BRITAIN’S “embarrassingly” small tank force would be destroyed in just two weeks if we went to war with Russia, a senior ex-Army colonel has warned.
Lt Col Stuart Crawford, former Royal Tank Regiment officer, said the UK is no longer seen as a “Tier One military power” thanks to its dwindling forces.
APA Challenger 2 – the main battle tank of the British forces during a Nato exercise in Estonia, May 15[/caption]
GettyBritish soldiers take part in Nato drills in Estonia this May[/caption]
APRussian despot Vladimir Putin has already had 3,000 Ukrainian tanks wiped out during his illegal war[/caption]
Speaking to The Telegraph, Crawford said the new Challenger 3 British tanks – due to be in service by 2030 – are “decent” but lacking in numbers.
In a damning indictment he said that our forces, once home to 900 battle tanks, is only set to buy up 148 of them.
This, he explained in the UK Defence Journal, would last “about a fortnight in intensive combat”, if Britain is “lucky”.
The former army officer said simply that “148 tanks ain’t going to cut it”, and dubbed the number “laughably small”.
Crawford is not the first army official to warn The Sun that Britain’s armed forces are rapidly shrinking in the face of global conflict.
An EU general told The Sun “size matters” after the Army nosedived to a historic low of just 73,000 trained troops.
He warned: “There is a concern about the British Army.
“You must have mass, you must have numbers. In Ukraine you can see, we must have mass to fight the Russian army.”
PM Rishi Sunak pledged to increase defence spending to 2.5 per cent of GDP by 2030.
But he is standing by plans to shrink the Army to 73,000 – its smallest size for 300 years.
Crawford told the Telegraph: “We’re currently planning to procure only 148 of them [Challenger 3], which is embarrassingly few, when you remember that at the height of the Cold War, not that long ago, the British Army’s Royal Armoured Corps could hope to field around 900 MBTs [main battle tanks].
“No wonder some US senior officers have said that Britain is no longer a Tier One military power.”
And in the journal he explained: “One hundred and forty eight is about sufficient to equip two armoured regiments plus reserve and training vehicles. It’s laughably small.
“In Ukraine the Russians have lost roughly 3,000 tanks in just over two years.
“So 148 main battle tanks might last about a fortnight in intensive combat, if we’re lucky, and after that there will be no replacements. If there’s one lesson to come out of the current conflict in Ukraine, it’s that you need lots of stuff, to use the correct technical term, and clearly 148 tanks ain’t going to cut it.”
Just days ago General Sir Richard Barrons told The Sun that Russian missiles also pose a serious threat to UK defence.
He said Putin’s conventional missiles would take only 90 minutes to reach London if launched over Russian soil.
Asked if Britain could defeat an attack, he said: “No, of course not.
“The UK does not have the air and missile defence that Ukraine has, for now. We’ve not needed it.”
He told The Sun’s World At War show, which you can watch on The Sun’s YouTube channel and thesun.co.uk: “The sort of missiles that fall on Kyiv could fall on London. And Kyiv’s air defences are way, way better.
“Even a quite elderly Russian cruise missile, I’m going to cite Kh-101 released from an aircraft over western Russia, arrives in London 90 minutes later with a 500 kilogram explosive warhead and an accuracy of two meters.
“So pick your door in Downing Street.”
The Kh-101 stealth missiles have a range of up to 2,800km and could hit most of Europe excluding Spain.
General Sir Richard Barrons spoke to The Sun’s defence editor Jerome Starkey on our new show, World at War
Russian KH-101 missiles – which could hit London in ’90 minutes’
Russian missiles also pose a serious threat to UK defences
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