Lessons from Ukraine for future UK Armoured Operations

For the previous 4 months or so the globe has watched agog as activities have developed in Ukraine.

In distinct, Russia’s huge losses in most important struggle tanks (MBTs) and armoured combating vehicles (AFVs) at the fingers of small, identified teams of defenders aided by arms equipped by the west has led to numerous questioning the value of this sort of motor vehicles in contemporary, traditional warfare. At the time of composing, Ukraine’s claimed losses it has inflicted on Russia’s MBTs and AFVs stand at 1,200 and 2,750 respectively.

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While this kind of statements have to be approached with some warning, there is small question that their Russian enemy has suffered grievously. Ukraine’s own losses are harder to ascertain but are very likely to be sizeable also.

There are lots of lessons to be garnered for the United kingdom and other western international locations from the development of the war so considerably. I have composed in other places that declarations that the age of the tank are untimely and misguided, but there is little question that we in the United kingdom will need to deal with the variations in armoured warfare we have witnessed if we are to have any hope of prevailing in a upcoming conflict of this character and intensity.

To start with and foremost amongst these lessons is the want for quantities. It’s no accident that victory ordinarily goes to the massive battalions, and of study course the aged adage that amount has a high-quality all of its own however applies. If you glance at the stage of MBT and AFV losses incurred by equally sides in the Ukraine to date, you do have to wonder how very long the UK’s recent tank fleet could previous at this stage of conflict. My effect is that if the UK’s 3 tank regiments with their fifty or so tanks apiece have been committed at the very same time they might last a week at ideal prior to becoming battle ineffective.

The challenge is that we have no immediately out there alternative tanks to refurbish and re-equip so we can go again. This will be exacerbated when, on current ideas, Challenger 3 arrives into services about 2030, Insh’Allah. On existing plans the United kingdom is preparing to procure only 148 of these, which mainly equates to two regiments’ value furthermore the harmony for education and servicing reserves. This will make the Royal Armoured Corps (RAC) a “use after only” pressure, due to the fact in something approaching a peer-on-peer conflict it will be expended quickly.

The speedy-take care of option for the Uk? Purchase from abroad, and do so quickly. The evident solutions are both the US M1A1 sequence or Germany’s Leopard 2 (which numerous of us thought that the British isles should have purchased in its place of Challenger 2 in the to start with position). Evidently the Usa may well have as lots of as 3,000 + of the M1/M1A1 Abrams in storage, and who is aware of how several Leopard 2s may well be in hangars and warehouses throughout Europe. Both would be a speedy and helpful solution to the UK’s woeful tank quantities.

Next, we have to have to glance at MBT and AFV protection against attack. Most are now familiar with the American Javelin and the Uk/Swedish NLAW (Following era mild anti tank weapon) which have been, with each other with guided artillery shells, knocking lumps off Russian tanks and AFVs in Ukraine. Javelin and NLAW use a prime assault mode which targets an MBT’s thinner top rated armour. Even though we have marvelled at the vulnerabilities of Russian autos to these weapons techniques, there is nothing at all to suggest that western tanks would fare any superior. In simple fact, the treatment meted out to the Turkish Leopard 2s in Syria in 2016 could have been partly owing to these kinds of attack modes. I very a lot question if Challenger 2 in its present-day mode would verify any more survivable.

What is to be accomplished? Once more, as I have written beforehand, there are countermeasures offered to defeat the best attack threats from anti-tank missiles, drones, and loitering and “suicide” munitions, both passive and active. At the similar time, distant weapons systems (RWS) – as noticed in action in some footage from Ukraine versus ground targets – can be optimised to counter the threats from earlier mentioned. The trouble in this article is that United kingdom MBTs and AFVs do not industry any of these, not nonetheless anyway, and the proposed acquire for the Challenger 3 fleet at present quantities to only 60 lively protective systems (APS) involving 148 MBTs. We have to have to move fast to equipping the full tank fleet at the really least.

Then there is the mixed arms facet. As any fule kno, productive fight functions desire practiced all-arms cooperation between tanks, infantry, artillery, engineers, etcetera, but above all air defence. Though considerably has been produced of the achievements in Ukraine of the British Starstreak and Martlet area-to-air missiles, and rightly so, we never have enough of them, which once again requires to be rectified as speedy as. Increase cannon-centered anti-air capacity although you are at it much too. Furthermore, infantry equipped effectively to accompany tanks in near region and urban environments can avert the enemy acquiring the chance to have interaction with limited vary anti-armour weapons by flushing them out in advance. But the infantry have to have to have a modern day infantry fighting motor vehicle to achieve this Warrior, the present British tracked IFV, is obsolescent and, wanting at Ukraine, I’m not absolutely sure that its wheeled alternative, Boxer, will necessarily be up to the work. We’ll see. 

I could bang on about other sections of the British army – artillery, engineers etc – and the need to modernise their tools but I feel you get my level. Nevertheless, I think we ought to briefly contact on air power and logistics. I terms of the previous, it is obviously a prerequisite for prosperous ground functions that air superiority is realized, even it is confined by time and geography to distinct steps. Is the Uk sure it could guarantee this for its ground troops – in point, can NATO – in the face of a peer or in the vicinity of-peer foe? And secondly, the Ukraine war has highlighted as soon as all over again the broad portions of materiel that present day large-tempo regular functions consume. Do we have the wherewithal to sustain these types of beat operations? I suspect we do not.

Allow me be the 94th man or woman to say that the recent war in japanese Europe has been a bit of a wake up get in touch with for militaries all over the world. For the Uk, and to a lesser extent the rest of NATO, it has also illustrated how the previous twenty many years of asymmetric warfare in Afghanistan and Iraq has been no preparing in machines, schooling, or ways for the true thing. The British military is underfunded, underneath-manned, and badly equipped to take on these kinds of an enterprise now or in the near long run. Only well timed and correct action by politicians and senior leaders can pull this a single out of the fireplace.

Above to you, Ben Wallace and CGS!

© Stuart Crawford 2022