Brief respite for the Royal Armoured Corps came with a part-fleet MBT replacement in the shape of Challenger 1, essentially a cancelled export order model for Iran which fell through with the removal of the Shah in 1979, but it was clear then that Britain needed a new tank. Meanwhile, Germany’s 105mm-armed Leopard 1 showed new levels of mobility and reliability, and the Soviet T-64 and T-72 models with their auto-loaded 125mm guns overmatched Chieftain. And by the time I commanded my squadron it was obsolescent if not obsolete. Its armour protection was good, its 120mm rifled gun powerful and accurate, but its automotive systems let it down. We used to say that Chieftain was the best tank in the world as long as it broke down in a good fire position, and there was a strong element of truth in that statement. I led a troop and subsequently a squadron of Chieftains during my time with the 4 th Royal Tank Regiment in the 1980s. My personal previous experience of tanks had been primarily on the old Chieftain, a sluggish and unreliable vehicle but one for which we came to have a grudging affection. The present British MBT, the Challenger 2, had its origins in the Chieftain Replacement programme of the 1980s, when I was a staff officer at the Headquarters of the Director of the Royal Armoured Corps (HQDRAC) at Bovington Camp in Dorset. He now works as a political, media, and defence and security consultant in Edinburgh and is a regular commentator on military and defence topics in the print and broadcast media.

During his military career he attended both the British and US staff colleges and undertook a Defence Fellowship at Glasgow University.

This article was written by Stuart Crawford , a regular officer in the Royal Tank Regiment for twenty years, retiring in the rank of Lieutenant Colonel in 1999. The UK now fields only 227 main battle tanks, a far cry from the 900 or so strong inventory only a couple of decades ago.

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