General Patrick Sanders gave an accomplished address at the Land Warfare Conference in London last week, but reading between the lines, he could not disguise the current poor state of the British Army.
To their credit, our instructors have trained 17,000 Ukrainian soldiers in Britain and I have no doubt the effect of this is improving battlefield discipline on the front line. We have some outstanding individuals, but our ability to deploy a medium scale armoured formation, which still remains the currency of serious combat, has withered in the past decade. There are not enough tanks and we don’t do enough high-intensity training at battlegroup, or brigade level. It is also abundantly clear that the Reserve Forces concept has been a complete failure, as we do not have a second echelon to sustain the front line force.
Given what we are seeing in Ukraine, it is simply appalling that our main fighting equipment for the infantry and armoured corps is as General Patrick said: “not fit for purpose”. We have spent so much money on peripheral capabilities and yet neglected the fighting core, with neither of the incoming platforms (Ajax and Boxer) filling me with confidence. It is no wonder the Chief of the General Staff has resigned early.
Challenger 2 Tank – 25 Years Old and Described by CGS as “Rotary Dial in an iPhone Age”
Rupert Wieloch 