New Tank For The British Army

[Tab]

In SundayTelegraph 5/10/03 Is a half page article on a new tank for the British Army. It will have the same size gun as the Challenger 2 but the
tank will only weigh 35 tons. This will be brought about by a new type of armour, the idea is to make the tank far easier to transport by air. To pay for all this the following programmes and units will be affected. The Challenger 2 to be mothballed, a further reduction in type 45 destroyers,
putting the new air craft Carriers on hold and if built to reduce their size by 20% also a cut in the new Typhoon aircraft.

[Josh]

Anyone for re-inventing the wheel?

[harry hackedoff]

Can you post a link to the article, Tab?

[davo141]

[url]http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jh ... uestid=849[/url]
very very depressing news:(

looks like we might come under attack from more powerful nations such as Wales and The Isle of Man the way our Armed Forces are being delt with...looks like i will be changing my vote in the general election!

chers, dave

[RobInDaUK]

As many wise men have said, "If it aint broke don't fix it!"

Nuff Said

[davo141]

[quote="RobInDaUK"]As many wise men have said, "If it aint broke don't fix it!"

Nuff Said[/quote]

so very true...shame this country and its government will brake it only to try and fix it but in the process brake it some more!! happened with everything i can think of...Armed Forces, NHS, Railways, Roads, Public services.....they just get that childhood urge to take things apart...put 2 and 2 together and get 5, use this for the foundations of putting the things back together.......wrong!

Ahhh such a blissful and pieceful country....

I was a labour voter for the next GE but after reading numerous stories from respected sources about cuts in defence....i must admit my vote is changing to someone knew....we'll have to see when it comes around wont we!

cheers, dave

[voodoo sprout]

Personally these new tanks do look promising, though the details are substancially lacking, at least BAe isn't the prime contender so we should still have enough money for two and a half JSF's after cost overruns are taken into account . The problem is that they are taking away far too much in terms of capability. Any country with sense would have looked at the problem, our armour is too large and heavy to be air tansportable. Most would look at it and say "then we need bigger aircraft; why not lease a few off the shelf C17's or even C5's". But oh no, our government says, "so let's buy up a load of fancy new light tanks and scrounge the money off someone else, noone will notice a few missing planes. Oh, and lop off a bit more cash to keep Gordon happy while we're at it."

However, it has to be said before we start holding it aginst the government, that they are politicians. Labour defence policy is a load of rubbish, but would the Conservatives or even Lib Dems be doing better? The Conservative policy is built on grabbing voters with assorted popularist tax cuts, I can hardly see them being able to maintain, let alone increase defence spending when budget miscalculations start demanding money be found.

[BenChug]

Everyone is going to light armour, here by 2008 the C2 Leopard 2 tanks will be replaced with Stryker fighting vehicles. Because they are quite simply easier to move around and cheaper. However being lighter and wheeled instead of tracked it would make them easier to destroy in combat as being lighter it simply doesnt have that extra few inches of armour.

[lodgi]

Theres no pleasing you lot. Whatever the government does you moan. Britain has the third largest defense budget in the world closely behind France. They have a set amount of money and cant buy everything at once.

[BenChug]

The problem isn't so much as with the new armoured units, however the very fact that they are scrapping away several billion pounds from the armed forces is. Especially as they have tens of thousands of troops deployed in Iraq, Bosnia, Afghanistan you name it they are there. And how do you solve this problem, a infusion of cash usually makes things better but taking money away? The next thing you know they will be removing battalions to save cash.

[Josh]

lodgi:

Theres no pleasing you lot. Whatever the government does you moan. Britain has the third largest defense budget in the world closely behind France. They have a set amount of money and cant buy everything at once.


Thats all very nice but could some one please tell where this "third largest defense budget in the world" goes?! All I ever hear about is how british forces ill provided for.

[voodoo sprout]

Lodgi, my problem as I said is that these new tanks are coming at too high a cost. In particular the downsizing of the aircraft carriers; if you reduce the number of Eurofighters at least the effect will be limited, and we can make up the numbers in the future. After all, the Eurofighter is only realistically going to be used in major conflcits, where allies will be able to bulk up the numbers. However, if you downsize a carrier then the capability is lost indefinitely, until a new carrier can be built. If we find that the smaller version is not sufficient, there is nothing we can do about it. Look at the SA80, it was orginally terrible. However because we could feasibly modify them, they now work (the fact that it took fifteen odd years is purely political). But I doubt you can simply stick another runway on the side of a carrier if you realise it can't provide enough airpower to support an operation. And removing money from the defence budget is just silly.

As for us having such a large budget, on the face of it that is true. But even if we have twice the funding of our nearest rivals, if pile on our forces four times as much work then problems will arise. Look at the US, they have by far the biggest budget in the world, yet even just for peacekeeping they're having to mobilise huge numbers of reserves for one year deployments in Iraq, imagine if the TA got shipped out for a year at a time?

[Frank S.]

When it comes to defense projects I suspect the problem lies in the management of said projects rather than the undertaking itself.

How do billions invested trickle down to the cheapest materials used, leading to equipment failures (meaning deaths and injuries)? Am I to believe that most of the money is spent on research/design/development and whatever's left spent on actual execution?

A quick parallel here: most of the progress made in Iraq stems from military initiatives/execution, despite blocks put in place by the civilian administration of Bremer, whether intentional or not.

[Twenty One]

Why do we need new tanks anyway.The day of the tank is now limited folks, just look at the effects of the Iraqi war when helicopters can eliminate a dozen tanks at a time.It is safer being the ordinary bloke on the ground when all that ordnance is fly around.

[Frank S.]

But it's also shown how effective they were against journalists.