British Army Considering Eliminating Tanks and Transforming Into 100% Auxiliary Force for the Empire
If you are serious about national defense then you have tanks. But if all you are is a secondary support arm for the military of a larger power, that's another matter
he British Army is quietly floating a proposal to send its main battle tank fleet to the scrapyard. The shocker would end more than 100 years of development and deployment by the very country that invented the tank.
Instead, the British Army would concentrate on space and cyber warfare, as well as contributing helicopters and airmobile troops to any NATO fighting force. The move would follow in the footsteps of the Netherlands, a country that eliminated—and then quickly rebuilt—its tank force.
The proposal would see the British Army’s 227 Challenger II main battle tanks eliminated from its force structure. The Challenger II, originally one of the best tanks in NATO, hasn’t received a steady stream of upgrades the way the American M1A2 Abrams has and is considered obsolete by today’s standards. The Challenger II needs new, uprated engines, new fire control systems, and a new 120-millimeter main gun to match the gun on U.S. and German tanks.
The U.K. has had tanks for more than a century, and in fact invented the concept of the tank as a tracked, armored fighting vehicle. The name “tank” comes from the cover story used to hide the development of a new offensive weapon designed to break the deadlock of World War I trench warfare. The vehicles were developed under the guise of building transport vehicles to carry water to the front lines.
The British Army fielded the world’s first tank, the Mark I, in 1916, and during World War II, introduced such impressive designs as the Crusader, Matilda Mark II, Churchill, and Cromwell. The Cold War saw the army equipped with the Centurion, Chieftain, and later, the Challenger I. The British Army introduced its current main battle tank, the Challenger II, in 1998.
The U.K. fields just 227 Challenger IIs, compared to the 6,333 tanks the U.S. military operates. In 2019, London proposed upgrading just 148 of the 227 tanks to a modern standard, leaving it with one of the smallest—albeit effective—tank forces in the world. That proposal has apparently been sidelined in favor of scrapping the fleet entirely.
The U.K. Ministry of Defense proposes to delete the British Army’s tank force and instead shuffle the money to fund greater space and cyber capabilities. It would also emphasize helicopters and presumably airmobile forces in its contribution to NATO, as the Army flies 50 Apache attack helicopters and operates an air assault brigade trained to conduct heliborne operations.
This isn’t the first time a NATO country has ditched its tanks. In 2011, the Royal Netherlands Army eliminated its 60-strong force of Leopard II tanks, arguing the future lay in lightweight, rapidly deployable combat forces structured for conflicts [waged at the behest of the Empire] such as the fight against the Islamic State or the Taliban in Afghanistan.
The Dutch quickly came to regret the decision, as Russia boosted its tank-heavy ground forces and embarked on a campaign to intimidate its neighbors and NATO. [LOL.] Today, the Netherlands leases 18 Leopard 2A6M tanks from Germany and plans to buy back more tanks as a permanent part of the Army.
The Pentagon is also shedding a small number of tanks. This year, the U.S. Marine Corps disbanded its entire tank fleet, arguing it no longer needed them as it refocused on fighting China in the South China Sea. The Marines sent the 120 M1A1 Abrams tanks to mothballs, but the service could conceivably replace the tanks with smaller, lighter vehicle with tank-like firepower.
Source: Popular Mechanics
Major mistake by the Brits. Should learn from covid, every country was on its own when faced with PPE shortages. Granted the UK has a good sized moat to defend against attack, yet in still another area the Brits are fecklessly getting rid of their Naval force putting money into carriers at the expense of the very necessary destroyers they are peeling off. They are in sharp decline.
Agreed, although in theory, the UK could potentially defend itself from naval attack using swarms of armed drones.
Getting rid of the tanks is an extremely stupid idea. A capability, once lost, is often impossible to regain. Plus you lose the corporate memory involved in knowing how to use and effectively deploy armoured forces.
Canada once considered getting rid of its tanks until experiences in Afghanistan showed that tanks make excellent infantry fire support vehicles even if they don’t need to engage other tanks. Plus, the Canadian Army recognized that losing armoured capability would be hard to regain if lost.
Given its small population and lack of ability to field a large army, plus the sheer size of the country and frequently inhospitable terrain, one would think a country like Canada would have gotten rid of its tanks, but it didn’t.
Canada has 3.855 million square miles.
America has 3.797 million square miles.
China has 3.705 million square miles.
“No one knows if Jesus Christ existed, and if he did, NOTHING is known about him!”
“what I am not a Christian” Bertrand Russell ..1928
…we should have of kept Roman paganis, instead!
Tanks are obsolete and very expensive I would not have any in my inventory.
You haven’t read much about the Abrams or you don’t intend to stage a ground assault.
The Abrams is a bad tank it needs constant maintenance to stay in battle condition. An army does not need tanks anymore to stage ground assaults this is old school. Tanks can be taken out by infantry very easily Or smaller wheeled armor. You haven’t studied much about the 1st gulf war have you? Their tanks for taking up by the air force and our tanks we’re unnecessary.
And now we have drones that soon will be taking tanks out also.
Very expensive, very unnecessary.
The F-35 is a flying Abrams tank since it has a 50% out of service rating.
We wouldn’t need anywhere as near as much military hardware as we have if we hadn’t been violating the Constitution since WW2.
All I need to know about any of the gulf wars is that traitors made them for profit.
In “Panzer Leader”, Colonel General Heinz Guderian refers to this question of whether tanks were obsolete being discussed back in the 1920s. Given massed artillery, which was ever more accurate, the argument was that tanks would be destroyed before they ever reached enemy positions. Guderian – who went on to become one of the architects of Blitzkrieg with its tank-centric strategy – says that those who posited the end of the tank also acted as though future wars would be like WWI, with waves of tanks massed track to track bearing down on trenches and fortifications, to be shot to pieces by defensive artillery. Obviously if it were to be *that* kind of battle, tanks would be obsolete. But what if the side fielding those tanks refused to act according to the script?
Later on in the Winter War the USSR attempted tank Blitzkrieg against Finland but in the Finnish forests, without adequate air cover and without mechanised infantry for protection, the light Soviet BT7 and T26 tanks were cut off and annihilated. The very same tanks, at the very same time, in open ground and with adequate air and infantry support, annihilated the Japanese at the Battle of Khalkhin Ghol in Mongolia….and the Finns, too, when the USSR switched to a broad front offensive and breached the Mannerheim Line.
The USSR used tanks most successfully in its own Blitzkrieg offensives from Stalingrad to Berlin, of course, when it had far better T34, T34/85, and IS2 tanks, far better (and self propelled) artillery, far better infantry mobility, and far better air support; but when Russia attempted to storm Grozny in 1995 with tanks they were cut off and annihilated by Chechens with RPG 7s.
Obviously, then, it’s not that tanks were obsolete; tactics were. The Saudi Barbarian headchoppers and the zionist entity both learnt that, against the Houthis and Hezbollah respectively. Their Abrams and Merkavas were optimised for taking on old T 72s and T 55s in the desert; small groups of infantry with modern anti tank missiles outclassed them.
However, having said all that, it does seem to me that the tank era is drawing to a close. Reasons:
1. WWII style all out wars are obviously no longer going to happen. If NATO actually attempted to invade Russia, for instance, no matter how many tanks it fielded that wouldn’t stop NATO cities from turning to radioactive ash. Modi in India, similarly, only invents “surgical strikes” in his propaganda factories to “punish Pakistan”; he doesn’t dare to send an armoured thrust across the Thar desert into Pakistan, though the Indian army has a doctrine (“Cold Start”) envisaging just that. Only local offensives against particular enemies – say China against Taiwan – can be envisaged as a serious possibility.
2. Wars of the future will increasingly move to the cities. City combat is mortar, artillery, drone, and overwhelmingly infantry combat. Tanks are not just useless, they’re a liability.
3. The old battle between armour and anti armour weapons is fast bringing diminishing returns for the former. You can’t just pack on metal any longer; no thickness of metal will be adequate to protect against modern ATGMs. Explosive reactive armour panels aren’t any longer enough either. Look at the increasing efforts Russian tank designers are going to to protect their tanks, for instance: infrared dazzlers, aerosols to defeat incoming guided missiles, etc etc, and even then they decided that none of that was enough so they had to do one of the most radical redesigns of tanks ever, the T14 Armata, with a remote controlled turret and the crew in an armoured capsule in the hull. This is obvious proof that they know that the tank is bound to be hit. I predict that by the time the Armata is available in any numbers that too will be no longer enough. The efforts of tanks to defend themselves are already bringing diminishing returns except against enemies who can’t shoot back.
The same situation as aircraft carriers, actually.
I suspect that in most warfare u r correct; in some terrain tanks properly hidden are effective…Russia produces inflatable tanks and other military decoys . probably others do also. amerikans destroyed few Serb tanks. Mainly they bombed cardboard tanks w foil—the actual tanks were camouflaged or hidden in farms, etc
The U$MC lost it’s tanks, and it’s air superiority fighters because the globalist oppressor class is terrified that the Marines may remember their oath, and live up to their motto of Ever Faithful. England has a similar problem in that all soldiers sweat their oath to the Crown, and not to parliament or a “constitution”. Upon joining the British military every member receives a silver schilling that has passed through the hand of the Monarch. This is know as taking the Queens’s or King’s schilling. The English globalist politicians can’t have a military that is loyal to the Crown owning tanks now can they?
The Houthis and even ISIS ripped the Abrams apart like paper bags. Whatever they are, the Abrams aren’t exactly the cutting edge of tank combat.
Send some down to the Falklands to deter the Argie nutters.
Just as a footnoot, the first tank was invented in Dublin, Ireland in 1911. At that particular time Britain had an empire, it has since just become a subservient colony of a former colony of its own, Amrerica, and America has since become a subservient henceman of the Khazars occupying Palestine.
Do you have a link for that claim?
The English are cute little politically correct, faggot US lap dogs. It’s sad that the UK is now a third world ghetto. I visited the UK in the ’70s a couple of times and enjoyed it. I’ve only been through Heathrow a couple of times since then but, based on what I’ve read and heard from others, I wouldn’t visit the UK now if someone paid for the trip and gave me spending money. Fuck that neo-liberal shit hole.
It is a leftist loony bin.
It’s not “leftist”. It’s a neo-liberal, financier, banker sewer. “Leftists” don’t have rotted out perverted royal families.
It’s extremely not leftist. My girlfriend is a British communist and she calls it a neoliberal hell.
read Bertoldt Brecht’s poem “contemplating hell” re the USA—he studied marxism w Karl Kolsh
Leftists don’t sell off the postal service to goddamn billionaires bit by bit.
I suspect that tanks are important in warfare where the terrain permits—they were a liability for the USA in Vietnam—a few German tanks and their military occupied Denmark in wwII
they seem to have importance in the ME today