Well when you find a way to coordinate and schedule a kickoff with the Ivan’s 12-18 months prior please let us all know. You keep referring to these long term mobilization timelines, that are not feasible
in today’s societies. If the Russians took the Baltic’s and NATO needed 18 months To build up for a counteroffensive to occur, you can bet the public will not let it happen.
You keep going back to COIN as if it is the only type of operations your military forces could be engaged in. The trend these days is to prepare for mechanized operations against a neer peer competitor in Europe. This is a rehash of what the Cold Warriors faced.
So yes an Armored Battlegroup as you call it, will spend quite a bit of time in their tracks in order to be profiecent. You can only do so much in the simulators.
If your reserves don’t have armor now, what makes you think it is a capability they can handle in the future?
The long-term mobilization timelines are a lot more feasible than indefinitely maintaining a large enough force to fight a real mechanized war. There's also little to no evidence that "the public will not let it happen". Most major actions or campaigns that have happened over the past 20 years have had at least a 6-12 month run-up time, and they have still happened. The campaigns that have happened for the UK: Kosovo, SL, Afghanistan, Iraq, Libya, Iraq 2, Syria (eventually). The campaigns that have been prevented for the UK...Syria the first time around. Personally I think Parliament voting against Syria was misguided. But pretending that "the public" or political pressure have stopped lots of actions from happening is just not true. Where "the public" pressure has worked is in making long campaigns shorter, and constraining the kind of indefinite time periods that Afghanistan and Iraq started out with.
By the way, I haven't mentioned COIN once. You have, twice. If you want to map all your preconceptions about what Brits think onto us, just do it, rather than ******* around with making up quotes that provably don't exist.
Finally, you are either deliberately missing the point or just aren't smart enough to get it. You're talking about Britain cutting armour like we have some great toy set hanging around that's on the verge of getting junked. That isn't what is happening. It's already been cut. It happened at least 5 years ago, and in reality had been on hiatus for a good 10 years before that. The experience, [modern] kit and capability is already gone. None of the bluff that comes from British generals about Armoured Divisions etc is planning to change that, it is all about trying to make a pig look like a wolf. To make an actual wolf would require a lot more money which isn't going to be forthcoming. Even were we to get the money, it's unlikely that we could sustain the increase in numbers required to actually man it all (or it would require a whole lot more money to increase the recruitment and retention offer). That money could be far, far better spent elsewhere, because the rest of our Defence establishment is a bit rickety too.
What I, and a couple of other people on here, are saying, is that it is better to admit reality and properly mothball our 'armour' capability, and focus on other things which we are - frankly - better at, and will contribute more to any allied effort. That is the route that has been taken by a number of more realistic militaries in NATO. Quite aside from that, have you actually thought *why* you are so keen on the British having lots of tanks? We happen to be one of the smallest major NATO members for manpower (actual citizens), are on an island, we have a massively diminished manufacturing base, and have a terrible habit of gold-plating our military procurement to make it unaffordable. A smart person looking to reshape NATO contributions, if they reasonably wanted a lot of armour, would look at countries with a lot more people, closer to the actual threat, and with much a larger and more efficient manufacturing base. Luckily enough there are several candidates (Germany, Poland, etc) who fit that perfectly!
The difference between what we are both saying is that I'm working from the position we are actually in, today, and you seem to be working from near total ignorance and are playing Fantasy Armies. It's almost as if you haven't actually thought about any of this and are just parroting the opinions being fed from the DoD and MoD to the newspapers.
We are not the US: we are not going to be the US: pretending that we can be the US (like you and unfortunately many British generals do) is not going to turn out well.