Does Ukraine salvage STRIKE?

 

The quick exploitation of the gap that the Ukrainians have punched in a lightly-held section of the Kharkiv front and in general the successful use of wheeled AFVs has caused some legit discussion about whether the Ukrainian experience supports the British Army’s STRIKE concept.

This is a discussion to be had, although I’m not sure we have all of the necessary information yet, and might not have it for quite some time still.

What i think must be said, already now, is that we should be very careful in mixing “rapid movement of wheeled AFVs” with “STRIKE”, because we were told in no uncertain terms that the two things were quite different and well separated.

I think no one has any real doubt about the viability and usefulness of wheeled mechanized formations, and their ability to move quickly along roads. Wheeled Mechanized Brigades have existed in multiple countries for decades, and in general in the history of warfare infantry has followed tanks in wheeled trucks (or in half-tracks) for most of the time mechanization has been a thing.

Remember that tracked AFVs to carry infantry into battle appeared only late in World War II, and essentially went into operation only in the British and Canadian armies with the KANGAROOs, after all. Later, the Soviet union has had a multitude of Motor Rifle Brigades combining MBTs and wheeled BTRs of various marks. The British Army used to have significant wheeled armoured components, and in the Cold War it has SAXON to work as a literal battle taxi to bring troops forwards to reinforce BAOR. 

In short: tanks (as in, actual MBTs) + Wheels is not new, is not revolutionary and is, ultimately, not STRIKE.

If you think Ukraine in any way vindicates British Army STRIKE brigade you have first to prove Ukraine formations actually bear any resemblance to STRIKE. Because if what we are talking about is actually a mechanized phalanx  exploiting a breakthrough, that is not new, and is not STRIKE. How many examples could we list, from the fall of France in 1940 to the breakout from Normandy and beyond...?

The British Army did not say it was building a mechanized brigade and it did not copy any of the medium, all-wheeled brigade that have proliferated in various Armies all around the world. The British Army said it had come up with a new concept, a new way of fighting that exploited dispersion to “penetrate an Anti-Access, Area Denial (A2AD) “bubble” and begin its disintegration”. This is how Chief General Staff Sir Nick Carter sold the concept from the onset, and how it was experimented and engineered, as explained years later by Brigadier James Martin, commander of 1^st Armoured Infantry Brigade/STRIKE experimentation group between November 2018 and july 2020.

If i had to find a direct counterpart to the STRIKE brigade, i would probably point to the original CENTAURO-centric brigades imagined by the Italian army in the late Cold War. CENTAURO, having anti-tank capability, was supposed to "race" along roads to meet an enemy penetration, and more specifically an amphibious assault by the Soviet Mediterranean Squadron on Italy's long and exposed coast. It had to contain the russians, successfully grappling with an heavier force for long enough for heavier allied formations to also arrive. 

STRIKE was described as a quick reaction tool that would self-deploy "from Catterick to Tallin" to contain a russian assault, so there is some similarity. But in practice, that's also as far as that similarity goes, because STRIKE then diverges in both concepts and execution.  

 

STRIKE as a concept

Being the commander of the very brigade that was due to become the first STRIKE formation, Brigadier James Martin ought to be the voice we should be listening to when trying to understand what sets STRIKE apart from a conventional mechanized brigade.

Brigadier James Martin speaks from minute 28.45

Speaking at the RUSI Land Warfare Conference 2019, the brigadier was clear on Dispersion being the core of the whole project, and specifically said:

“fighting dispersed provides opportunity for decisive action that could otherwise be pretty difficult to come by. It allows for levels of infiltration, penetration and unpredictability that can decisively threaten a peer opponent Command & Control, his echelon forces and of course its logistic elements”.

There cannot be any doubt that what he summarizes as “dislocation at scale” is targeted at peer enemies and is supposed to allow the STRIKE sub-units to infiltrate the enemy front and threaten command posts, echelon and logistics in its rear.

In my rather less charitable way to describe it: the British Army expected STRIKE to go directly to Exploitation without having to achieve a Breakthrough.

He further specifies that experimentation has looked at brigade frontage of 82 to 100 km width, up to 100 km in depth

“beyond the traditional FEBA (forward edge of the battle area), if that concept still has relevance”

He then reaffirmed the bit about operational marches of 2.000 kms (the infamous “Catterick to Tallin” line that Carter had used all the way back in 2015) and tactical advances / investments along up to 12 different routes, with sub-unit dispersion “well beyond the confines of the kilometre grid square”

In other words, experimentation up to 2019 had supposedly proven the feasibility, and indeed the effectiveness of the idea as it was first conceived in 2015. How fortunate!

In more recent times there has been a sort of revisionism about STRIKE, led by a 2020 article from “STRIKE prophet” on uklandpower.com, written pretty literally to respond to my criticisms. According to this new current, STRIKE is a perfectly sensible “screening and exploitation force”, built on past operations and proven, clear concepts.

I find it instructive that Brigadier James Martin talks about covering and exploiting only once in his address about STRIKE. He does so when addressing lethality, and saying that STRIKE only needs to be “competitive with, not necessarily superior” to an enemy heavier force. He goes on to add that in experimentation this was achieved by “consistently privileging anti-armour capabilities across the brigade in the forms of organic, mounted and dismounted ATGW in every Platoon and Troop as well as some CSS elements”. This, he went on saying, enabled the STRIKE brigade to “survive, operate and win as both a covering and exploitation force”.

Ukraine does indeed prove how much damage can be caused by having ample availability of mounted and dismounted ATGW capabilities, but then again I don’t think there ever was  a doubt about this particular point.   

I don’t have any doubt about the viability of what is still, in the end, a mechanized brigade to provide a screening / covering and an exploitation function, but if this was the point, there would be no need to call it “STRIKE” and pretend it was a new and revolutionary thing.

The British Army intended STRIKE to do things differently and achieve some extraordinary effects, as Brigadier Martin so aptly explained.

If mechanized brigades do well in Ukraine, that has next to zero relevance to STRIKE. I don’t think there ever was a doubt on the usefulness of mechanized brigades and indeed on the mobility of wheeled AFVs. But since it was called STRIKE because it was going to be something different, something more, it can only be considered validated if we observe something on the battlefield that rhymes with what makes STRIKE unique.

The breakthrough in Kharkiv does not look like a single brigade exploiting by dispersion on a 100 x 100 km battle area, sorry. It just does not.

STRIKE bde didn't have MBTs but AJAX. Is any of Ukraine's mech battlegroups deliberately trying to fight without MBTs but using IFVs in medium armour fashion?

STRIKE bde was supposed to have a 100 Km front. Is it happening in Ukraine?

STRIKE talked of exploitation without breakthrough, purely by dispersion/infiltration. Any evidence of anything similar proving feasible on the ground?

If none of STRIKE’s defining characteristics are to be observed, we cannot possibly see a validation of them in the ongoing operations.

 

 

STRIKE as executed

I repeatedly made the point that a concept is ultimately only as good as its execution, so we have to also consider what the STRIKE brigade actually looked like and the context in which they appeared.

STRIKE prophet and others go on to claim that STRIKE is supposedly platform-agnostic, but the reality is that the Army considered the replacement of MASTIFF (used in some of the experimentation, by the way) as absolutely indispensable. The procurement of the Mechanized Infantry Vehicle (for which BOXER was eventually selected, as we know) was moved forwards from 2029 to 2023, and the STRIKE brigade IOC depended literally on BOXER becoming available.

As we know, each STRIKE brigade was going to have 2 Regiments of AJAX (removed from the armoured infantry brigades) and 2 infantry battalions mounted in BOXER APC. One of those AJAX regiments was going to be a “Medium Armour” formation tasked with providing tank-like support to the infantry, despite armament and protection being unchanged.

Future Soldier put an end to STRIKE brigades plans and with WARRIOR going out of service, BOXER is no longer heading to Catterick at all. WARRIOR's demise leaves plenty of empty garages around Bulford and Tidworth. 

All my doubts about STRIKE brigades stand, starting from the AJAX – BOXER mix, which would have had inexorable consequences for the ability of STRIKE brigades to conduct those long operational marches. 

It is telling that the British Army has converted 77 Oshkosh tanker tractors into “Medium Equipment Transporters” with trailers rated for 44 tons payloads. These would have been indispensable to carry AJAX (and at the same time not sufficient) during a STRIKE brigade operational march.

This is particularly ineffective because between AJAX and BOXER it is the former that has the sensors and the firepower that are meant to enable STRIKE to fight and be competitive with enemy heavy / heavier forces. It is AJAX that has the sensors to acquire targets and direct joint Fires.

In a workable STRIKE brigade, AJAX should have been wheeled and able to ride on into battle in the very vanguard. To return to my earlier comparison with the italian example from the 80s, AJAX was supposed to be STRIKE's very own CENTAURO. But while CENTAURO has MBT-like firepower with a  105 mm (and now 120 mm in CENTAURO 2) and is wheeled, AJAX has the firepower of a IFV and is tracked. 

AJAX was hammered into STRIKE for lack of alternatives, not because it was ever thought for anything resembling STRIKE's CONOPS. And allow to say me one thing: if you have to deal with METs, you might just as well deal with HETs (a bit bigger and with one extra axle, yes, but otherwise entirely comparable) and carry actual MBTs. Which, unsurprisingly, is what mechanized formations that include both tracks and wheels tend to do, all around the world, whether it’s a soviet / Russian Motor Rifle Brigade or a german armoured brigade or a French heavy brigade. 

Either you don't have tracks at all, to fully capitalize on the long range mobility of wheels, or those tracks tend to belong to MBTs. STRIKE's mix was very unique, and very sub-optimal. 

The operational debut of MET during IRON SURGE, the flash reinforcement of the battlegroup in Estonia following Russia's invasion of Ukraine. You can appreciate how little practical difference there is, at the end of the day, between HETs and METs. Investment in more HETs and METs, but to quickly carry MBTs and WARRIORs respectively, would have made more of a difference for the British Army's ability to quickly move towards battle than adding a wheeled APC does. 

It was also extremely dubious whether Brigadier Martin’s point about availability of mounted and dismounted ATGW at all level was ever going to be realized. The Overwatch variant of AJAX (more accurately, technically a sub-variant of the ARES) was cancelled years ago now, and while Battle Group Organic Anti-Armour is now its own program, hopefully to result in ground-launched BRIMSTONEs, it is not yet anywhere near being in service.

A recent US authorization for the Foreign Military Sales of 513 lightweight JAVELIN Command and Launch Units also includes an unspecified number of electronic assemblies to enable the fitting of a single JAVELIN tube on the RS4/PROTECTOR remote weapon station used on ARES and BOXER, but apart from this there is no real evidence of any big investment in new mounted ATGW capabilities.

Variants and sub-variants breakdown of the BOXER Batch 1 order. It is assumed the "Recce/Fire Support Vehicle" was eventually going to get JAVELIN integrated on the RS4 RWS, but there is no definitive confirmation available in the open. Readers and Twitter followers will know that i think the British Army is wasting way too much money on BOXERs for ambulance and command posts roles, while mounting a ridiculously small number of infantry battalions in the new vehicle and missing firepower and key variants such as a recovery vehicle. I'd rather use cheaper vehicle bases in Support roles and reserve BOXER for the fighting roles at the front. This is, by the way, what happens in Germany, where FUCHS is used, or Italy where ORSO and LINCE cover all of the ambulance requirements and the vast majority of mobile command post needs. 

There is a very bitter irony in the fact that Brigadier Martin’s power point slide when he talked about lethality showed a german PUMA IFV firing a SPIKE anti-tank missile. AJAX does not possess that capability, obviously, so...

MIV programme personnel from the British Army at a Kongsberg event in Norway last April, getting a demonstration of the RS6 RWS, a step up from the RS4, which can employ the M230LF 30x113 mm cannon and JAVELIN 

In other words: even the one bit of the concept that was pretty unquestionably wise still does not have, to this day, a clear path to becoming an operational reality. It has been widely suggested that, now that BOXER is de facto replacing WARRIOR, a firepower boost will have to come, somehow, but there's still, even to this day, no evidence of a firm plan being in place. 

And beyond the viability of this bizarre brigade construct in itself, we should never fail to consider the impact that the sudden STRIKE brigade obsession had on the wider Army.

 Army 2020 (the 2011 plan centered on 3 armoured infantry brigades) was a plan mainly concerned with sustaining enough brigades to maintain a “1 in 5” cycle for enduring deployments (6 months deployed, 24 to rest, regenerate, train), and inevitably so since operation HERRICK was still Defence’s main effort. Even so, Army 2020 very much had “contingency” (state on state warfare, that is) in mind. Its heavy core of 3 capable armoured brigades was meant to preserve the Army’s warfighting know how. Army 2020 planning guidelines did include a Divisional "best effort", with 3 brigades, 2 of which armoured and 1 of which would be made up by elements of 16 Air Assault brigade and 3 Cdo brigade.

In other words, Army 2020 was meant to protect the Army’s ability to field a force pretty much equivalent to that generated for Operation TELIC in 2003, but from a smaller overall army. Accordingly, it was acknowledged that a Divisional deployment would only be possible with adequate warning and preparations, because supports were insufficient.

When in 2015 Army was given direction to accelerate regeneration of a warfighting, deployable Division because focus by then was squarely back on being able to provide NATO with a sizeable land component, a rational mind would have sought to improve the readiness of the existing armoured brigades while rebuilding as many of the missing supports as possible.  

It was, without a doubt, doable.

But the Army instead decided that the overwhelming priority to be funded was procurement of BOXER, not just to replace MASTIFF in the single mechanized infantry battalion that had been part of each Armd Inf Bde of Army 2020, but to build a whole new kind of fighting formation.

Under 2015’s “Army 2020 Refine”, the Division would have again been composed of 2 armoured brigades, with the 3^rd one being a STRIKE brigade, leaving 16AA, 3Cdo and a light brigade from 1^st Division for Rear Area security on top.

In practice, a force much heavier than had been generated for the invasion of Iraq in 2003, coming out of a smaller army. An army that didn’t really enjoy any growth from Army 2020 plans.

Army 2020 Refine and STRIKE were the ultimate "do more with less" madness, calling for a super demanding force generation cycle and the ability to deploy 100% of the armoured brigades in the ORBAT. And it was supposed to solve the difficulties that Army 2020 had in deploying 2 armd bdes from 3.  

It was, in other words, a fairy tale that Land HQ at Andover told itself.

By 2019 it was painfully evident that the Defence budget was again running hot and that the Army was in particularly dire straits ahead of the incoming Integrated Review, but in December BOXER was ordered, reconfirming it as Andover’s number 1 priority.

From that point onwards, the Army’s ability to fund upgrades to CHALLENGER 2 and WARRIOR, and in general its chances of hanging on to its current sizes and programs were, to put it mildly, tied to the chances of rolling nothing but sixes at every throw of the dice.

Thankfully, the Army rolled several sixes. Boris Johnson’s government put many billion pounds of investment into Defence and Land HQ got most of the increase and the largest allocation over the 10 years. Those were 2 sixes rolled. Getting the CHALLENGER 3 programme funded was another.

WARRIOR ended up not rolling its six, and in general the Army’s mess at that point was so big that the money was never going to be enough for everything.

The STRIKE brigades as once imagined have disappeared, and the Army is getting smaller, with Future Soldier leaving it dramatically short of actually deployable and meaningful brigades.

In all of this, what Ukraine probably proves once again is that replacing MASTIFF with MIV was never what was urgent. Fires, air defence, MBTs themselves and even the IFVs are decisive. Shape of the wheeled APC is secondary. Ukrainian mechanized infantry is making do with an unlikely dog’s breakfast of platforms, including, funnily enough, MASTIFF itself.

In the end, Future Soldier itself admits that the picking of priorities was disastrous. It finally puts the money into CR2 upgrades, artillery and air defence (hoping that plans continue to progress).

Warrior did end up being the sacrificial lamb and BOXER is now de facto THE vehicle the British Army’s future depends upon, but that was unavoidable after the December 2019 contract and the building of two assembly lines in the UK.

The only ray of true hope at the moment is (apart from the promises of a further defence budget boost) the coming of a Chief General Staff who has pretty clearly said that there is much to fix, and that he is prepared to change Future Soldier structures to (hopefully) deliver real combined arms formations and not pure lip service.

I’ve seen hints that the so called Operation MOBILISE might result in a first refinement of Army plans to be announced by the end of the year. I’m wishing it the best of luck, and I’m hoping rationality has returned to Andover, because it’s badly needed.

The Good, the Bad and the Ugly of the BOXER purchase

 

A Written Answer has finally provided interesting details about the british purchase of BOXER vehicles. Minister Jeremy Quin, on 9 June, said:

 

Details of the variants of Boxer currently on order by quantity can be found in the table below. The Department is looking to enhance and uplift the size of the total UK Boxer order as we work to implement the Integrated Review. This may include new variants and partnering opportunities with industry and our Allies.

 

First, the Good: the Minister gives up new hopes that an expansion of the order might still happen. For a while, MOD talk had pretty much killed off any hope in this sense, but the answer is pretty univocal in suggesting that there will be adjustments.

The list offers many surprises because so far we had been given very little reason to believe there would be such a wide range of sub-variants. An Engineer Section vehicle was expected, but nothing had so far been heard about a Mortar Carrying vehicle. A Repair sub-variant is also an interesting semi-surprise.

It is interesting to note that the “Command Post” is expected to come in a significant number of sub-variants as well, including OPV (a surprisingly old fashioned definition) for Fires direction; an Electronic Warfare & SIGINT sub-variant and a BLOS comms carrier.

The inclusion of these sub-variants is, for the most part, Good. How good, we will only know when the effective mission fit becomes known. The mortar carrying vehicle, for example: will it an APC giving mobility to a L16 81mm mortar team? Will it at least have a turntable and roof port for firing from inside the vehicle, or not even that…? Or maybe there is scope to finally adopt a turreted, heavy mortar…? Unlikely, but it would be a great capability boost and, for the moment, we just don’t know what might or might not happen.

The “Recce / Fire Support Vehicle” is probably the APC “up-gunned” with JAVELIN on the RWS. Around 50 such enhanced fits were expected, and the removal from service of WARRIOR has given new impetus to attempts to further improve the otherwise pretty dismal firepower of MIV.

A notable aspect is that several of these sub-variants will bring entirely new capabilities that the BOXER family, at present, does not offer. The development of the relevant modules should happen in the UK, according to know commercial agreements, and there could be some genuine export potential as well, if the resulting product is valid. 

While it remains dubious, at best, that BOXER's modularity will ever have a usefulness in terms of "on the battlefield re-roling", the possibility of developing mission modules in isolation from the base vehicle should greatly ease the creation of new variants and sub-variants 

The Bad is undoubtedly the tiny number of Infantry Carriers, an incomprehensible 85. Even assuming the Fire Support Vehicle is effectively an upgunned infantry carrier despite being counted in with the “Specialists”, the combined number of 147 vehicles is still insufficient to equip 4 infantry battalions.

They are numbers more appropriate to just 2 battalions… which is what Army 2020 Refine needed, since the plan specifically called for the ability to deploy only one of the 2 STRIKE brigades at a time. 1 Brigade, 2 battalions.

 Indeed, this might be the explanation for the tiny number of ICVs in the order.

The loss of WARRIOR means that such a plan no longer makes any sense, and adjustements are indispensable.

And this leads us straight to the Ugly side of this list: the overlap / confliction with AJAX.

Until a short time ago, the UK was of course planning to equip 2 armoured brigades and 2 STRIKE brigades on top. Although AJAX itself was going to be in the STRIKE Brigades for the most part, it appears clear that the support variants of the family (ARGUS for the engineers, ATHENA command posts, ARES, APOLLO, ATLAS) were primarily destined to units aligned with the tracked, armoured brigades.

ARGUS would work alongside TITAN and TROJAN in the two heavy engineer regiments, for example, with BOXER ESV working with the 2 engineer regiments of the STRIKE brigades instead.

Now, however, there will only be 2 heavy mechanized Brigade Combat Teams in total, with the other two BCTs being Light Role. Clearly, you are not going to put the engineers in BOXERs while the infantry of the brigade moves, at best, in FOXHOUND with JACKAL for fire support.

This means, effectively, that the 52 ARGUS and the 60 BOXER Engineer Section Vehicles are now virtually overlapping directly, as there are only 2 Engineer regiments of this weight class to re-equip, not 4. The OPV variant, similarly, is increasingly overlapping with the number of AJAX to be kitted for Joint Fires direction.

The sum of 112 ATHENA command posts and 123 between BOXER command posts and command-utility vehicles also leads to a frankly absurd situation in which the UK will have a Command Post vehicle virtually for every single Infantry Carrying vehicle in service army-wide (up to 147 BOXER, as discussed earlier, plus 93 ARES, vs 112 + 123 command posts). A 1:1 ratio is clearly insane.  

I think it unavoidable that this overlap will need correcting, somehow.

We have all been following with increasing despair and rage the embarrassing situation of AJAX and it is hard not to muse about the implications of these sub-variants. if there are only two “heavy” regiments to equip, you suddenly only need one of the two sub-fleets, not both. In practice, if AJAX was to be cancelled, the loss of ARGUS would not be an immediate issue.

This generates unpleasant thoughts.

A more optimistic way of looking at it is that, if AJAX survives and the BOXER sub-variants are acquired in these numbers,  the Army then “only” needs to procure more Infantry Carriers to get back in a position in which it can properly mechanize all 4 Brigade Combat Teams. The 2 armoured brigades would keep the AJAX-based support variants, for obvious reasons, while the “Light BCTs” could be progressively uplifted with BOXER to become fully-wheeled formations.

Third option: the current balance of variants and sub-variants is modified, drastically reducing the number of BOXERs to be used as “Command Posts” and Engineer Section Vehicles, in favor of more ICVs / FSVs.

One thing is clear: this is the Army's position in regards to BOXER at the moment 

Judging from the list, an increase in the number of ICVs is both urgent and unavoidable. What’s left to be discovered is what adjustments will be adopted to make that increase possible.

 

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.