ARmy Rumour SErvice

Originally Posted by jimmys_best_mate

Neither will Chally 2, Warrior, Abrams or Bradley if the IED is big enough. That's why we need a very clear separation between our warfighting equipment and our occupation/COIN equipment.

Which brings us back round to what that war fighting will be. Does anyone imagine Russian armour charging over the plains of Poland? Chinese armour storming into India; and the UK deploying to defend those countries?

Or is it more likely that we a company of marines aboard Ocean or some such to conduct counter piracy, counter drugs?

Which 360 brings us back to why do we need a tank? With the additional question of how the heck are we going to pay for it?

Originally Posted by crimsonhussar

Do you not think that 'real' war does not involve COIN or occupation? The French resistance used these tactics all day every day. The stuff we buy has to be multi use unfortunately as war can get pretty ugly.

No - 'real' war is the bit at the start. The tanks, APCs, self propelled guns etc crossing the border, destroying the enemy's regular forces and forcing their surrender. Once they've done that the occupation/COIN starts and the tanks and APCs become very vulnerable to massive IEDs which aren't viable during the 'real war' so high vehicles with blast deflecting hulls come into their own.

You wouldn't want to be in a Mastiff advancing against an enemy mechanised force because it's not the situation it's designed for. MBTs and traditional APCs like Warrior have a place in COIN (for their added firepower and the intimidation effect of having 75 tons of armour sat on a road junction daring the rebels to have a go at them like the Challies did in Iraq) but ideally you want the kind of vehicles we've brought into use in the latter stages of Iraq and in Afghanistan because they're designed to survive an IED environment and our heavy armour isn't.

Originally Posted by Kromeriz

Which 360 brings us back to why do we need a tank? With the additional question of how the heck are we going to pay for it?

Because before you can start occupying countries and using all the gucci mine protected vehicles we have you have to get into that country. By far the best way to do that is to have armoured/mechanised forces. As I said in another post, if we allow our 'real' armour capability to deteriorate too far because we're favouring the COIN warfare we've been fighting in the last few then we're in very real danger of turning up for our next real war perfectly prepared to occupy the enemy's land and subdue any resistance movement and being severely embarrassed when it turns out the enemy didn't get the memo and kept all their tanks and APCs.

Originally Posted by Stonker

Before I left the Army (nearly a decade ago), I found myself exploring the 'system' - if that is what it could be called - for managing the issuing of UINs (budget codes that were [are? I dunno] the keys to getting money out of the MoD treasure-chest, across all three Services).

The 'system' comprised a clunky database (think MS Excel's mutant/Hulk first cousin) managed by a passed-over Major. Amongst a number of other concerns, he - my fellow passed-over-Major -was certain that there were 'Phantom' UINs out there in 'Procurement Project Land', against which MoD was gaily disbursing funds, but for whose existence he could not account - surmising that at least some of them had simply been invented by contractors [individual or corporate, who could say?] who understood how to work the 'system'.

The fact that the Army was running the Tri-Service UIN allocation system was but a quirk of early computerisation history.

What bugged me, was that although there were numerous concerns about the system, its attendant business processes, and their implications [little things like "MoD simply does not know how much it is really spending, on what, or on whose authority", the senior Sybil Serpent who was s'posed to oversee such things, made it plain to me and my team, that he had no intention of allowing the lid to be lifted on that p'tickler can of worms, for fear of 'rocking the boat'.

I'd also like someone to tell me of an occasion in the last 30 yrs, when a poly-titian has truly been held accountable for a single one of their piss-poor decisions. I mean, it is one thing to be fucked off into the wilderness, and entirely another to do a Mandelsson: where you step down 'shamed' only to resurface a few weeks later, 'redeemed' and 'purified'.

On this, I think Sunnoficarus (Post #8 ) and I are as one.

I agree on the phantom UIN's poping up when I left the Green and became a sad civil servant I challenge my Boss over billing to certain UIN's and was told to rapidly wind my neck in.

Originally Posted by jimmys_best_mate

Because before you can start occupying countries and using all the gucci mine protected vehicles we have you have to get into that country. By far the best way to do that is to have armoured/mechanised forces. As I said in another post, if we allow our 'real' armour capability to deteriorate too far because we're favouring the COIN warfare we've been fighting in the last few then we're in very real danger of turning up for our next real war perfectly prepared to occupy the enemy's land and subdue any resistance movement and being severely embarrassed when it turns out the enemy didn't get the memo and kept all their tanks and APCs.

So which heavy war involving us invading another country are you thinking about?

I am myopic, but with glasses I can read and I just do not see the capability being retained above a Brigade sized force (which is good for what?) come the draw down after Afghanistan. The whole expeditionary capability is going to get binned and as History Man has stated on another thread, 80k bods is going to be the maximum the army shrinks to. I'll put money on it going down to 60K.

Even with 80K, you will just not have the force generation capacity for invading another country. Time to act a little bit more like Holland, Denmark and Norway. Defend what is ours. For that we need ships and submarines etc... although they are stuffed because of the manure about Trident MKII which will strip any cash from the military budget for years to come because of political dogma. Rant over.

Originally Posted by Kromeriz

So which heavy war involving us invading another country are you thinking about?

Who knows? Would you have sat watching the Berlin Wall coming down on TV and predicted that all those tanks and APCs we had in Germany seemingly without a role in a brave new Cold War-less world would find employment fighting in the desert a few months later or that less than fifteen years later we'd be using them again to invade someone?

I don't know who we might be invading or why, but since the Army should be planning on the next twenty years they should be considering that we might just want to do that. All the mine protected kit and COIN training in the world won't be much use to us if our invasion force is left as a large heap of burned out Mastiffs because the enemy rather unsportingly had some tanks.

Originally Posted by crimsonhussar

Do you not think that 'real' war does not involve COIN or occupation? The French resistance used these tactics all day every day. The stuff we buy has to be multi use unfortunately as war can get pretty ugly.

Actually, alot of current thinking points towards 'hybrid threats' as the way our enemies may seek to engage us. The Israeli adventure in Southern Lebanon is an example of this - a well co-ordinated defence in depth, re-enforced by a liberal sprinkling of mines and IEDs.

So yes, I do think our primary warfighting kit will need to be a lot more resistant to this type of threat than our current legacy fleet. However, I still think there is a need for a specialist 'toolkit' of PPVs for enduring COIN operations.

Originally Posted by Kromeriz

So which heavy war involving us invading another country are you thinking about?

I am myopic, but with glasses I can read and I just do not see the capability being retained above a Brigade sized force (which is good for what?) come the draw down after Afghanistan. The whole expeditionary capability is going to get binned and as History Man has stated on another thread, 80k bods is going to be the maximum the army shrinks to. I'll put money on it going down to 60K.

Even with 80K, you will just not have the force generation capacity for invading another country. Time to act a little bit more like Holland, Denmark and Norway. Defend what is ours. For that we need ships and submarines etc... although they are stuffed because of the manure about Trident MKII which will strip any cash from the military budget for years to come because of political dogma. Rant over.

We used a heavy armoured capability in 1991 and in 2003 (we would have used it in 1999, had a forced entry to Kosovo been required), even though the latter was really only Bde-sized in terms of armour.

The problem with heavy armour is that it appears utterly useless until you really need it - in which case you need the best you can get. Even a limited intervention against the crappiest 3rd-world banana republic with T-55 and BMP-1 is going to go badly without a complete technology overmatch in term of the ability to stand off and kill enemy armour during ground operations.