Challenger 2 numbers: don't waste time on the wrong ones

The Times, almost certainly thanks to someone “leaking” from within the Army, has thrown the bombshell news of the British Army sinking even lower in the global league by preparing to see another massive reduction in the numbers of MBTs at its disposal.

The news is unfortunately not surprising in the slightest: for years we have known that there is a very real possibility that only around 150 MBTs will go through the Life Extension Programme (LEP). It has become an almost foregone conclusion as soon as Army 2020 Refine came out, inclusive of plans to convert 1 of the 3 remaining tank regiments into an “imaginative” Medium Armour formation equipped with AJAXs. I do not think the AJAX idea, and STRIKE in general, in its current form, are good ideas, but i've already made that plenty clear in other occasions.

The Army currently still has 3 tank regiments, with a fleet of 227 “operational” MBT remaining after the earlier round of cuts in 2010 and 2011, but the King’s Royal Hussars are still scheduled to begin converting to Ajax as soon as next year.

The Times report has caused a predictable eruption of discussions around the numbers and their meaning. Is mass important? Absolutely, it is. Is “mass” clearly defined and easily compared? Not quite. How should we read the numbers? It is pointless to compare MBT numbers with Russia, or Turkey, or the US. It is even arguably pointless to compare with nations with more comparable mass (France, Italy, Germany to a degree), because the british situation is, as often happens, particular. The numbers that matter in order to understand what the British Army can or cannot do are others. In this short article I will provide a few key information needed to have a clearer idea of how many tanks the British Army is actually able to field.

Challenger 2 weaknesses do not stop at numbers. Non NATO-standard and obsolescent 2-piece ammunition and arguably underperforming powerpack are the biggest problems of the tank. Yet, the LEP might address none of the two problems. Rheinmetall has proposed a whole new turret, with smoothbore L55 cannon and NATO-standard ammunition, including latest high-tech programmable rounds and long-rod anti-armout capability. One has to hope the funding allows the selection of this solution. (in the photo, Rheinmetall's unmanned firing trials of the new turret in late 2018) 

At the moment, the british tank regiment is known as Type 56 because it has a total of 56 tanks. Of these, 2 sit in the Regimental Headquarters, leaving the others spread on 3 squadrons of 18 tanks each. Each squadron is indicatively structured upon 4 Troops, each with 4 tanks, plus 2 MBTs in the Sqn HQ.

These are the paper numbers: manpower shortages already mean that some Troops might be understrength, while changes in the ORBAT are always possible. A smaller Troop of 3 tanks is a possibility, in order to form additional troops from within the regiment, for example.

We are, of course, talking about the Regular formations. The British Army’s only MBT Reserve Regiment has been expanded to 5 squadrons, but is not meant to be equipped and operated as a tank regiment in the field. It trains individual crew members and crew replacements in favor of the regular regiments and, following recent uplifts, can prepare formed crews as well, ready to be put on a tank and sent out on operations. The Royal Wessex Yeomanry regiment, in other word, is unlikely to ever see a whole regimental park of tanks and is not counted as a 4^th Type 56 regiment.

Rheinmetall's new turret being inspected by Williamson at RAF Brize Norton during the recent meeting with his german counterpart. The new turret would solve the obsolescence of optics, electronics and main weapon system. The powerpack could really do with a change, too. 

Each regular tank regiment is assigned to an Armoured Infantry Brigade, in support to 2 battalions of armoured infantry, mounted on WARRIORs.

In the field, regiments and battalions typically end up splitting in sub-units that are then combined into Combined Arms Battlegroups which are the actual unit of manoeuvre you want to employ during an operation. The ORBAT of said BGs can vary pretty wildly, but I will use the most orderly of the base BG schemes to help you visualize what might happen: the 2 infantry battalions might form the basis for 3 battlegroups, each one with 2 Companies of WARRIOR IFVs and infantry. In turn, the single Tank regiment will split its Squadrons into “demi-squadrons” of 9 tanks, assigning one demi-squadron to each infantry company.

The result is a “square” battlegroup of 2 tank and 2 infantry companies. These are the real measure of the fighting power of the Brigade, as you pretty much never want armoured infantry to operate without intimate MBT support. There was a time in which it would have been normal to have a 1:1 ration between MBT and IFV in the battlegroup, but in the british army that is no longer feasible and hasn’t been for a while.

The issue of numbers gets more complicated when geography and Whole Fleet Management come into the picture. I apologize if the numbers in this section get speculative, but the Army does not like to reveal its workings in the detail, or keep information up to date, so what follows can only be indicative.

The British Army, many years ago now, adopted the so-called Whole Fleet Management approach, which is supposed to reduce costs, spread wear and tear from usage across the whole fleet and ensure there are always vehicles “ready to go” when the call for a deployment comes. WFM hasn’t been exactly a success and it is a source of endless debates in itself, but that is a story for another time. 

For now, what you need to know is that British Army regiments are no longer assigned a whole fleet of vehicles. A formation has, instead, daily ownership of a greatly reduced portion of equipment, the Basic Unit Fleet (BUF). The make-up of a BUF can vary a lot, but for tank regiments I believe it is something like 20 tanks. Aka, 1 Sqn plus RHQ, the bare minimum needed for sub-unit level training (Collective Training level 1, CT-1).

When the time comes to train the regiment to an higher level of Collective working, the unit moves out to a training area (Salisbury, or Sennelager, all the way up to BATUS in Canada) where it “borrows” additional tanks from the resident Training Fleet. At the end of the exercise, said tanks are handed back to the TF depot, and wait for the following formation to arrive.

The rest of the vehicles sit in Controlled Humidity Storage, preserved for assignment to formations deploying for operations. In theory, said vehicles are meant to come out of storage in perfect material state and ready to go, but this has often not been the case.

Whole Fleet Management and geography are two factors to consider when reading the numbers

What does this mean, in practice? Well, the Times suggests that just 148 Challenger 2s might be updated and life extended. This is even less than expected (168 was a number that circulated for quite a while). In theory, it is plenty for an army with just 2 Type 56 regiments, so with an active fleet of, in theory, 112 tanks, (more or less as many as were deployed in Operation TELIC).

However, the Whole Fleet Management approach and simple considerations about geography, training needs and logistics mean that 148 are not “plenty”, not even for an army with just 2 MBT regiments.

The 2 regiments might have on-site Basic Unit Fleets of 20 tanks each, for a total of 40. Then there should be a Training Fleet allocation at Warminster, for use in exercises on Salisbury Plain. I have no clue how many tanks might be part of it, but at the very least I’d expect enough to equip at least a second squadron. Maybe enough to bring a visiting regiment up to full ORBAT, which would mean as many as 46 (without considering any spare). If we are anywhere near the true figure, we have already allocated 86 tanks out of 148.

Then there is BATUS. Considering the difficulty and cost of carrying tanks from the UK to Canada, the near totality of the vehicles used during Battlegroup exercises in BATUS are kept in a Training Fleet held on site. There are probably only enough MBTs for a 2-squadrons BG, but that means as many as 40 vehicles, still. And that would bring us to 126, leaving just 22 other tanks to allocate.

Sennelager? The Army is withdrawing from Germany, but does not want to vacate the Sennelager training area and will maintain a permanent presence there, to support exercises by visiting units coming from the UK. However, having tanks on site as Training Fleet risks being impossible. The numbers are merciless. Moreover, the British Army intends to continue using the Controlled Humidity Storage site of Ayrshire Barracks in Mönchengladbach. This depot is arguably ideally placed to ensure there are stored MBTs already on the continent, so that crews can pick them up and swiftly drive east if it ever becomes necessary.

The problem is that 148 tanks are nowhere near enough to have tanks everywhere. WFM, if done well, has merits, but those do not include reducing the overall fleet requirement, because geographic spread complicates things terribly.

With 148 tanks, the British Army will not be able to have stored tanks ready to deploy and appropriately sized and well placed training fleets. The whole concept will have to be reworked, and since the numbers are merciless, there is probably no real way to fix it. Ahead of any deployment, the British Army will have to literally collect its tanks from a multitude of different locations, raiding all training fleets to be able to put the 2 regiments in the field. And with virtually zero possibilities of ever rushing the Reserve regiment onto the field as a formed unit.

This only adds to the already numerous doubts about the Army’s ability to ever realize its ambition of being able to resource a Division-level deployment with 100% of its armoured brigades. The British Army claims that, in the future, it will be able to deploy 3rd Division for a complex operation with 2 armoured and 1 strike brigade, out of a total of 2 and 2. Respectively 100 and 50% of the total component, deployed at once.

The possibilities of it ever being feasible are very slim. And even if the ambition is realized, there will be literally nothing behind the deployed division. It will be a silver bullet that can be fired only once. After 6 months or so, if the need for Armour in theatre has not ceased, some other country will better show up, because the British Army does not have any other armoured formation to rotate. 

All that remains is a bunch of Light Role infantry battalions (with no supports) coming from the semi-imaginary “1^st Division”. I say semi-imaginary because a Division which will include literally zero Artillery, Signals, Engineers and Logistic assets is not a division. It's an administrative construct, and nothing more. 

The British Army does not need just to reassess the number of MBTs to maintain. It needs, as I will repeat to the end of times if necessary, to reassess 1^st Division, and the best use of the manpower and resources it currently absorbs.

As useful as Infantry Battalions are, I don’t think that maintaining 27 infantry battalions is wise, when it is painfully evident that the Army is horribly imbalanced and completely unable to provide them with communications, logistics, MBTs and artillery support.

Note: the number 27 is due to me leaving out of the total the 5 tiny “specialized infantry battalions”, including the newly formed 3 Royal Gurkha Rifles, as they are literally Company-group sized and have a completely different role). 

16 of those battalions are small Light Role formations (or at most Light-mechanized with some Foxhounds) and are undersized even when fully manned (and they definitely aren’t fully manned, due to the 6+ % manpower deficit in the army). Britain loves its infantry battalions, but reality doesn’t.

It is time to admit that, if the resources do not increase, the army needs to rebalance its priorities and structures.   

Or change its ambitions and settle sights on a different mission. The tiny light role infantry battalions are okay for securing the rear lines and fill gaps between manoeuvre formations fielded by allies. They are also good for a variety of stabilization tasks and “other-than-war” commitments. Is this what the British Army wants to be? Because it is what it will become if the current force structure and equipment choices carry on. 

British Heavy Armour for the future: Combined Arms Regiment

Earlier posts on the subject of future army structures: 

Army 2020 Refine: a proposal 
British Army 2025: a proposed concept and structure 
After the SDSR: Strike Brigades, a big deal? 

In detail: the Combined Arms Regiment

In this post I provide a graphic which helps in visualizing the Combined Arms Regiment I’ve been proposing as a solution to the British Army’s current heavy brigade headache. How do you square three brigades into two, and how do you deal with the insufficient number of Warrior vehicles to be upgraded under the Capability Sustainment Programme, while also delivering a workable, credible force structure?

My reply is: with the Combined Arms Regiment. This mirrors, in some ways, what the US Army has been doing for years in its Heavy Brigade Combat Teams, which were composed of two such regiments (then grown to three in exchange for a reduction in the number of brigades).

Israel also combines infantry and tanks within the same armoured regiments, albeit in a different way. Italy used to, in better days for its army.

The British Army does it regularly… but only on deployment and during training. The Combined Arms Regiment is, in the end, a formalization of the “2+2” square battlegroup that the British Army knows all too well. 2 tank squadrons supporting 2 armoured infantry companies.



The graphic uses vehicle profile drawings from ShipBucket.com. Credits for their realization to users Darth Panda, Glorfindel and Sgtsammac. Click on the link to see in full size at Pintrest.com

I feel confident in saying that it is time to make this structure permanent. The one good thing of Army 2020 is that armoured infantry and tank units are now all based in the same place, on Salisbury Plain, which virtually removes any remaining logistic / infrastructure reason against such an approach.

The two Heavy Brigades in Army 2025 would restructure each on 3 such permanent battlegroups, and rotate them into readiness, one by one, making the force generation cycle quite straightforward and greatly reducing the need to pull pieces from this regiment, that battalion and that other company over there, which is the current norm.

With the CAR, the British Army:

-          Maintains the same number of MBTs it had in Army 2020, replacing 3 “Type 56” regiments with 6 binary “battalions” (a handy trick to avoid capbadge issues!) of 28 tanks each. The number of frontline tanks is unchanged, at 168.

-          Has more tanks per brigade, 84 versus 56.

-          Has an even balance of tank squadrons and armoured infantry companies. One problem of the Army 2020 armoured brigade is lack of tanks: only 3 squadrons to support as many as 9 companies of infantry (6 armoured, 3 mechanized).

The CAR also “avoids” an otherwise unavoidable cut from 6 armoured infantry battalions to 4: with 245 “turreted” Warriors expected to be upgraded, there simply isn’t enough of them for six battalions. Make the count by yourself: 6x3 companies, and 14 Warrior per company, would require 252 vehicles. And that’s without counting any in the Fire Support Companies, and without any in reserve and in the training fleet. Simply unworkable.

The CARs reduce the number of infantry companies on Warrior to 12, for a total of 168 vehicles. More are used within the six Fire Support Infantry companies, leaving an uncomfortably small margin for the training fleet and for attrition, but at least fitting within the 245 figure. A much needed injection of realism.

The CARs also require 135 men less than the Army 2020 structure (6 infantry battalions of 729 and 3 tank regiments of 587 versus 6 battlegroups of 1000 each).

The graphic shows the distribution of manpower and vehicles. One important piece of the puzzle is the Armoured Battlegroup Support Vehicle, the replacement for the ancient FV432 family of vehicles. The ABSV programme hasn’t been launched yet, but remains on the army list for the next future.

In my CAR assumptions, I’ve inserted the hope for a firepower boost in the form of 120mm mortars and, finally, a vehicle-mounted anti-tank missile capability (complementing, not replacing, the dismounted Javelin teams carried in the back).

ABSV, also known as "turretless Warrior", is a programme that is attempting to take off from well over 10 years. It is fundamental to get it on the move, because FV432s aren't getting any younger. 

ABSV: it was around when Alvis was still kicking... 

The CAR makes up for the relative weakness in infantry numbers by fielding an exceptionally large and capable Fire Support Company, shaped to attach mortar and ATGW sections not only to the infantry companies, but also to the tank squadrons. Mortars, after all, can be extremely useful in setting up smoke curtains and suppressing enemy ATGW firing positions, thus helping and protecting the tank’s ability to manoeuvre.

One relatively unique feature of the proposal is the reconnaissance element. Armoured Infantry and tank formations have so far enjoyed the support of recce troops equipped with 8 Scimitar vehicles, and it was assumed that these would be replaced with an equal number of Ajax. However, the British Army is now looking at forming 4 regiments on Ajax, but all destined to the two Strike Brigades (an approach I do not personally support, but so it is).

Even a more reasonable scenario based on an Ajax regiment in each Heavy and each Strike brigade would still require forming a fourth regiment, out of the same number of vehicles to be purchased. So, the vehicles have to come from somewhere.

My CAR proposal thus does recce with Warriors carrying dismounts, and with the support of the sniper pairs. This collaboration is, again, nothing really new. The sniper pair’s use of quad bikes for independent battlefield mobility is also something that already happens.

The Assault Pioneers, 4 sections mounted each in a Warrior (3 crew + 6 dismounts following the upgrade), stand ready to offer their support.

The REME Light Aid Detachment is expanded to account for the big fleet of vehicles, including tanks. Its structure is a hybrid formation built from the REME elements found in the current armoured infantry battalions and tank regiments.

The HQ Coy is also considerably larger, to account for a bigger echelon with the greater number of trucks needed to support the battlegroup. The HQ Coy is composed of HQ element, Signal Platoon, Quartermaster platoon, Motor Transport platoon, catering and other supporting elements.  

Supported by a capable artillery battery from the brigade’s Fires regiment; a logistic group and an armoured engineer squadron, a CAR is a ready-made battlegroup.

In a future post I will explore the difficult topic represented by the fourth battlegroup, the cavalry one, tasked with reconnaissance and screening. The Army’s need to put some flesh on the bones of the mythological “strike brigades” has given birth to the questionable idea of moving Ajax into those, leaving a big question mark floating on the future scouting element within the armoured brigades.

What the Strike Brigade really needs, but isn’t getting, is the cancelled FRES SV Direct Fire variant, also known as “Medium Armour”. The army had plans for procuring this medium tank variant, armed probably with a 120mm smoothbore gun, but the plan was cancelled years ago as part of the infinite wave of cuts.

Now, Ajax is being asked to play the part of “medium armour” within the Strike Brigades, but armed only with a 40mm gun, and at the cost of leaving the armoured brigades short of recce support. A failure from one end to the other. 
This also signals a further move towards recce by force rather than by stealth, and it would as a consequence require additional firepower to enable the cavalry to manoeuvre, scout ahead and act as an effective screen even in presence of enemy armour. 
The US Army cavalry squadron within armoured brigade combat teams is swapping out all 4x4 in favor of more Bradleys and is also being given a tank company (although, for now at least, this is robbed from one of the combined arms regiments rather than being additional). 
The italian reconnaissance cavalry is also an interesting example. It is wheeled, not tracked, but nonetheless includes a tank-destroyer squadron to be equipped with 8x8 Centauro 2 vehicles armed with a 120mm smoothbore. 
If the British Army wants to be able to manoeuvre against a capable enemy, a regiment of sole Ajax with 40mm will not do: the heavy brigade reconnaissance regiments should have a Challenger 2 presence; while the Strike Brigades should include the Medium Armour variant of Ajax. (or, better still, use a wheeled tank destroyer and recce vehicles, to better match the rest of the brigade that is to be mounted on 8x8). 

Meanwhile, the bids are in for the Challenger 2 Life Extension Programme, an enterprise which now faces a couple of years of Assessment Phase, hopefully with two rival industry teams selected for the demonstration programme as “soon” as this October.

The widest possible range of budget figures have been quoted for this programme, going anywhere from 250 to 1200 million pounds. Hard to say what kind of room for manoeuvre Army HQ might have in funding the obsolescence removal from Challenger 2. After years of false starts, the consensus is (or maybe was…?) that the gun and powerpack would not be replaced, despite being the two biggest weaknesses of the tank. But there was a most impressive and interesting development when Rheinmetall filed its bid and boldly promised that their “innovative solution” will enable the switch from the rifled L30 to the smoothbore L55.

A new turret bustle? The image from Rheinmetall does not provide a definitive answer, but suggests so. 

To understand the Challenger 2’s gun problem it is important to underline that the heart of the matter is not so much the fact that it has a rifled barrel, but the fact that it uses two-piece ammunition. This unique feature means that the current ammunition storage spaces are far too short to take the long one-piece shells used by everyone else in NATO; and it also means that the Challenger 2 crews can store the explosive rounds and the launch charges beneath the turret ring, where they are generally safer. In exchange for this, the Challenger 2 does not have the extensively protected and blast-venting ammunition storage compartments found, for example, on the M1 Abrams.

Switching the gun is very easy, and has been trialed and validated already years ago: the problem is that the ammunition storage needs to be completely re-thought, and vast internal modifications become necessary.

Rheinmetall does not elaborate, for now, on how their proposal work. Extensive rebuilding of the turret seems inevitable, and the one CGI image they have published might provide clues to it: the Challenger 2 in the picture seems to have a new turret bustle, which also houses a new independent thermal sensor for the commander (compare the position in the picture with that of the current system to see the difference). Rheinmetall might be suggesting, effectively, a complete reconstruction of the rear of the turret.

There is no telling how much it could cost, and whether the army could face that cost, but I think the Army will be very interested in hearing what Rheinmetall has to say on the matter.

The Challenger 2’s gun is fundamentally handicapped by its use of two-piece ammunition, which makes it pretty much impossible to adopt new, longer armor-piercing darts, putting a hard roof to lethality that is already assessed as problematic and will only get worse over time. In addition, while in the past the HESH round for the L30 added a flexibility that smoothbore tanks did not match, now the situation is fundamentally reversed. There is now a whole variety of ammunition available for smoothbore guns, including novel tri-mode HE shells with airburst and anti-structure capability, and the Challenger 2 is locked out, lost in its own little sea of aging shells with their own exquisitely unique logistic tail. An oddity in NATO, with all what descends from it.

On the engine front, the current powerpack is not powerful enough, especially with how much heavier the Challenger 2 add-on armour kit have become, pushing combat weight as far upwards as to 75 tons. It is also not commendable in terms of reliability.

An army slide about CR2 LEP from last year. The Army has wanted to replace the gun for many years now, but eventually lost hope in front of the ammunition storage problem. Can Rheinmetall's proposal change this, and can the MOD buy?

It is my opinion that if these critical weaknesses can’t be solved, the whole LEP expenditure might become questionable at best. Alternative approaches would have to be considered, with the LEP cancelled and all the money moved across towards the Ajax family, to restore the Medium Armour variant.

FRES SV variants that will never (?) be: ambulance, medium bridgelayer, and Medium Armour / Direct Fire

Being lighter, the new tank would never be able to match the formidable survivability of the Challenger 2 and would inexorably have less passive protection, but it could at least be rolled into service with a smoothbore gun, up-to-date electronics and a powerful powerpack. And if a suitable number of them was procured over time, both Heavy and Strike brigades could have their hitting power secured.

After the SDSR - Strike brigades: a big deal?

 SDSR 2015 is published: What it says and what it does not detail

 Strike brigades: a big deal?

The Strike Brigades: a big deal?

The “Strike Brigades”, which seem actually destined to be mechanized infantry brigades, fantasy-titles aside, represent a far great change for the army than most appreciate from the SDSR document, which is completely devoid of details.

What is the extent of the change, and what are the implications?  

What is a strike brigade?

Answer: we don’t yet know exactly what shape it is supposed to have. It will include the Ajax family of tracked vehicles and the new Mechanized Infantry Vehicle (a wheeled, 8x8 armoured vehicle) to be procured in the coming years.

It is also expected to have the full range of supports, from logistic to artillery, from medical regiment to REME to combat engineers.

Where do the strike brigades come from?

One Strike Brigade will be obtained downgrading one of the current three Armoured Infantry Brigades; the other will come from the upgrading of one of the seven Adaptable Infantry Brigades.

The end result is a force with 2 armoured infantry brigades, 2 strike brigades, 6 infantry brigades.

Vehicles?

The key questions are: how will Ajax be distributed? The most likely answer is in a single Cavalry regiment for each brigade. The implication: the Ajax fleet has been ordered under the Army 2020 plan, which would have seen Ajax replace the ancient, light CVR(T) vehicles in the reconnaissance regiments and in the recce platoons within tank regiments and armoured infantry battalions.

The assumption was that the vehicles would equip 3 cavalry regiments and 9 recce platoons (in 3 tank and 6 armoured infantry units).

Now we must assume that the cavalry regiments will be four, one for each armoured and strike brigade. In addition, Ajax will continue to be required for the recce platoons in the Tank and Armoured Infantry regiments and battalions.

The Ajax fleet on order is not expected to be expanded: it should be possible to squeeze four cavalry regiments out of the fleet, but it might take some Whole Fleet Management magic: the number of the specialized variants is carefully thought out for 3 regiments. Adding a fourth might mean that there are not enough vehicles for everyone, and regiments are only given access to all the vehicles on the ORBAT only when deploying.

Next, how many MIV? Until yesterday, the Army required the MIV as a replacement for the Mastiff and Ridgback MRAPs employed by 3 battalions of “Heavy Protected Mobility Infantry”.

One such battalion is present in each armoured infantry brigade.

Now the MIV could be required to equip as many as 6 battalions of infantry, or as few as 2, or 4. We have no real idea what the plan is. A Strike Brigade will have, one would expect, the canonical 3 infantry battalions. But how will these battalions be configured? They could be all mounted on MIV, or 2 or even just 1 on MIV and the rest on Foxhound, or some battalions might even be of the Light Role type, with no section vehicle at all and soldiers on foot.

What will the Engineer regiment of the brigade use? The description of the brigade’s concept would appear to rule out the massive Titan bridgelayer and Trojan AVRE vehicles, so the 30 tons Terrier will be the main item, with the truck-mounted ABLE and REBS bridging systems as likely complement, plus wheeled excavators, trucks and all the rest.

REME? We can expect no Challenger recovery vehicle for the same reason. Ajax recovery variants, MIV recovery variants, MAN Wrecker are the most likely tools.

Medical regiment: a MIV ambulance variant is a most likely fit.

Artillery: AS90 is excluded by its weight and logistic tail. The Light Gun is the most likely initial solution, although it really is an underwhelming weapon for use in a mechanized formation: a 155 mm system such as the French CAESAR would be ideal later on.

Direct Fire: armoured infantry brigades enjoy the firepower of main battle tanks. Traditional Mechanized Infantry Brigades also have tanks, but the “strike brigade”, as described, seems destined not to have tanks as they are too heavy and difficult to deploy.

If money wasn’t a problem, a MIV Direct Fire variant, sporting an MBT-class main gun but on wheels, would be procured, but it takes quite a bit of optimism to imagine the british army being able to afford this.

Italian Medium Brigades, which are mounted on Freccia 8x8 vehicles, enjoy the presence of the Centauro 8x8 tank destroyer with a 105mm gun, and its eventual replacement, the Centauro 2 with the 120 mm. The Centauro is used in the reconnaissance cavalry role.

Being the result of endless change of plans, the british Strike Brigades, despite being almost entirely wheeled, will instead end up using the tracked Ajax for reconnaissance and combat screening. Not exactly the best of solutions.

Logistic: the RLC element for the Strike Brigade will not be as large as that associated with an armoured infantry brigade, but nonetheless will have to be much larger than that found in an Adaptable Infantry Brigade. 


For the Full Size image click here

The transition from Army 2020 to Joint Force 2025 and its implications. Note: the 2025 structure of both the Strike and of the Armoured Infantry brigades can, at this stage, only be a guess. For all we know, the armoured brigades could have 2 smaller tank regiments each and 2 or 3 infantry battalions on Warrior. The Strike brigades might have to complement MIV with Foxhound battalions. We literally have no idea for now. Hope the army has a more consistent plan...

Manpower

Mechanized Infantry Battalions are only slightly smaller than armoured infantry ones in manpower terms (709 versus 729, in Army 2020). They are however some 150 men larger than a Light Role infantry battalion (709 versus 561). Since the Army’s overall manpower is not increasing, the larger units needed to transform an Adaptable Brigade into a Strike Brigade will require other infantry battalions to get even smaller. 

Supporting elements will become smaller as they move from armoured to mechanized, but again we must assume that current "light" supports will have to grow to account for the other strike brigade, and this will require even more manpower. 

Sure enough, the SDSR says that “a number” of infantry battalions will be “reconfigured for mentoring and defence engagement”: another way to say that they will shrink further as manpower goes in other directions.

Mind you, it is not necessarily a bad thing: in earlier posts I’ve argued for this kind of approach (I actually suggested closing down entire battalions rather than keeping a lot of tiny, understrenght units, but I knew all too well that the government wouldn’t have the guts to face a “disappearing capbadge” outrage scenario), but the SDSR uses nice words to announce the change without making it explicit.

Heavy metal

The armoured infantry brigades remaining will have to change in some way. How, we don’t yet know.

Everything is possible, in theory. Two fairly safe assumptions are that the brigades will continue to have their own cavalry regiment on Ajax but will lose their Heavy Protected Mobility Infantry battalion in favor of the Strike Brigades.

The six armoured infantry battalions could all stay and be spread 3 and 3 into each brigade. Logical, but expensive, especially if another six battalions get mounted on MIVs. 

Similarly, what happens to tank regiments? Now 3 (+1 reserve): tomorrow? Will they become two, but larger? Two, same size? Four, smaller?

GMLRS: difficult to even guess. Its precision and long range is key, and its weight class isn't far from Ajax or what we can expect for the MIV itself. It could go both ways: we could see a fourth precision fires battery formed, or we could see a reduction to two. Hard to say.

AS90: how many will be cut? It seems an unlikely fit for the Strike Brigades, and, as of march 2015, the OSD of AS90 is 2030. The Army is already thinking about replacing it, perhaps with the french CAESAR (which 1st Royal Horse Artillery has extensively trialed). GMLRS OSD is also 2030, but this will probably not hold true, while it might for AS90.

Titan & Trojan: how many will be cut? 

Assuming each armoured and each strike brigade gets a Cavalry regiment on Ajax, a fourth such regiment has to be created. It could be obtained by re-roling one Tank regiment, or by re-roling a Light Cavalry regiment, in theory. It seems far more likely that a tank regiment will be re-roled, sadly, because this would free up some manpower (although not terribly much: a Challenger 2 regiment has an establishment of 587 versus 528 for an Ajax cavalry regiment, in army 2020) and money.

Infantry brigades and enduring deployments

The British Army currently works according to the Rule of the 5: it takes 5 man to keep one constantly deployed, as this allows said man to enjoy a 24 months interval between one 6-months operational deployment and another.

Army 2020 delivers the ability to sustain a brigade-size enduring deployment by means of 3 armoured brigades and 7 infantry brigades. The latter, which are really “containers” of deployable regiments and battalions, can deliver two deployable brigades to deliver the fourth and fifth deployment in an enduring operation. The rhythm works out as: armoured, armoured, armoured, adaptable, adaptable, and again armoured and so on.

The air assault battlegroup and the amphibious battlegroup are in addition.

Will Joint Force 2025 deliver the same kind of capability? If the answer is yes, how?

We can assume that, from the six remaining infantry brigades, a third 2-brigade, 2-year force generation cycle could be sustained, delivering each year an infantry brigade at readiness. Supports elements would be available for a single deployment, assuming that the current “5 of everything” approach is maintained.

There currently are 5 artillery regiments, 5 signal regiments, 5 engineer, 5 REME, 5 logistic elements and so along. Will Joint Force 2025 cut back from 5 to 4?

Or perhaps will Harmony Guidelines be changed to account for a 1 in 4 rule, meaning 6 months deployed at intervals of just 18 months?

We don’t yet have an answer to any of these questions.

Conclusions

The Strike Brigades have profound implications for the Army. They are extremely likely to cause further losses in heavy armour assets and in heavy, self propelled artillery, despite the relevance of these systems having been dramatically reaffirmed in Ukraine.

The formation of the Strike Brigades will send ripples across the entire army and its procurement plans. Depending on the structure of the brigades, the numbers of the MIV programme can change dramatically. The requirement for ABSV will become smaller as one brigade moves from tracks to wheels.  

Each Corp of the army will be touched in some way. And there are enormous implications in terms of force generation cycles and potentially of harmony guidelines.

The army might finally get its long dreamed Medium Brigades and new 8x8 armoured vehicles, but how much it will have to sacrifice to get to them is not yet clear.

Army 2020 is no more: a new plan needs to take shape, and we can only hope the Army knows more than we do. The SDSR provides no answers: let’s hope the Army has an actual plan about the way forwards.