{"id":27793,"date":"2021-05-20T16:33:01","date_gmt":"2021-05-20T16:33:01","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/uncategorized\/2021\/05\/20\/fresh-thinking-on-close-battles-sealed-british-warrior-vehicles-demise\/"},"modified":"2026-08-07T22:22:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-07T22:22:15","slug":"fresh-thinking-on-close-battles-sealed-british-warrior-vehicles-demise","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/staging.sightlinemg.com\/defensenews\/global\/europe\/2021\/05\/20\/fresh-thinking-on-close-battles-sealed-british-warrior-vehicles-demise\/","title":{"rendered":"Fresh thinking on \u2018close battles\u2019 sealed British Warrior vehicle\u2019s demise"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

LONDON and WASHINGTON \u2014 Changing battlefield priorities was one of the reasons behind the British Army\u2019s decision to ditch the Warrior infantry fighting vehicle update program in the recent defense, security and foreign policy review<\/a>, according to British Army chief Gen. Sir Mark Carleton-Smith.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Speaking to Defense News during a recent visit to Washington, Carleton-Smith, the Army\u2019s chief of the general staff, said that divesting the aging vehicle<\/a> frees up money to invest in other equipment that is a better fit for how the land component will fight going forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe need to reimagine how the close battle is fought. And I think most close battles in the future are going to look and feel very much more like Mosul and Raqqa and Fallujah, than it is going to feel like the central European plain,\u201d Carleton-Smith explained. \u201cTherefore, the utility of an [Infantry Fighting Vehicle] in order to maneuver dismounted ground troops into fixed defensive positions, feels like less of a priority for me, against being able to operationally deploy infantry across large strategic distances quickly.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The security review, released in March<\/a>, axed plans to extensively upgrade the virtually obsolete Warrior, as the U.K. Army and the other armed services have embarked on a transformation policy towards the information age and away from traditional platforms.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Since 2011, Lockheed Martin UK has been leading the development effort to update Warrior<\/a> with a new cannon and digitized turret, better protection and other improvements.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The upgrade program is now seven years late and more than \u00a3225 million ($319 million) over budget, with Lockheed pointing the finger at the MoD for much of the delay. Still, until the release of the security review, the program was expected to move forward pending government approval a more than \u00a3800 million ($1.1 billion) production deal to update around 275 vehicles.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Nixing the upgrade program has already had its industrial consequences; Lockheed has announced job losses at the Ampthill, southern England, site where it has invested in creating a turret center of excellence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company is also supplying General Dynamics UK with turrets for its Ajax armored reconnaissance vehicle fleet now in production for the British Army, and is casting around for opportunities to leverage its turret capabilities in other programs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Carleton-Smith said that once the Army\u2019s transformation agenda was taken into account, along with the competition for resources and age of the platform, killing off Warrior was quite a straightforward decision.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cIt became really quite an easy decision. If we were going to get to true transformation, we needed to leave behind as many of the 20th century legacy systems [as possible] and Warrior fell precisely into that,\u201d said the British general.<\/p>\n\n\n\t