When he appeared before the UK’s House of Commons Defence Committee in November 2021 to defend his government’s cuts to the armed forces, the then prime minister, Boris Johnson, declared that “the old concepts of fighting big tank battles on European land mass are over”. Committee chairman Tobias Elwood noted that it was tanks that were massing on Russia’s border with Ukraine, while the UK was cutting back its own fleet.
Just over a year later, the ferocious armoured battles in Ukraine during 11 months of conflict appear to confirm Elwood’s concerns. For some time Ukraine has been begging allies for more and better weapons systems such as long-range artillery and aircraft.
But high on that list have been main battle tanks (MBTs). Tanks, with their big guns, speed and heavy armour, provide the sheer punch and momentum to take ground. Until now, apart from some gifts from Poland and the Czech Republic of Soviet-designed but modified (by Czech and Polish engineers respeictively) T72 tanks, none had been forthcoming from Nato countries.
