UK armored vehicles, which are significantly outdated, would succumb to the Russian artillery power if there was an armed conflict between the two parties, the UK’s Defense Committee said in a report on the country’s military capability published on Sunday.
“Were the British Army to have to fight a peer adversary—a euphemism for Russia— in Eastern Europe in the next few years, whilst our soldiers would undoubtedly remain amongst the finest in the world, they would, disgracefully, be forced to go into battle in a combination of obsolescent or even obsolete armored vehicles, most of them at least 30 years old or more, with poor mechanical reliability, very heavily outgunned by more modern missile and artillery systems and chronically lacking in adequate air defense.
They would have only a handful of long-delayed, new-generation vehicles, gradually trickling into the inventory, to replace them,” the 60-page-long report said.
It specified that the initiatives to modernize UK armored fighting vehicles were stalled because of “repeated delay, indecision, and technical obstacles.” In its current state. The UK army’s armored capability is likely to be outmatched by “a peer adversary,” a term often referred to Russia in the report.
Besides, the report noted that the 2014 military conflict in Ukraine demonstrated to the United Kingdom and its NATO allies that Russia had a high armored capability that is being modernized promptly.
The report concluded that the state of UK armored forces raises concern, as the country’s armored capability seems to have fallen behind quantitatively and qualitatively.
