"Defense panel rips into British Army over ‘deplorable’" Topic

…state of armored vehicles

"Britain's armored fighting vehicle capabilities have been labelled as "deplorable" in a report released by the parliamentary Defence Committee on March 14.

Actually, "deplorable" was one of the kinder terms used by the committee to describe the Army's reasons for letting its armored vehicle fleet atrophy over the last two decades.

"The recent history of the British Army's armoured fighting vehicle capability is deplorable," the committee wrote. "This report reveals a woeful story of bureaucratic procrastination, military indecision, financial mismanagement and general ineptitude, which have continually bedevilled attempts to properly re-equip the British Army over the last two decades."…"
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Armand

This is what happens when you centralise the kit and take it away from crews, issuing it when required with no crew manning the same vehicle,

Tally Ho!

Yep.

Wow !!! What stupidity …

This is well worth a read for some background on the hole the British Army has dug for itself.

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Midlander65,

Very good article.

I should note the French picked the "wheeled" option over the tracked one because the primary role of French military is COIN in Africa. French Army only has 2 brigades for conventional warfare and these themselves have been "de-mechanised" to a degree – eg loss of tracked IFVs, planned replacement of tracked, fully armoured SPHs with wheeled non-enclosed SPHs.

The mainstay new French APC, VBMR Griffon, is actually an MRAP.

The main IFV, the VBCI which is similar to a Boxer has already proven vulnerable in Mali where at least a couple have been destroyed despite insurgents often preferring to melt away and relatively limited combat as well as insurgents not packing much heavy firepower ala ATGMs.

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As for the Boxer it's arguably a purely COIN/policing vehicle. It's extremely tall and dwarfs all other vehicles including MBTs, it's protection is only up to 14.5mm and most variants being acquired by various western states are not fully equipped with active protection or advanced weapon options.

It's also wheeled which reduces it's usefulness in a European context (especially Eastern Europe where many roads are still rather undeveloped).

It's actually interesting to contemplate that western forces are switching en masse from full capability tracked IFVs to wheeled vehicles that come closer to an old fashioned BTR-60. Note many modern European IFVs aren't being acquired with full weapons capability and very often just buy the basic vehicle with very limited capabilities.

Couple this with massive reductions in artillery/MLRS, attack helos, air defence and armour and precious little is left for conventional warfare.

Indeed countries like Belgium only have light infantry left whereas others like Czech Republic have only paper capabilities. Even most of the British and French Armies is light infantry with very little heavier assets available to bolster them unless they strip their few remaining heavy brigades.

Should be noted this is not the case in North Asia or Israel/Middle East, let alone Russia and China who are all investing heavily in conventional capabilities.

Unilateral disarmament seems to be the rule of the day in Europe.

I hope it works for them, since the US military's power is but a shadow of its former glory too, and looks to be getting worse almost immediately.

Glup!…..

Armand