British Army With No Tanks!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

[Rainbow Six]

Originally Posted by Legbreaker

The way I read it is certain people are considering it as an option.

I see it the same way - it's one of several options that are under consideration. We'll just have to wait and see where it goes.

[mpipes]

And as soon as there is a new Marine Commandant after a few years of flailing about without a tank and finding out the army does not really want to play the same way as the Marines and the tank will be back.

After all, if I remember correctly, did not the Marines give up their tanks before in the '50s?

[Hybris]

Meanwhile.


https://youtu.be/EnL0Fz-34nA

[Askold]

a) Although I am convinced that no matter how warfare changes, infantry will still have a place on a battlefield, I am not that certain about tanks. Who knows if in a few centuries there will be hover-plasma-DVD-whatever things that have replaced the tanks we see today. It is not like the tank is an old invention either, it's been here for a relatively short time in human history.

b) When the Dutch sold their tanks, they sold their old obsolete versions of Leopard 2 rather than spend money on upgrading them (and they immediately regretted it when Russia invaded Ukraine and Finland made the totally unfair decision to not give the tanks back because we also share a border with Russia.) They had plans to buy new tanks to replace the old ones even back then, it was never about completely abandoning tanks. Though their eventual solution was a novel one, they offer crews for German tanks in a form of combined military unit between the two countries (with EU integration slowly advancing, this type of thing will likely become more and more common.)

c) As for USMC, much like the Netherlands, even if they have no tanks of their own this does not mean that they go into combat without tanks. US military is huge and they have simply made it so that marines use their budget for things that they consider important and in case of a war, the army will fight alongside them with tanks. It's not like USA would go "Yeah, we will send these marines to die in that battle because they have no tanks of their own and there is no reason for other armed forces to help them even though we are perfectly capable of doing so. Sucks to be them."

[micromachine]

The scariest thing about this is the loss of manufacturing capability and the brain trust of the designers. Let us remember that after World War I, the British thought that the tank had seen its day and the antitank gun was going to put the tank on the shelf. It took until the mid-1940s and the Centurion tank for them to get the equation back into equilibrium, as the thinking in the design department was firmly cemented in the last war.
While wheeled alternatives seem to be the way forward, the lack of survivabilty and mobility will fast be shown in the next conventional or unconventional conflict. Antitank helicopters, missiles and rockets do offer a persistent threat that cannot be disregarded, however, they are more defensive in nature.
I foresee a future where the light to medium tank will have a place at the table, with active protection systems and graduated levels of protection dictated by the threat level. To lose the main battle tank would be a defeat without a shot being fired.
After all, the best way to fight a tank is with another tank!

[StainlessSteelCynic]

Originally Posted by micromachine

The scariest thing about this is the loss of manufacturing capability and the brain trust of the designers. Let us remember that after World War I, the British thought that the tank had seen its day and the antitank gun was going to put the tank on the shelf. It took until the mid-1940s and the Centurion tank for them to get the equation back into equilibrium, as the thinking in the design department was firmly cemented in the last war.

This is probably the most significant factor, something similar occurred with the RAF after the 1957 Defence White Paper which concluded that manned, air-defence fighters and manned bombers where going to be obsolete due to advances in SAM technology.
That view was wrong and they finally got back on track but not before some potentially promising aircraft projects were cancelled and various aeronautical companies were "encouraged" to merge (thus reducing the number of people involved with R&D). The British lost the opportunity to operate, in the 1960s, a Mach 3 capable recce & bomber aircraft in the Avro 730.

The Avro 730 could very well have provided the United Kingdom with the same sort of reconnaissance capabilities as the SR-71 did for the USA as well as being a bomber capable of delivering nuclear weapons.

[Legbreaker]

It's my belief the only reason there's talk of getting rid of tanks is because there isn't currently a credible threat that APCs and wheeled IFVs can't handle - it's all low level, counter insurgency stuff and peace keeping really.
It's a very big mistake long term to remove the heavy armour capability. Sure, there may be sufficient warning and lead time to obtain the hardware, but the skills and experience using them could well be gone. Without continual training, experimentation and practice, there's going to be some very hard, very bloody lessons to be learnt all over again made even worse by the continuing march of time and technical development.