UK DEPLOYS MISSILES ON RUSSIAS BORDER

[Gil Boyd]

From the Mail on Sunday November the 13th 2016 "so it must be true"!!!

Britain is to deploy batteries of long range missiles on Russias border for the first time since the Cold War.
The guided Multiple Launch Rocket Systems (GMLRS)will be moved to Estonia next year, amid fears Russian President Vladimir Putin could be planning to invade.
About 800 British Troops will be stationed there as part of a 15 Nation NATO forcedefending the Baltic States.
Among that number will be 25 Royal Artillery soldiers tasked with operating the GMLRS, which can fire up to a dozen 200Ib warheads per minute with a range of up to 45 miles.
The vehicle mounted rocket system will be complemented by British drones, RAF Typhoon jets and Challenger 2 tanks.

Sorry for my cynicsm this time in the morning, but why have secrets, they should have named the soldiers and given out their addresses and bank details too, whilst they were at it.
Who writes this stuff, or more importantly who feeds them the facts?
Well.............. just got the Challengers all back from Germany at great cost, for them to go straight back, because those that are supposedly in the know in the Ministry of Defence said the threat from Russia had deminished.

Information

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[Flying10uk]

I seem to recall hearing in the media within about the last week or so that the U.K. is going to refurbish/upgrade the Challenger 2 M.B. Tank soon. One would hope that the government department which is organising the refurbishment of the Challenger Tank has actually communicated it's intentions to the the government department which is hoping to deploy the vehicles to Estonia, as mentioned above.

[mrclark303]

I would imagine this deployment has been shouted from the rooftops of Whitehall by the top brass Gil.

Lots of journalists being briefed "off the record" as some elements of the MOD finally wake up, smell the coffee and start spinning!

Eyes fixed firmly on the next defence rewiew, to persuade the next Government why we need new tanks, more troops etc as the Russian bear is about to overrun Europe..

You only had to see the clapped out black smoke belching old aircraft carrier strike group plodding through the English Channel with its equally ancient Su33's arranged on deck to see what a threat the Russians really are to the west!

Not saying we don't need some serious defence investment though, love to see defence properly funded.

I wholeheartedly agree with Trump regarding the p*** poor state of European defence spending, why should a financially broke USA largely pay for and underwrite NATO, while some NATO members spend as little as 1% GDP .. and rely on Uncle Sam to save the day when things go south

[mrclark303]

I seem to recall hearing in the media within about the last week or so that the U.K. is going to refurbish/upgrade the Challenger 2 M.B. Tank soon. One would hope that the government department which is organising the refurbishment of the Challenger Tank has actually communicated it's intentions to the the government department which is hoping to deploy the vehicles to Estonia, as mentioned above.

I wouldn't hold your breath F10, the scope of the upgrade is being downgraded and it remains far from clear if all the remaining active inventory will be upgraded.

[Flying10uk]

It would make sense to refurbish the Challengers in storage first, not the active examples.

[mrclark303]

The stored examples are probably now in various states of disrepair and robbed of spare parts F10.

[Flying10uk]

It was suggested to me, several years ago, that I shouldn't expect to see a replacement for the Challenger2 Tank for the foreseeable future and this was partly because there are many who consider the M. B. Tank to have very limited military use in todays world. Personally I wouldn't necessarily agree with this and the same was said about the aircraft carrier in the mid to late 1970s here in the U.K.. Just after the U.K. had scrapped the last of it's large Fleet carriers it was discovered that carriers are still useful military assets to have as was borne out in the South Atlantic in the early 1980s.

[Peter Laidler]

If you could see the effect of a Javelin top-hit on an MBT you'd come to the conclusion that really, tanks - ANY tanks - are obsolete. We used to think that the Milan was the bee all and end all. Until I saw a Javelin hit. Tank hulks used as hard targets used to last for ages and ages. Not any more! Just a few days and they're shredded almost vapourised steel plates. Even the controllers are simplicity itself to operate.

[mrclark303]

If you could see the effect of a Javelin top-hit on an MBT you'd come to the conclusion that really, tanks - ANY tanks - are obsolete. We used to think that the Milan was the bee all and end all. Until I saw a Javelin hit. Tank hulks used as hard targets used to last for ages and ages. Not any more! Just a few days and they're shredded almost vapourised steel plates. Even the controllers are simplicity itself to operate.

Agreed Peter, one of the very few occasions that modern ATG (current generation) anti tank missiles have been used in action a against enemy armour was when an RAF Tornado GR4 ripple fired it's Brimstone anti armour missiles during the Libya campaign and destroyed an armoured formation in a single pass.

The follow on mk2 and the next generation SPEAR 3 (in development), will make Tanks little more than iron coffin's of the future battlefield.

Future ground based weapon systems, will, like the air based systems, no doubt seal the MBT's fate ten years down the road.

By all means upgrade the Challenger 2 for today, but don't waist money on a soon to be obsolete replacement.

[Flying10uk]

We may find that new types of armour plating that currently don't exist perhaps get invented that better protect the occupants of the Tank in the future.. All through the history of the Tank there has been a race between the technicians and inventors who develop the Tank and those who work on counter measures against it.