Ron5 wrote:Boxer's nice until it rains a lot then watch them axle deep in mud desperately trying to spin their way out
Well large tyres, heavy duty suspension, a central tyre pressure system and a powerful drive train with plenty of torque means that there are very few places a tracked vehicle can go that a Boxer cannot also. Tracked vehicles have few advantages over modern 8x8 vehicles whilst the latter certainly have advantages over the former such as mobility on roads or good going and most beneficially much lower running costs. If you want a traditional heavy formation that has very little deplorability and costs a fortune to operate then by all means go for a fully tracked formation.
So in relation to the British Army, the Deep Precision Fires BCT that is going to live in eastern Europe equipped with two regiments of M270 GMLRS would be a good place for two Recce Regiments equipped with large well protected tracked Recce vehicles. How even for our heavy and Light BCTs that are all supposed to have a certain level of strategic deplorability, we need to minimise the number of tracked vehicles and the large support tail they require to be able to operate.
What we need is a fast, well protected wheeled 8x8 platform that can be easily altered to carry our a multitude of different tasks from carrying infantry supporting out Challenger 3s, to Recce, to Air Defence, Command vehicle, the list goes on and on. Until technology enables it, there is not alternative to the Main Battle Tanks in a number of its key roles, and so we must retain out Challenger 3s until that time. This also mean retaining a number of Heavy Armoured Engineering Vehicles to support them. This means that the Heavy BCTs will still need a number of HETs but substantially fewer than a traditional Armoured Brigade need for anything more than tactical manoeuvres over a limited distance and then it still requires a very large logistics train to keep moving etc. .
The Lighter units hopefully will be centred on a fleet of 4x4 and 6x6 MRV(P) platforms eventually, and therefore shouldn't have any of the above issues.