Tobias Ellwood, the chair of the defence select committee, has accused Downing Street of “an absence of an over arching defence strategy” after leaks that the army was considering mothballing its fleet of tanks without buying a replacement. The senior backbencher – an increasingly vocal critic of Boris Johnson’s government – complained of a lack of transparency at the heart of decision-making as the defence and foreign policy review gears up towards its conclusion in November. “I don’t see a defence strategy here, I see a cost-cutting exercise,” the MP, a former defence minister, said. “We need to be asking what role do we want Britain to play in the world before we make decisions about land warfare.” Defence sources confirmed the British army was considering simply not buying a replacement for the ageing Challenger 2 tank, and potentially switching investments into cyber-warfare, information systems and attack helicopters. It was one of a number of related options under consideration, which also included abandoning the British-designed Challenger after 20 years and buying the widely used German Leopard 2 tank off the shelf. The defence review has been plagued by accusations that it is being driven by Johnson’s chief aide Dominic Cummings, who has in the past criticised the military’s investment in heavy equipment and argued that Britain should focus on drone and cyber-warfare.
But Ellwood said he was “concerned that we seem to be retreating from the global conversation” and argued that the UK risked damaging its standing within Nato if it stepped back from heavy equipment, some of which is deployed on the Russian border in Estonia to protect the Baltic states from Kremlin incursion. Citing the ongoing crisis in Belarus, the Conservative MP said: “We are entering a decade of huge instability, with a growing number of failed states and a terrorism threat … Mass matters and our presence with tanks and armoured personnel carriers will be respected by Russia.” Ministry of Defence insiders hit back at Ellwood’s criticism. Responding to the backbencher, a defence source said: “Of course we have a defence strategy. We don’t expect people to make judgments on an unpublished integrated review based on partial information”. The UK nominally has 227 Challenger tanks, which after two decades are at the end of their natural life, although the total deployable force is understood to be half that. The Kremlin has 12,950 at its disposal and military experts fear Russian tanks may be impervious to British guns, because of armour upgrades. However, the UK last used its tanks in battle during the 2003 Gulf War, and there has been a growing political unwillingness to deploy British troops on the ground in recent conflicts, most notably the Syrian civil war. Trade unions said they were concerned that a decision to abandon tanks would be a blow to the Rheinmetall BAE Systems factory in Telford, Shropshire, where it was expected any Challenger 3 would be built. Rhys McCarthy, a national officer with Unite, accused the government of “blue sky, harebrained thinking” meaning “bye, bye UK, whilst we buy elsewhere” and said France and Germany were using defence spending as a way to support manufacturing to recover economically after the coronavirus pandemic.