Originally Posted by Schaden

Well everyone is going to shit bricks if they give up heavy armour and then come up against a mob that decided not to.

Stuff and nonsense. In time honoured tradition the call will just go out: "Run away!"

the work on "non-Newtonian fluids" "walking on custard" was on last night , stopped a 50 cal but made a mess of the bar holding the target up..

BC, another interesting option would be an unmanned turret

Jordan seemed to have managed to develop something called the Falcon




Not ideal I know, but it allows us to use a Rheinmetall smoothbore and tap into the massive R&D effort going on with smoothbore ammo

3. Go the whole hog and either convert CR2 to smooth-bore, accepting that you'll need a massive redesign including a new (smaller) powerpack or buy either late variant LEO2s, M1A2s (ideally with a more sensible powerpack) or potentially even some sort of a Mekerva variant. T-90 anybody?[/QUOTE]


Putting a smoothbore into CR2 has been looked at carefully and dropped. It seems it is cheaper to buy new Leopard 2's than re-gun CR2!

As to the main question? My view is simple, you cannot hope to win a "conventonal" war without heavy armour. It is only a conventional war that can put hostile foreign troops on the streets of Britain. Now then the no 1 task of the military is to defend the country against foreign attack is it not? An army needs tanks, a militia can do without tanks, Mr Cameron it's time to choose what you want?

Originally Posted by Brierski

Stealth over force that's what makes uk army the best in the world
(USA use force)

I think that most observers would agree that if it came to a showdown between ourselves and the USA we would probably come second!

Originally Posted by brave-coward

3. Go the whole hog and either convert CR2 to smooth-bore, accepting that you'll need a massive redesign including a new (smaller) powerpack or buy either late variant LEO2s, M1A2s (ideally with a more sensible powerpack) or potentially even some sort of a Mekerva variant. T-90 anybody?

Why would a new gun of the same calibre require a massive redesign (genuine question)? Obviously there'd be slight changes but aren't guns of the same calibre roughly the same size (assuming they're not used for different roles like the infantry support and anti tank 75mm guns the Germans used on P.IVs during the war for example)?

Originally Posted by jimmys_best_mate

Why would a new gun of the same calibre require a massive redesign (genuine question)? Obviously there'd be slight changes but aren't guns of the same calibre roughly the same size (assuming they're not used for different roles like the infantry support and anti tank 75mm guns the Germans used on P.IVs during the war for example)?

The smoothbore ammo, Western at least, is one-piece; Challenger 2 doesn't have the stowage for such a long round since the present ammo is a bag charge and a separate projectile.

Originally Posted by ObnoxiousJockGit

The smoothbore ammo, Western at least, is one-piece; Challenger 2 doesn't have the stowage for such a long round since the present ammo is a bag charge and a separate projectile.

Ah right, I was only thinking about the tube and not what you stick in it! Thanks.

Originally Posted by brave-coward

To address each in turn, the TA cannot turn out a complete Sqn to train, because the ORBAT is unknown until the evening before deployment to the training area and is, by all accounts, always about 30% of what it should be on paper. This means that the Sqn can never conduct progressive training with a consistent ORBAT. Add to that the stop-start effect that breaking the training up into weekend slices has, and it would take a huge amount of time to actually deliver that Sqn to CT-2, even if they all turned up to every training event. In short, it cannot be done and that is why we have lower standards across the board for the TA (see AFV ACTs and CFTs, for example). Ultimately a manoeuvre capability requires full time, professional units.

Cannot? No. More difficult? Yes. Occasionally frustrating? Certainly. Meanwhile, consider that we're almost at the thirtieth anniversary of 5 Inf Bde being stood-to at zero notice. What was their collective training level on mobilisation? Consistent or varied? Did the Bde Comd even know which BGs he was going to have in his ORBAT?

It's not "unknown until the Friday night", it's usually "uncertain" - a few either way from an ORBAT identified on the previous training night. It's not "never conduct progressive training", it's just that it has to be well planned, well publicised, and with more fallback planning. For instance - as a regular, would you expect your training plan start bang at 0800 on the Monday after a long weekend with a major match/pissup on the Sunday, or if there was a transport strike / weather warning on?

As for "breaking training into weekend slices", try "breaking courses into fortnights". See huge numbers of ARAB v STAB threads. Short answer is "the whole army will have to change the way it trains".

It makes you wonder how the Israeli armoured reserves managed to deploy in 1973, or the USNG armoured reserves fought in Iraq (California_Tanker is a National Guardsman; did his first op tour in Iraq as a Tank platoon leader). Ask yourself how conscript armies (like ours in the 1940s) managed to train tank squadrons, or how the Dutch conscripts managed to beat the Germans and Americans in CAT, or Swedish beat the Germans in the Leopard competition. I'll grant you that the most recent Israeli invasion of Lebanon is a good argument for "don't skimp on your reserves spending".

Originally Posted by Gravelbelly

Cannot? No. More difficult? Yes. Occasionally frustrating? Certainly. Meanwhile, consider that we're almost at the thirtieth anniversary of 5 Inf Bde being stood-to at zero notice. What was their collective training level on mobilisation? Consistent or varied? Did the Bde Comd even know which BGs he was going to have in his ORBAT?

It's not "unknown until the Friday night", it's usually "uncertain" - a few either way from an ORBAT identified on the previous training night. It's not "never conduct progressive training", it's just that it has to be well planned, well publicised, and with more fallback planning. For instance - as a regular, would you expect your training plan start bang at 0800 on the Monday after a long weekend with a major match/pissup on the Sunday, or if there was a transport strike / weather warning on?

As for "breaking training into weekend slices", try "breaking courses into fortnights". See huge numbers of ARAB v STAB threads. Short answer is "the whole army will have to change the way it trains".

It makes you wonder how the Israeli armoured reserves managed to deploy in 1973, or the USNG armoured reserves fought in Iraq (California_Tanker is a National Guardsman; did his first op tour in Iraq as a Tank platoon leader). Ask yourself how conscript armies (like ours in the 1940s) managed to train tank squadrons, or how the Dutch conscripts managed to beat the Germans and Americans in CAT, or Swedish beat the Germans in the Leopard competition. I'll grant you that the most recent Israeli invasion of Lebanon is a good argument for "don't skimp on your reserves spending".

More pertinently, the choice now being given to the Army is TA or nothing. The Army has played the "Regular or nothing" card often and hard and lost every time. And got nothing. The sooner the Regs get out of the denial phase and start to make the best of the shit sandwich we've all been given the better. Man up and make it work, or fuck off and hang up your boots. That is the reality we face, and no amount of buzzword heavy PowerPoint bullshit delivered with that slick careerist glibness we all know and love will change things.