We have only ever been told there would be 4 F-35 squadrons.

 

And it would be very difficult indeed to create more.

The RAF currently has 7 frontline TYPHOON Squadrons and has repeatedly made clear that they want to try and squeeze an 8^th one out, from a fleet of 140 machines (160 have been procured in total, but 1 was written off after a belly landing at China Lake in 2008; 3 were instrumented production aircraft for development and the Tranche 1 two-seaters have been withdrawn and dismantled for harvesting spares).

If you had 4 F-35B Squadrons, the total is 11 to 12 frontline Fast Jet units. The RAF hasn’t had this many from before 2010. And, notoriously, in 2010 the RAF shrunk down by 5,000 posts.

There clearly does not seem to be any manpower margin to create more Squadrons, even if there was the money to procure the airframes.

 

The fact that 70 F-35s are being described as the bare minimum requirement offers hope that the number of squadrons to be formed is still 4. A fleet of 70 to 80 jets should be enough to deliver that kind of force structure.

 

But again, there are too many things we do not know. One being the number of years in which the force will be built up. If 70 merely replaces 138 as a “through life” objective, we might well never see that many in service at the same time, and thus the number of squadrons would have to reduce.

If purchases are slow, the last 2 Squadrons might form only very late on, perhaps even beyond 2030. That would be very, very late indeed.

 

“70”, “138”, or whatever other number of airframes is individually almost meaningless.

If the Review finally gives us a realistic plan for the formation of the last 2 planned Squadrons by 2030, I invite everyone to leap with joy. 617 Squadron is operational, 809 will only stand up in 2023. What we need to see mapped out is the road that brings us to a third and a fourth frontline squadron.

The exact number of airframes is entirely secondary. Obviously, the more are purchased the easier it will be to form and sustain the fleet in the long term, but adjustements can be made. Less “attrition” aircraft purchased might be balanced by a greater investment in spare parts. Eventual losses should be faced with an eventual, occasional future purchase from a hot production line rather than by acquiring spare airframes early on, which will be difficult and expensive to keep up to date as the aircraft evolves.

 

I will be happy, quite literally, if people stop pestering us with a meaningless 138 number without dates attached to it in favor of an actual plan to get to 80 in 4 squadrons in an acceptable timeframe.

In fact, the UK should not commit to a fixed number of F-35s, and especially not such a high number. There will be time to make future purchases from a hot production line (for example if TEMPEST encounters delays, which is, let’s be honest, almost certainly going to happen; it always does) without having to unnecessarily constrain the Equipment Budget right at this time. 

 

My chief worry is that cutting back on the distant, long-term total number is in itself going to generate zero savings in the short term, were the financial problem sits. What needs to be settled satisfactorily is the timeframe 2023 – 2030 (2035 at the very latest).

This is especially true because the closer we get to 2030, the more F-35 will have to contend with TEMPEST for the same slice of budget. If you want TEMPEST by 2035 it means expenditure ramps up very quickly indeed. The UK has pinned on TEMPEST the future of its Aerospace industry and of its international credibility as a country able to lead a programme of this complexity. As a consequence, TEMPEST is an absolute priority and F-35 will inexorably tend to get crushed under its growing burden.

 

The real question is: can the UK afford another circa 40 F-35B by 2030? It would require the purchase of 5 jets per year beginning in 2023. This should not be unfeasible (the UK has ordered 6 or more jets in every year from 2019 to 2022) and is less aircraft per year than several other F-35 countries regularly order, but we know that the Combat Air budget is not looking very roomy in the next years and the RAF will have TYPHOON upgrades to fund; TEMPEST to develop and, hopefully, the LANCA unmanned loyal wingman to acquire. The same, small share of money will have to be cut up among these main programmes.

The situation is thorny enough that, I will repeat it again, 70 jets should make us all rejoice, provided that they are acquired over a reasonably short timeframe.

The real nightmare scenario we face is the impossibility to even do that.

 

Late 2020s and early 2030s will see TEMPEST expenditure ramping up more and more. As a consequence, I feel that the bulk of F-35 procurement will be over by 2030, by lack of money if not by design. Every effort, in my opinion, should be directed on getting those other 2 Sqns of F-35Bs by that date. And it is not going to be easy. It is in no way a given.

It is to be hoped that getting to 4 F-35B Squadrons will still happen, and that it will happen in a reasonable timeframe. The RAF will be severely short of Stealth capability until that happens, and the aircraft carriers will have a very hard time embarking a meaningful air wing. It would be a very embarrassing situation, as well as a dangerous one.

 

One welcome side effect of this much needed injection of realism is the fact that, if the RAF is at all sane, this will be the end of the ridiculous “Split Buy” idea. The fleet needs to be made up of one type, the B, which can work from the carriers as well as from land.

The F-35A is individually less expensive, yes. Has a slightly longer unrefueled range, yes. And can carry larger weapons in its internal bays, yes.

While these justifications are all true, the numbers (money, manpower and thus number of Squadrons, number of airframes) were never  sufficient to truly justify a split buy and were never going to be unless there was to be no TEMPEST. Splitting the fleet would result in tiny, operationally-ineffective fleets and in near-empty aircraft carrier decks.

The F-35A’s “advantages” would be totally illusory as well: the aircraft would be cheap, but there would be new costs associated to running two separate sub-fleets. Despite much commonality, F-35A and F-35B are not and will never be the same thing and there would be a constant fratricide struggle for securing a slice of the budget for covering the respective “unique” needs.

Moreover, the RAF does not own or plan a single payload which would fit the F-35A’s larger weapon bays but not the B’s ones. The large payloads are too large for both; the others fit the B just fine. So that is, and has always been, a moot point. Looks good on paper but never meant a thing in the UK’s context.

 

Hopefully, with the formation of the next two Squadrons now officially in jeopardy (unofficially, they have been uncertain for years to all who could look at the facts with the necessary realism) and the total number of airframes being revised downwards by 50% or even more, everyone will realize how utterly demented the idea of a split is.

 

The last time there was a 2-Squadrons small fleet, said fleet was offered up for the ritual slaughter because it was “too small to be sustainable and to support any sort of enduring operation, at sea or on land”. And honestly, it was. 2 Squadrons are too few to rotate in and out of task in a sustainable way. 4, ideally 5, is the number you are looking for.

That ‘s why the reduction of the number of squadrons in 2009 sealed the fate of that fleet, well before the 2010 SDSR even started.

That fleet was the HARRIER GR9 fleet. The number of airframes, ironically enough, was still 72 when the cut was decided. The number of crews and frontline squadrons operational on the type determined the cut, not the number of airframes.  

 

Whoever suggested that splitting the F-35 purchase in two to create not one but 2 barely-sustainable small fleets, both too small to meet their requirements, was being very unwise when 138 jets were still the assumption.

Whoever was to still insist on a split buy now would be, and I will unapologetically say this no matter how many might feel offended, an idiot. There really isn’t a kind way to say it.

 

 

CHALLENGER 2 Life Extension Programme

 

There is now a consensus on the fact that, if CHALLENGER 2 cannot be very decisively upgraded, it might be better to just remove it from service because it is suffering severe obsolescence, including in its main armament. The problem is well known: the rifled gun is a british oddity which has the drawback of employing two-piece ammunition. This means that the armor piercing rod cannot be lenghtened, creating a more effective round and putting an hard ceiling to the tank's lethality. It also means that there is no way to adopt the extremely flexible new generation of programmable, multi-mode explosive shells which are critical to counter reinforced positions and urban obstacles. 

I do not disagree on this assessment. The CHALLENGER has aged badly. It is also underpowered: its 1200 HP engine was arguably already inadequate when still new, especially considering that the british tank is heavier than its 1500 HP-powered counterparts. More weight and less power are a bad combination, that even the hydrogas suspensions cannot balance. 

What is extremely irritating, if not downright dishonest on the Army's part, is to come up with this radical assessment only now. Up to literally last year, the official position was that CHALLENGER 2 had no major lethality problems and only needed a refresh to optics, communications and electronics. 

For years i've written about the CR2 LEP and campaigned for the Gun and Powerpack to be at the very heart of the programme,. I went so far to suggest that LEP had no real sense to exist if the main issues were not to be considered. I did so before it was even confirmed that Rheinmetall was bidding a re-gunned upgrade solution, as this 2016 article shows. 

Yet, the Army initially launched LEP as a very limited obsolescence-removal effort, and it is only thanks to Rheinmetall's courage to show up with a new turret with the smoothbore 120/55 (what the Army wanted but did not dare asking for) that we are now looking at a LEP that, if it will progress, will actually mature the CR2 into that "world beater" it was falsely described as for all these years. 

Specifically, the latest Major Project spreadsheet, released in July and current to September 2019, reports on the sudden "change of heart" regarding CR2 LEP: 

The scheduled baseline project end date at Q2 1920 (30th September 2019) is 31/07/28, has lengthened by 791 days since last year's Q2 1819 date of 01/06/26, due primarily to the following factors;

 - In this period the programme's scope was expanded from obsolescence only to include enhancements to its lethality and survivability. The expanded scope has also lengthened the time to complete the work and increased cost over the assessment, demonstration and  manufacture phases.  These dates are currently subject to negotiation and will be confirmed when the full business case has been approved. 

The baseline Whole Life Cost at Q2 1920 (30th September 2019) is £1,304.19 m, due primarily to the following factors;

 - This reflects the financial position following the capability uplift endorsed by HMT. This sees a capability uplift and extension to the Main Battle Tank out to 2035.

Speaking to the Defence Committee, the Chief of the Defence Staff, previous Chief General Staff and mastermind of Army 2020 and Army 2020 Refine, General Sir Nick Carter, said that it has been "realized" that the CHALLENGER 2 needs the lethality upgrade to effectively face russian armor. 

I think the requirement is now pretty clear, and that is one of the reasons why Challenger 2 is taking a long time. It is because there was this realisation that the programme was not ambitious enough. It needed a smoothbore gun. It needed the ability to put a missile down that barrel to overmatch Armata, as you rightly describe. It needed its protection levels to be significantly enhanced. So the requirement has evolved. I think the Army now has a very clear idea of what it needs. The trick now is to find the resources to get behind what

it needs.

[Note: the mention of a "missile" can be interpreted as a new requirement for a gun-fired ATGW missile, but it seems that Carter was just being very "byzantine" in describing what is just the APFSDS round, but the longer-rod one enabled by the smoothbore cannon]

Carter's words do not reflect positively on him and on the Army as a whole. If they couldn't see the need for upgrade before 2019 they were not doing their job properly. 

The Army, of course, knew perfectly well that the gun needed to change: it was, in fact, looking for solutions already in the early 2000s, when the Challenger Lethality Improvement Programme was tentatively launched. It was in 2006 that a CHALLENGER 2 was first retrofitted with a 120mm smoothbore gun, in fact. Swapping the gun was never an issue: the issue was in the complete redesign needed to fix ammunition storage spaces and make room for the much longer single-piece rounds. This is the main issue to this day: the driver behind the need for a new turret. 

Have they forgotten everything about that phase? Was Carter being overly kind to his political masters, to the point of having the Army shouldering more blame that necessary? He was not shy earlier in the same hearing saying that it depends on money: why, then, say something as hopelessly stupid as this about CR2 lethality problems suddenly "dawning" on an oblivious Army...? 

The handling of the whole CHALLENGER 2 saga is horrible, and it makes me think very unpleasant things of the Army and of the current Chief Defence Staff. 

It strikes me as a binary choice: either there is staggering incompetence at play, or there is a fundamental dishonesty. 

The sudden "extremism" on the CHALLENGER 2 LEP issue at a time in which the risk of seeing the whole fleet axed for real is staggeringly elevate is very puzzling indeed. Up to last year they were fine with doing little more than changing radios and thermal cameras; now it's all or nothing. 

It's a terribly risky gamble. 

If not a deliberate ploy to direct the incoming cuts exactly in that direction. 

It feels like the 2009 reduction to the number of HARRIER Squadrons, which effectively made cancellation of the whole fleet the following year a foregone conclusion. 

Maybe i'm being overly harsh. Maybe my suspicions are unfunded. But it very much smells to me like an underhanded move on the part of what i suspect is a "wheeled faction" which seems to have gained the upper hand within the Army since 2015. 

I've long suspected the existence of a fundamental disagreement at the heart of Army planning between Tracks proponents and Wheels supporters. The dramatic change of priorities in 2015, just after the massive AJAX contract was signed, will always have me wondering. 

It is safe to say that, whatever the final outcome, as far as i'm concerned, the sooner General Carter's era ends, the better i'll feel. The original Army 2020 plan was a mess that had to be fixed with a long list of U-turns in the following years, and Army 2020 Refine now risks to destroy what's left of the British Army. It could hardly have gone any worse than it has. 

The prospect of the Army losing its MBTs and IFVs is one that is very hard to stomach. The destructive effect of such a decision would ripple farther across the force structure than most realize. It would be a life-changing injury for the Army. In the graphic below, I tried to evidence some of the less immediately-evident ramifications of such a scenario.

 

 

 

This graphic shows some (not all) of the implications of doing away with the tank. 

 

What is most infuriating about the tracked heavy armour situation is that the Army has laid its head into the guillotine all by itself. As we wait to see if the blade descends or not, we might contemplate the fact that in late 2019 the MOD signed into a 2.8 billion pounds contract for 523 BOXERs, as part of a Mechanized Infantry Vehicle contract which has an overall budget for procurement and first few operational years that is given as 4.6 billions in the latest Major Projects spreadsheet.

It is a fact that the Army put itself into this thorny corner by making BOXER its absolute number 1 priority, despite knowing that these 523 vehicles are a mere start, insufficient in numbers and variants to cover the need of the 2 STRIKE brigades.

 

In an alternate universe, the British Army has not strayed away from the 3 armoured  brigades of Army2020; has not yet bought a Mechanized Infantry Vehicle (MIV) and is making do with MASTIFF in its place but has but those billions into continuing the job it had started on Armour, getting CHALLENGER 2 LEP and WARRIOR CSP under contract and is, as a result, riding out the Integrated Review with a lighter heart.

This is a fact, and no hindsight is required. I’ve been shouting warnings for 5 years about the STRIKE adventure, as you will know if you have been following me for a while. I’ve collected hate from multiple corners, but I’m sadly, once again, proven right.

Believe me, I would very much like to be proven wrong in these cases, but it does not happen.

In pursuit of a concept that remains uncomfortably vague, the Army has put its core capabilities into a guillotine.

 

The MBT – IFV combo is the heart of any modern army. As the graphic hopefully helps understand, the ramifications extend across multiple formations and roles. All of that would have to be re-imagined and re-built around new concepts and new vehicles. This would be very expensive… and thus would likely not happen. Not anywhere near the scale that would be required.

 

Doing away with MBTs would require a very honest and very significant downgrade to national ambitions; a complete re-write of how the Army fights and against what kind of enemy it can go; and the rebuilding of the force structure around new and different vehicles and sources of firepower.

 

The problem is the UK would probably do none of the 3. Multiple governments have shown not to possess the necessary coherence and honesty to admit that having less capability only ever means doing less, not more. And the expenditure required to rebuild the army would be monstrous. If the tanks are cut for lack of money, you cannot possibly expect big amounts of money to be available right away, if ever, to launch a complete reconstruction of the force.

 

The Army would be left with BOXERs for some 4 infantry battalions, and plans for 4 regiments on AJAX. And that would be it. Half of 3^rd Division would virtually cease to exist in one go, and since 1^st Division is mostly only an empty shell containing multiple Light Role infantry battalions, there would be very, very little left to work with.

 

This is not the time to lose the MBT. Such a decision would also shut Britain pretty much out of any attempt to secure an industrial role in future MBT programmes. One popular option that gets mentioned a lot is “joining the franco-german Maing Ground Combat System”. There are multiple issues with this: France and Germany are not really looking for partners to treat with any equality. Industrial opportunities for other countries will be extremely limited. The UK would be welcomed as customer, not as partner.

And even if this was to change, the UK will have very little chance to secure any important industrial role simply because the relevant capabilities in this sector will have gone.

 

Rheinmetall BAE Land Systems is offering an incredibly fascinating option for a deep modernization of CHALLENGER 2: a whole new turret. This solves the ammunition problem of the CR2, which is the only NATO tank that uses 2-piece ammunition, which prevents the armor-piercing rod to be lengthened, thus hard-capping lethality. The CR2 ammunition is increasingly obsolete and is an oddity that offers zero commonality to NATO stocks and developments. No path to greater armor-piercing capability (important in the light of new Russian developments) and no chance to adopt modern programmable explosive rounds either. The new turret has been tested on a CHALLENGER 2 hull armed with the NATO standard 120 mm smoothbore and the very latest ammunition.

The new turret also comes fully digitalized and with modern systems, including new optics shared with AJAX, offering logistical commonality.

 

The first LEP demonstrator by Rheinmetall (now RBLS) focused on a "conservative" approach by going with the standard 120/55 smoothbore. 

The second demonstrator, publicly unveiled only last July, is more radically new as it comes with the 130/51 smoothbore. The turret is the same, but fitted with extra armour on the front and sides, possibly also as a form of counterweight for the cannon. Rheinmetall is betting big on this turret and this cannon; for them the CHALLENGER 2 LEP is an exciting opportunity, but the turret is very clearly aimed at future developments (MGCS) and at the LEOPARD 2 upgrade market. The first CHALLENGER 2 demonstrator was showcased at the NEDS show in the Netherlands in 2019, along with the 130 mm shell. It was a hint of what was coming, and a clear sign of the turret being meant for far more than just CHALLENGER. In the Netherlands, nobody cares about CHALLENGER. LEOPARD 2, on the other hand...

But more than that, the new turret is a product that Rheinmetall is using to develop next-generation solutions that could find a vast market in the future as LEOPARD 2 customers around the world take an interest.

 

In July it was revealed that the new turret, mounted on a CHALLENGER 2 hull (presumably the 2^nd of the tanks given originally to Rheinmetall to become demonstrators for LEP proposals) has been trialed with the new 130/51 gun, which offers an estimated 50% lethality boost.

This new cannon is not yet a given for the franco-german MGCS, but is expected to eventually be officially picked, and it is assumed it will become a NATO standard in time as a consequence.

 

Clearly there is a risk that, in the end, the new gun won’t be so widely adopted. Or perhaps it will only be adopted over many years.

Then again, every risk comes with an opportunity. There is a more than real possibility that this new gun will only grow in relevance in the future, and that it might pick up big export orders.

If the UK became the launch customer and got RBLS to launch production of the turret, gun and ammunition in the country, the heavy armour industrial capability of the country would go from moribund back to very healthy. It would be much easier to secure a role into a future tank programme too. Perhaps even have a leadership position into an alternative programme to the franco-german one, with countries like Italy and Poland not at all thrilled by the virtually inexistent role for their industries if they were to buy into the MGCS.

Rheinmetall is likely to be sympathetic with a UK base for the new turret and gun because London is less likely to impose bans that prevent the company from bagging massive and lucrative middle east contracts. The german parliament has killed off several opportunities that Rheinmentall would have loved to pursue.

 

There is a huge opportunity within reach. In order to make CHALLENGER 2 fit for the next 2 decades, the new turret is a must. And whether it is armed with the 120 mm or the new 130 mm, new ammunition will have to be part of the expenditure. Arguably, this is exactly the time to be bold and adopt the new gun.

 

 

MIV and WARRIOR

 

MIV is a huge part of why the Army’s budget is in trouble, but BOXER is a good vehicle, and there are understandable reasons for wanting wheeled armour. Ideally, there should be both fully tracked and fully wheeled brigades, but the British Army does not have the resources to make it happen anytime soon, and so a different approach is required.

 

As I’ve written multiple times, I think the best compromise that can be pursued from where the Army currently stands is the French one. This means giving up tracked IFVs in favor of wheeled ones.

 

WARRIOR CSP is not yet under production contract, and since the base hull, even after the upgrade, shows all the limitations of age and of a powerpack that is not being replaced with a more modern and powerful one, it might be wiser to just abandon the project and the whole fleet.

 

The money (more than 800 million are earmarked for the WCSP production), the 40mm gun and the turrets should instead be put into BOXER.

Integration of the turret into a BOXER module should not be overly complex. Lockheed Martin fit one onto a BOXER and carried out some early trials, including weapon firings, as far back as 2015. While these industry-led demonstrations involve integrations that are far less mature than one might think, there should be no reason for the turret not fitting on a troop-carrying module.

 

The turreted BOXERs would then be mixed with the APCs already on order with the aim of eventually forming 8 battalions: 2 for each Armoured and Medium brigade. There are many reasons for me to formulate this recommendation, but they all more or less stem from the following main considerations: the Warrior hull is old and tired and the CSP does not quite solve that, nor does replace the old powerpack; an all MIV fleet helps standardization; having the infantry on wheels helps the Army be more self-deployable and means the precious few Heavy and Light Equipment Transports (89 and 77 respectively) are free to focus on moving the MBTs and other tracked platforms, such as AJAX and TERRIER; having at least a portion of the BOXERs well armed with a 40mm gun means that, apart from being able to get to the fight, they will also be able to fight. The current MIV, armed like a SAXON, can get there but can’t get into a fight, only drop its infantry a safe distance back. 

With thanks to Jon Hawkes (@JonHawkes275) who dug up these old slides and posted them on his Twitter. He is a must-follow in the field of Armour. 

Finally, plans for a new tracked support vehicle to replace FV432 seem to have died entirely, and it would border on ridiculous to field a 28 tons tracked Warrior supported by wheeled 8x8s weighting close to 40.

 

Boxer is a modern and well protected hull, and if the Army cannot afford a proper split of tracks and wheels, on balance of merits and defects, wheels should probably take precedence. This is what France has done with the VBCI replacing the last tracked IFVs of the Armee de Terre. 

It is a compromise, since there a tracked IFV will always have a greater ability to run down obstacles and dug-in positions and will always have greater all-terrain mobility than a wheeled platform, but I feel it would be a good compromise all the same.

 

Again, a priority for me would also be to re-evaluate the variants of MIV to be procured, reducing to the bare minimum the number of ambulances and command posts in favor of pursuing instead a 120mm mortar and an ATGW variants as well as, potentially, more APCs / IFVs to increase, if at all possible, the number of mechanized battalions in the Army. With over 500 vehicles already on order, it should be feasible. I’ve written about this in greater detail in a previous article.  

 

The Ambulance role and, wherever possible, the C2 role would be instead “offloaded” onto much cheaper Multi Role Vehicle Protected variants. Regarding MRV-P, I’d personally urge the Army to finally proceed with the programme with the aim of rationalizing the current dog’s breakfast of multiple “mini” fleets, getting rid progressively of Husky, Panther, DURO, Pinzgauer and part of the Land Rovers.

My favorite for Group 2 would be the Thales Bushmaster, to be assembled in their Glasgow plant as promised by the company and by the Australian government.

 

I do realize, however, that a quiet, unspoken further delay to the whole of MRV-P is likely, as it defers expenditure into a vague, undetermined future.

Further pre-Integrated Review reading material: 

- Amphibious without ships  - There is no amphibious capability without adequate ships and ship to shore connectors. A look at the USMC reforms and the question mark over the Future Commando Force

- A different angle to "difficult choices" - If the UK really doesn't want to spend money to maintain its capabilities, it needs to at least be wise on what it invests on. Building on strengths is more cost-effective than trying to reinforce weakness. 

- The many weaknesses of STRIKE - 5 years on, there is still not a consensun on what STRIKE is actually good for. And it is becoming painfully clear just how much it might cost the Army to pursue this plan. 

- Towards the SDSR 2020 - This was written in December 2019, before the COVID spending generated the current psychosis around public expenditure. While we wait to understand if HMG chooses to obsess about Debt reduction and launches a new Austerity drive (hopefully not), the overview of the main issues remains valid.