Key Points and Summary – The United Kingdom’s new Challenger 3 is a formidable main battle tank, boasting a new NATO-standard 120mm smoothbore gun and an advanced active protection system designed to counter modern threats like drones.
-However, this technologically superior platform is facing a strategic “nightmare.”
-A damning report from the Royal United Services Institute (RUSI) highlights that the British Army is only procuring a paltry 148 units.
-This “unsolvable math problem” means that while the tank may be one of the best in the world, the UK will have too few to make a decisive impact in a large-scale conflict.
Challenger 3 Tank: Low Numbers, Drone Threats on the Horizon?
The latest British Army main battle tank is the Challenger 3, an upgrade of the current Challenger 2. Most commentators would agree that, on a one-for-one basis, the Challenger 3 is significantly more capable than its predecessor — better armed and better armored, with improvements to the main gun and a wide range of other upgrades.
But, there are some clear challenges that this new tank might not be able to overcome: low numbers and a drone future that looks ominous for the future of armored platforms.
Armor Protection
Compared to its predecessor, the Challenger 3 retains the same basic hull, with a very similar engine compartment and chassis, though in upgraded form. While the tank’s digital systems and suspension have been improved, the overall design remains in line with the Challenger 2.
The turret, however, is completely new.
Out with the Old, in with the New
The most significant difference between the two tanks, and arguably one of the biggest advantages of the Challenger 3 over its predecessor, is the tank’s main gun, a Rheinmetall-designed 120mm smoothbore main gun.
Though that 120mm main gun is a mainstay of most main battle tanks within NATO-member armies, the British Army long eschewed the German design in favor of a 120mm rifled main gun.
Although the difference may seem slight, it allowed British tanks to fire high-explosive squash head, or HESH, rounds —a unique type of ammunition that the British brought to bear against both armored vehicles and fortifications, such as bunkers and other strong points.
A rifled barrel, however, precludes the use of NATO-standard ammunition, which is compatible with smooth-barreled main guns only.
That shift to a NATO-standard 120mm smooth barrel will see the end of the HESH round in British service. Without the stabilization afforded by barrel rifling, HESH rounds would careen wildly off course. The upshot, however, is compatibility with a wide variety of NATO-standard ammunition, a boon to both logistics and interoperability.
The 120mm NATO-standard round is a battle-tested and proven caliber, with several types of ammunition available.
While the Challenger 3’s hull is rather similar, the new smoothbore barrel necessitated a change to the tank’s turret in part to accommodate the main gun. Increased armor protection is a feature of the Challenger 3, as are increased situational awareness and upgrades to the tank’s fire control system.
One of the tank’s more important protection upgrades is a direct response to the lessons being learned by the ongoing war in Ukraine: the threat to armored vehicles from drones.
Active Protection
Since the genesis of the Challenger 1 tank, the platform has incorporated increasingly sophisticated armor protection, essentially layers of specialized composite materials, including steel, ceramics, and other metals, the exact composition of which is not publicly known.
These were the Dorchester and Chobham armors — now they’ll be augmented by an active protection system.
By leveraging information gleaned from turret-mounted precision radars and an array of acoustic sensors, the Challenger 3’s active protection will, in essence, shoot down incoming projectiles with other projectiles, somewhat akin to hitting a bullet with a bullet, and causing them to explode before staking the tank, or pushing them on oblique trajectories that are less damaging to the tank.
The same logic applies to drones too, given the right combination of active protection and sensors, to knock those threats down and out of the air.
Show Me the Money
One of the oldest think tanks in the world, the British Royal United Services Institute, studied the question of the Challenger 3 with a particular focus on just how many of the main battle tanks the British Army wanted to acquire.
The conclusion? There will be woefully few Challenger 3s in service with the British Army.
RUSI wrote that the shortfall could be disastrous. “Similarly, when RUSI analysts last looked at the Army, and the combat division the UK claims to have, it measured the number of main battle tanks and self-propelled artillery in the UK’s inventory and found the numbers wanting when set against a ‘credible’ armoured division of anywhere from 170 to over 300 tanks and around 110 to 220 artillery pieces.”
By 2030, RUSI writes, the Challenger 3 program will have acquired, for the British Army, a paltry 148 main battle tanks. And the fact is, in a large war with, say, Russia, thousands of tanks could be destroyed, as the case of the Ukraine war clearly shows.
“The numbers have not improved in the subsequent four years: under the Challenger 3 programme the UK will have a total of 148 main battle tanks (in 2030).”
RUSI’s conclusion was damning. “The Challenger 3 may be the ‘most lethal tank’ ever fielded by the British Army,” it concedes, but adds that the tank will “be available in such limited numbers that it will have to perform heroically in the face of a notional foe in the form of Russian ground forces, such as a Combined Arms Army.”
Harsh words, but perhaps not inaccurate for such a small force.
About the Author: Caleb Larson
Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.
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