Lots of stuff on armour but I thought it might be sensible to look at the vulnerabilities, and one could argue, the fallacy of ‘Theatre Entry’.

History shows we start light and race to medium. With a premium placed on protection, firepower and mobility that enables manoeuvre.

Market Garden. A tactical and operational failure due to poor planning, resources, over confidence in an unproven capability and a lack of mobility and firepower to manoeuvre from the DZ/LZ or anywhere in fact.

Operationally it was obvious delay the link up, defeat in detail.

Add in to this:
- under estimating the enemy strength and capabilities.
- difficulties in resupply and communications.
- etc.

Suez 1956. Political will, diplomacy and risk. The Army was caught between preparing for ‘test cricket’ or ‘village cricket’ (Monty). You might say light and agile or heavy and close.

Geraint Hughes analysis spot on that in 51 it became clear UK lacked the Joint enablers..

Lacked Joint enablers for a genuine airborne operation. The lack of transport aircraft meant a single Bn drop.

Strategically prepositioning took time and didn’t arrive in sufficient mass to deter Nasser. The military fait accompli was never credible. https://www.google.co.uk/amp/s/defenceindepth.co/2016/11/09/suez-sixty-years-on-the-land-war/amp/

We also take from Suez the fragility of Defence Planning Assumptions with nearby forward lillypad of Libya being denied through basing agreements brokered as part of our presence there.
But the positives were the first ‘heli-carrier’ and improvised close air support.

Resourcing genuine Joint enablers sufficient for the daring do of the Green and Maroon machine would be troublesome for years to come.

As Hughes asserts Op Vantage (Kuwait 61) and Op Corporate (Falkands 82) and the green and maroon bits of 2003 become “close run things”.

We “lacked the antitank weapons to resist Iraqi invasion...their counterparts at Goose Green and Tumbledown found themselves faced by incompetently-led and demoralised draftees.

British land forces avoided a Dien Bien Phu because they were lucky with the enemies they confronted”

The story here is of a lack of inter-Service agreed Joint and strategic enablers that would make this vision of how we fight a reality.

Then there’s the issue of over confidence in capability - and an under estimation of the threat, their capabilities and their combined effect.

Operation Agricola and the Kacanic defile. A long telegraphed strike move that the opposing side read early and chose not to contest in significant force.

In fact the Serbian forces and militias has sufficient armour and heavy artillery and weapons that could have really stung.

We simply mustn’t look at this example as a case of dazzling manoeuvre and theatre entry.

Arguably the Russian insertion was. Secret, surprise and to the heart of the country.

An airport too far maybe.

Now I’m all for being balanced so I’d acknowledge that our armoured forces who crossed into Iraq in 2003 did so against a fixed force with poor morale etc.

We return to the issue of protection firepower and mobility. The balance therein and what you can do with light forces.

So what for now?
It’s more a plea for self-awareness of the limitations, strengths and weaknesses of both ends of our ever expanding spectrum of forces carved out of 83k regular personnel.

An honest reflection on what can and can’t be done in an A2AD environment and ltd budget.