Summary and Key Points: Britain’s Challenger 3 tank, an advanced upgrade of the Challenger 2, boasts impressive features including enhanced armor and a new 120mm smoothbore gun.
The Flaw: However, low planned acquisition numbers—just 148 tanks by 2030—pose significant strategic concerns. That would make these tanks drop in lethality considerably in any fight against Russia or any other threat with so low numbers.
-Compared to Germany’s Leopard 2 (320 units) and America’s vast Abrams fleet (4,600 units), the UK’s tank force appears inadequate, especially amid the high-intensity, attritional warfare observed in Ukraine.
-While technological upgrades are essential, experts highlight the critical need to invest in logistics and support infrastructure. Simply put, Britain’s advanced tanks alone won’t ensure battlefield success without sufficient numbers and comprehensive sustainment capabilities.
The Challenger 3 Flaws
One paper at least, the British Army’s new Challenger 3 main battle tanks, the successor to the Challenger 1 and Challenger 2 platforms, is remarkable. The Challenger 3 is, in essence, an upgraded Challenger 2 tank, with special consideration given to the main gun. In addition to improved passive and active armor protection, the new tank will be outfitted with a new main gun, a 120mm smoothbore gun.
Previous iterations of the Challenger platform sported a 120mm rifled main gun, a design consideration that enabled the use of specialized HESH projectiles but one that precluded the use of NATO-standard 120mm ammunition.
In 2021, then-Defence Minister Ben Wallace explained that 148 Challenger 2s would be selected for upgrade. The combination of improved passive protection systems and active protection systems is, at first blush, impressive.
However, one aspect of the Challenger 3 program effectively hamstrings the new main battle tank‘s effectiveness: extremely low acquisition numbers.
The Royal United Services Institute, a leading British think tank, recently commented on the Challenger 3 situation in a defense paper assessing the state of the British military. The picture it painted was, in a word, grim.
“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. 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).
“Meanwhile, the UK has essentially removed the AS90 artillery from service by donating 32 to Ukraine, replacing them with 14 Archer guns until such time as the ‘Mobile Fires Platform’ is procured (some time ‘this decade,'” the report stated. ” Challenger 3 may be the ‘most lethal tank’ ever fielded by the British Army, but it is going to 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.”
Challenger 3: Tank Numbers by Comparison
The tank fleets of other countries vastly surpass those of the British Army. Take the M1 Abrams, for example, the main battle tank of the United States, Australia, Ukraine, Poland, and a handful of other countries. The United States has around 4,600 M1 Abrams in service, with thousands of others in service with allies.
Or consider the Leopard 2, the German-designed main battle tank in service widely across Europe and with Ukraine. The German Bundeswehr, often lambasted for low preparedness, has around 320 in service, over double the number of Challenger 3s that the British will have at the end of the decade. Even France, following a modernization program announced earlier this year, will have about the same number of Lelerc main battle tanks as the Germans.
With the war still raging in Ukraine, the number of tanks in service with both countries dwarfs those of these Europeans: Ukraine has around 1,500 main battle tanks of various builds in service, whereas Russia has around 2,000 in service in Ukraine.
Also noteworthy are the incredibly high equipment losses both sides have absorbed during the three-plus years of fighting. Oryx, an open-source tracking group, has put Ukraine’s documented tank losses at 1,147. Documented Russian tank losses, on the other hand, are staggering—3,847 confirmed.
These metrics are based on visually documented evidence and are, therefore, conservative estimates. Russia’s and Ukraine’s actual losses are certainly higher.
More importantly, however, the statistics point to where the war in Ukraine is at right now: an attritional fight, one that is highly dependent not on prestige weapon systems but on deep industrial reserves to feed a broad industrial base and ensure platforms are produced at least quickly enough to replace losses. In the event of a large-scale war that involved the British Army, even minimal losses to the British Army’s tank fleet would be very detrimental to the ability to fight.
What Happens Next?
As RUSI fairly points out, the effectiveness of a country’s armored forces is not just reliant on sheer numbers alone. “Solutions are available, but they will require hard thinking and prioritisation. In some cases, increased firepower will be desirable. But it may be that the UK should be investing in sustainment and enablers like bridging equipment before purchasing a single additional tank or jet that it can’t, in any case, deploy and support.”
“Technology should play a key role—for example, learning the lessons about where drones can complement artillery and provide effective local surveillance. But it will take novel thinking and the development of doctrine and tactics, allied to new training, to achieve increased combat output – and effect – with forces that appear unlikely to increase in terms of personnel.”
Ship, tank, or personnel carrier—each platform’s effectiveness is not simply a measure of how many rounds can be brought to the target, top speed, or armor thickness. Each platform and the individual soldier rely on extensive support infrastructure to supply fuel and ammunition and repair and maintenance.
So, while it appears that the British military is acquiring few too few Challenger 3s, simply acquiring more would not necessarily solve their armor shortage platform. An adequate support base is just as important as the first step before acquiring more vehicles.
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.
