However spare parts supplies meant they suffer from a 22% attrition rate on arrival. These vehicles were all modified by REME with sand filters and climatizers, additional Chobham armor blocks and ERA bricks, external fuel drums and a smoke generator. It showed the excellent combination of the Challenger with the new Warrior IFV, both capable to sustain high speeds on flat with excellent reliability. Later one, the thrust of the 1st British Armoured division was faultless and lightning fast, completely cutting off Iraqi Forces stationed around Kuwait in dug-in positions and out on the open. UK had the honor to make the opening for the ground assault phase, with the British Special Air Service's B squadron making an advance recon mission and surgical strikes. A large percentage of Iraqi forces were destroyed this way, however Operation desert saber (the ground assault phase of Desert storm) saw the British Armoured forces committed in full force since ww2 or the 1956 Suez crisis: The entire 1st armoured division was deployed on the breach zone, west of the supposed attack direction, together with the US 'armoured fist' formed by the 1st and 3rd US Armoured division, the 'big red one' (1st Infantry Division), 1st US cavalry division, 2nd US armored cav regiment, which formed the VIIth corps.Ĭhallenger 1 ODS (tropicalized) of the Royal Scots Dragons, Iraq, 1991. Fearing to be embroiled in a long protracted war, General Schwarzkopf at the head of the coalition defined a masterfully planned deception, and the ground assault came long after the air war, to get supremacy in the air.

Indeed on the paper, both in the number of men under arms and tanks or all types, it was quite impressive and well experienced by ten years of war with Iran. The press will rapidly turn it as the 'fourth world's largest army', to boost sales. The first large conventional war for many European nations since ww2 came not from the ex-USSR, now collapsed, but Iraq. Challenger 2 in BATUS firing training exercise in Canada.

British tank destroyers modern