The British Army's Main Battle Tank. To ditch or not to ditch.

My late grandfather was a regular in the Somerset Light Infantry, but during the First World War he was transferred to the Royal Tank Corps and took part in the Battle of Cambrai where tanks were first used successfully, and en masse.

Therefore I was interested to see in the press that there are those in our Conservative government who advocate abandoning the use of tanks in the British Army.  I came across an article and a letter in The Week (5 September) which argued for and against the retention of the tank.

The case against was made by Jack Allen, a former Cold War tank commander, in an article originally published in Reaction. Life.  I reproduce the points I found of interest below:

Tanks for the memory, not for war today.

MBTs were already proving ineffective when I was a tank commander at the end of the Cold War: they’re even more so today.  For a start, being huge (some weigh 70 tons) they’re hard to move around the battlefield, hard to hide from drones and attack helicopters, and notoriously bad at fighting in cities.  On the modern battlefield – think Iraq or Syria – they’re easy prey to the lone operator on a moped with an anti-tank gun.  Or to roadside IEDs.  Even if the attacks only damage a tank, it all adds to the vast amount of support needed to keep the tanks on the road.  It’s not as if NATO general staff believe the next conflict will be fought on the open North European Plain, where MBTs come into their own.  No, Moscow prefers to work by destabilising governments and infiltrating militias.  By all means let’s invest in light armoured vehicles.  But let’s ditch the tank.    

The case for retaining tanks was originally made in The Times. I reproduce it below as published in The Week.

Why tanks are vital.

To The Times.

In all the articles (about the rationale for scrapping tanks), we could find no mention of deterrence.  Is there anyone left in Whitehall who understands deterrence strategy, which we are all signed up to in NATO?  Simply put, it requires an ability to outdo an enemy at all levels of conflict up to and including nuclear; if you can’t do this at each level, with a reasonable level of assurance, the strategy loses credibility.  The test for disposing of a capability that an enemy might retain is whether whatever is deemed to be a replacement will deter that enemy.  If not, then escalation or capitulation are the only responses.

When our conventional forces are as limited in number compared with those of our potential enemies as they now are, escalation could quickly rise towards a nuclear conflict.  Under these circumstances, our nuclear capability might well become a cuckoo in the nest.

Air Chief Marshall Sir Michael Graydon; Vice Admiral Sir Jeremy Blackham.

 

Without a big increase in attack helicopters to replace the tanks, I lean towards agreeing with Sir Michael and Sir Jeremy.