Battlefield is utterly terrifying and we still need tanks, Chief of the General Staff insists
The head of the Army has dismissed the idea that tanks are obsolete – despite the challenges faced in Ukraine.
General Sir Roly Walker, who was speaking at the International Armoured Vehicles conference in Farnborough, said tanks had an evolving role in land combat and were vital for offensive and defensive operations.
"To fight on and win from the land, it is still true that you must be able to seize and hold ground," the Chief of the General Staff explained.
"It follows, therefore, that our land forces must be able to close with and kill the enemy in the most dangerous and difficult circumstances.
"And the frontline of modern battlefields show you what that looks like and feels like in the close fight – and it is utterly terrifying for the soldiers that have to work there.
"Without armour, you are just not in the business of fighting and winning in the most dangerous and difficult circumstances."
Gen Sir Roly also spoke about the importance of the integration of armoured vehicles with advanced technology for battlefield superiority.
"We are taking a lot from our observations and what the Ukrainians share with us, which is almost uniquely done to us, and what we are learning from the Russian system, which probably irritates them that we're learning.
"The confluence of commoditised components, coupled with increasing capacity to store and compute data at the edge, is rapidly transforming the design, scale and cost of every single system we are familiar with to date on warfighting operations."
The CGS also touched on his plans to double the British Army's combat power by 2027 and triple it by 2030.
He said the key to achieving that were the new platforms Challenger 3, Boxer and Ajax, using the latest software-defined capabilities to modernise existing systems and greater collaboration with industry to innovate at speed.
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