The much maligned Nott review recognised that our Cold War commitment was more important than the illusion created by the Falklands War that "out of NATO area" was affordable and desirable.
Now that we faced a bubbling rather than Cold War with Russia and China it is time for another look at the Royal Navy.
I have argued consistently that Denis Healey called ot right in 1966 that the SSN was the capital ship of the RN for the Cold War. Carriers appeal to politicians (that is why we now have two expensive white elephants) as visible symbols of national status but they do not survive long if a war starts (the fate of the Moskva is the latest example of big ship vulnerability).
We need more SSNs.
The Trident deterrent accepts the reality that nuclear weapons are not going to be uninvented. Ever since 1968 the submarine based deterrent has had the role of reminding Russia (and more recently China) that the UK cannot be attacked by a nuclear power without serious consequences. I see nothing to change this requirement.

TBF, fixed-wing carriers are probably the second most vital component of the RN after the SSBNs. SSNs are third most important. Navies also don't survive nuclear wars, if that's what you mean by "big war" (it's the only one I can think of anyway). Armies do, and air forces might, since they can both disperse extensively and don't require much in the way of maintenance. Navies are tied intrinsically to harbors and ports, which are limited in quantity and easily hit by ballistic missiles though.

Submarines also cannot operate without friendly air superiority after all, or else they are destroyed by maritime patrol aircraft. Since the British Empire stopped existing in the 1960's there's no place in Asia, or the North Sea, where British air cover would exist extensively without the use of aircraft carriers to host fighters for protection of the submarine forces. Brunei isn't rejoining the UK anytime soon, and Diego Garcia is so far away I'm not sure the PLA realizes it exists in anything other than the abstract "nuclear missile target" sense.

Since there's no more Tornado ADFs, or any long legged air defense fighter (and you'd need bigger legs than Tomcat anyway) to expand beyond the North Sea into the Arctic from UK, CVFs with a supersonic fighter like F-35B provide that air superiority and strike capability out to a combat radius pretty much identical to Super Hornet. They are brutally important for providing the air defense muscle against Tu-142 and IL-38, or whatever the UK might be forced to fight.

Moskva was also lost because it was an outdated ship with 1960's weapons and sensors in a close sea, in bad weather, in the littorals, against a anti-ship missile. It was then towed without being patched. You might as well say the Falklands accurately predicted big ship vulnerability, because Sheffield got lost in the exact same circumstances.

The truth is they aren't actually that vulnerable to anti-ship missiles, and this won't change in the future, it will just mean that ships will come under anti-ship attack more often than before because the vital VID aspect of HVUs by MPAs will become irrelevant when you can cue commercial radar or visual satellites to do this instead. Which just means bigger magazines of better missiles I guess. UK should focus on building a 9,000 ton destroyer with 64 VLS cells for PAAMS next I guess.

For naval surface forces in particular, some sort of large optionally manned corvette in the 2-3,000 ton class with something like 32 VLS cells and stuffed to the gills with engines and whatnot, designed for extensive autonomous patrol, might work. That would require an order of magnitude (or two) increase in nautical systems reliability and extensive compartmentalization. In combat the ship would just be sealed up and controlled by a manned central ship in the 10-12,000 ton class (like a bigger Type 45 maybe) and three to five of these ships could be built alongside each manned ship. That would restore some surface fightability to the RN without necessarily stepping on anyone's toes.

Submarines the UK needs more of, clearly. four or five more Astutes, or better a wholly new ship, would likely do. Four SSBNs is fine. Maybe six SSNs and six conventional fleet submarines could work though, with the latter for the Pacific and the former for Europe and the islands. The RM either needs to be scrapped utterly or just converted into a literal couple battalions (one for each carrier) lifted by helicopters, and the Army should bite the bullet, and try to restart Warrior production or buy Bradleys from America or Tracked Boxer from Germany. UK is already buying Challenger 3 and Boxer (a British product lol) from Germany so the latter is the smarter option.

The UK's ultimate problem is it is becoming too poor to maintain its global relevance though. There's no easy solution to that unfortunately. It's also not a problem unique to the UK. Everyone is feeling this, simply because of global demographic squeezes, and wealth concentrations from lack of capital controls, reducing taxable incomes. Of course, as the UK has benefited most, aside from America, from these free capital flows it won't want to change them.

It could always be worse after all. Unlike Italy, Spain, and Germany, the UK has maintained not only a functional air force and navy, but possibly the best trained air force, and best trained submarine force, in the world.
 
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Neither Russia nor China have the ASW capability of the former Soviet Union. For a long time the West has also let its airborne ASW decline.
The SSN can deploy globally and kill a range of sub and surface targets without any surface support. This is not true of a carrier battle group.
As for ground forces, Germany, France, Sweden, Finland and Poland are all better placed than we are to field machanised combined arms units and equip them. Our strength is in high quality light forces.
 
Submarines can't function under threat of undeterred ASW patrols...

The Hitlerites lost the Battle of the Atlantic because their submarine forces were, as submarines are now, heavily dependent on naval intelligence organs to ambush warships with extremely short range weapons, and heavily vulnerable to air attack during the intrusion phase, which was easily disrupted by aircraft carriers and hunter-killer formations. The entire lesson of WW2 is that submarines need air cover to attack and destroy naval forces when the enemy naval forces have any appreciable ASW. The Russians recognize this, as does the PRC, which is why the PRC is pushing out into the SCS with sandbar islands, and why the Russians are whinging about Kuznetsov being in drydock for the next 500 years because the Northern Joint Command needs sea-based air cover to properly protect the bastion at range over the Arctic Ocean.

The only people who never fully appreciated the utility of ASW capabilities were the Japanese,and they were a somewhat special case.

The UK has barely four operational SSNs at any one time, so I don't think either Russia or PRC require much ASW to handle that threat. What they have is more than adequate for the most part...

...except for the fact that the UK has a pair of supercarriers with fighters that can effectively neutralize any significant air defense response to allow the MPAs to fly. A CVF protected by two Type 45s and a few Type 23s is a lethal threat that is unlikely to be assailable by anything short of one of three Backfire regiments (the one at Olenya) using nuclear missiles. A carrier in any form presents a strategic threat, one that has to be handled immediately, and is often heavily defended against all forms of attack both undersea and airborne.

This is not surprising. A carrier battlegroup is often five or six times as many ships as a single submarine. Of course it's more survivable.

A submarine by itself (and they are always by themselves, because wolfpack tactics are dead and buried, thus submarine threats are arguably less dangerous than they used to be) is mostly an annoyance unless it packs nuclear weapons, then it is also a strategic threat. Of course, Astute has no nuclear weapons, either now or for the foreseeable future, so it's mostly a threat to strategic forces, but not a strategic threat in of itself. It's fairly easily handled by picket forces and ASW aircraft.

The only thing Astute does that is noteworthy in a big war is penetrate bastions and attack portions of the Russian strategic deterrent, but there aren't really enough Astutes for the UK to do anything substantial without incurring the wrath of either the Russian Navy or the Strategic Rocket Forces were they to attempt to decapitate Russia's nuclear arsenal, so it's a bit useless at the moment by itself.

There would need to be an Astute for every operational Russian SSBN, so about eight ready, which means maybe a dozen or so SSNs. More once you account for immediate losses from MPAs and anti-submarine screens, though. So maybe half again or double that number. So very nearly, or more than, twenty SSNs would be required. The UK clearly cannot afford this, even if it scrapped CVF, but it would be about equal the number of USN submarines assigned

The existence of CVF lets the UK stretch its limited resources more by having the ability to neutralize MPAs and allow its smaller-than-adequate quantity of SSNs survive long enough to potentially liquidate more SSBNs, by shooting down Tu-142s and IL-38s that would come running to the rescue of the bastion, and maybe killing the SSBNs fast enough that they can only partially fire their missiles. Maybe. At the very least the CVF would allow SSNs to survive the intrusion phase of penetrating the Russian SOSUS line into the bastion without incurring casualties by neutralizing picket frigates, ASW helicopters, and curious MPAs.

Since Russia has no operational flattops anymore for a bit there's no real, serious method of deploying frontal aviation forces to the Arctic or North Sea, which makes the bastion vulnerable to direct incursion by a submarine-CVBG task force. Prior to Kuznetsov's unfortunate welding accident there would have been something of a battle between the CVs and potentially this could have inflicted adequate losses to force the CV to retreat, which would deny the enemy SSNs their air cover, and make them easily killed by MPAs. This no longer being the case is rather significant since it makes the Borei/Delta SSBN force extremely vulnerable to ASW action in any form.

That would be the only practical purpose of the Astute-CVF team in a "big war", or any submarine force, really: neutralizing SSBN forces. There is no other purpose for a navy in a war between nuclear armed nations besides this because lessening the damage from strategic bombardment forces is all that can be done by forces which require massive, fixed-installations to function.

The UK would need to invest in ABM protection of its military harbors to go further in regard to making the RN more important in a "big war". Since it hasn't, the RN's sole actual purpose is fighting "small wars" so carriers are no more a "political" (what does this mean?) move than a recognition that the UK is neither sufficiently economically developed nor moral-politically motivated enough to fight and win a nuclear conflict. Not even the CPSU was.

To make the RN relevant in a "big war" requires hardening harbors against nuclear attack through ability to intercept and destroy incoming nuclear warheads. Otherwise, it is useless outside of the first opening few days where it will likely be used (and expended) in dealing damage to the ballistic missile forces before they launch in order to reduce damage to the homeland. Until that becomes a economic possibility it's a bit useless to discuss what can be done in "big war" but it's fine to discuss what the RN can do in the next Sierra Leone or Iraq War.

The answer currently is "quite a lot". Certainly more than they did in 2003, which itself was rather impressive with the capture of the Al-Faw Peninsula. The UK could likely do Al-Faw again, all by itself this time, with the force structure of 2022 tbh.

In other words, what you consider to be a marginally effective force at best, incapable of fighting a "big war", would be recognized by Gorshkov and the Soviet Navy as being an exceptionally dangerous scalpel explicitly built to penetrate and destroy the future SSBN (Borei) within its own bastion. Perhaps this has some truth, after all CVF has been in development for a very long time and JSF was ultimately descended from 1980's future strike aircraft, which were going to be built to strike Murmansk with nuclear weapons. Naturally, this would be with nary a scratch able to be made by Soviet-era equipment between the stealth/low observable design of the Type 31/Type 45/CVF ships, the F-35B JSF's doubling of combat radius over VAL equipped nuclear strike carrier Midway, the Astute's LFA sonar stealth shaping, and the exceptional lethality of the Spearfish torpedo against deep diving Boreis making it unlikely that countermeasures would work or that existing torpedo weapons could attain range superiority even if a TMA solution were found before the British. Which itself is highly unlikely in any case, as the British have one of, if not the, best trained navies in the world.

If you take away the CVF then the lethality of Astute drops to extremely middling quantities, at best, against a defended, both-eyes-open bastion, even without the Kuznetsov. Certainly not enough to seriously intrude on the bastion's ability to deliver its nuclear missiles to target. Between casualties caused during the intrusion phase by Astutes unprotected against Naval Aviation, the subsequent inability to escape or ward off attackers without giving away their position through engagement, and the lack of naval intelligence provided by a on-call JSF wing with advanced SAR radars for naval search and detection of hostile fleet units, the Astutes are going in blind, unprotected, and against an awake predator (MPA).

Arguably the only thing the UK is lacking at the moment is a SURTASS-style ship, but they're not planning to fight in the Pacific where deep ocean battles are the supposed norm, so that's fine.

It's kind of funny actually, but I suppose it's one of those "other side of the hill" moments. The Royal Navy's current force structure and ship designs are fine. The "only" problems are that the UK lacks hull numbers, a few important support ships, like fast replenishment ships and repair dock ships, and a proper AEW for its carrier. It could use another CVF, about five to seven more SSNs, and another four to six Type 45s, on top of a triplet of fast supply ships, some submersible repair dock ships with the barge (I forgot the name), twice as many P-8s, another squadron of JSFs, and a proper AEW like a V-22 or something, but none of that will be happening, so any significant investment in new or particularly more capable ships than what exists wouldn't happen either.

All these problems are ultimately economic in nature and thus somewhat intractable for the UK to solve. Since it is a primary beneficiary of the current economic world order it would also be unlikely to want to change this, too, because change means the UK's position could end up worse than it already is. The PRC is rather different, but it also has fairly cheap agricultural laborers to draw on, as Britain and America did in the 19th and 20th centuries respectively.

Also using Sweden and Germany as examples of "better placed" militaries is...interesting, to say the least. I somehow don't think that spending the most per capita on defense and having a military with the funding of the UK's yet still incapable of fielding more than a mechanized battalion or a single fighter squadron, at best, is evidence against British policymaking. The UK has simply been handed a bad lot of suffering from a Soviet-style economic contraction in the middle of the last century, going from preeminent world power to a first-rate regional power, and declining, yet it's made do for itself quite well.

It could very well have ended up worse, and it likely will become worse as this century drags on, with the only question being whether the UK can become worse slower than its enemies. The answer seems to be yes, at least so far. No one else in Europe could have built CVF. No one else in the world could have maintained the Cold War standard of training of fighter pilots, or actually improved their ability to fight wars from the sea, as judged by the fact that only the UK has done this from 2003 to 2022. It may have sacrificed its mechanized ground troops to an ill-fated adventure trying to fund Spain's much-desired ASCOD 2, but this is not particularly relevant, as mechanized ground troops don't seem to be very important in all seriousness.

Britain is an island. It doesn't need an army. It needs an air force first and a navy second.
 
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Submarines also cannot operate without friendly air superiority after all, or else they are destroyed by maritime patrol aircraft.

This is a lesson of WW2 that applies to mainly to submersibles. Nuclear subs aren't nearly this dependent on/ vulnerable to air power.
 
Britain is an island. It doesn't need an army. It needs an air force first and a navy second.
All nations require an army.

When it needs an army, it can build, buy, or borrow one.

It has done this at every point in its history where it actually mattered, from Napoleon to Hitler. The British Army arriving on the continent, getting smashed, and coming back for a second or third or fourth round, is a historic tradition. Without an air force, Britain gets bombed into submission. Without a navy, Britain gets blockaded into starvation. Without an army, Britain has to wait a year or two before it can just make one out of thin air I guess?

The BAOR was an aberration brought upon Britain reneging on its global empire in favor of becoming a diminished regional power though.

Britain only needs a standing army for purposes of colonial policing, as is the case of all island nations, as armies for nations without land borders are primarily instruments of imperialism. Secondarily they are police forces for internal security. Since Britain is neither an empire nor a anarchy anymore, well it no longer really needs an army, at least not a standing one. Some warehouses with some stuff in it might be useful. Conversely, it absolutely needs a standing navy and air force to survive, whereas an army can be forsaken if it means more flight hours for Typhoon or JSF pilots or more Astutes or Dreadnoughts for the Navy.

If Britain still had India or something I'd agree that it needs an army, because it would need to keep India safe from China and the Taliban. It doesn't, though. Which means it has no land borders with enemies. What's an army going to do for it now that a newly raised army in a year or two can't?

What the British Army does right now is mostly serve as a cadre for conscripts. Which is fine, at least for Britain, if a bit luxurious tbh. Spending the money on stuff like Ajax would have been better spent on putting the old 432s and Stormers in warehouses and slowly buying replacements, since FCS itself was just the US Army wringing its hands about transshipping an armored division to Kosovo, so it had no real applicability to Europe despite NATO slavishly copying it.

That didn't happen though but it's not especially threatening to the British Army in either case, except it's returning to its historic roots of being a colonial police force/light infantry force, and playing second fiddle to the RN. It's no longer as important as it was in the 1980's, because Britain no longer has significant land commitments in Europe, nor would it be able to afford them.

I'm not sure if "armored cadre" really counts as an "army" though. Generally, you don't expect an army to be depleted in a single combat operation, which 150 Challenger 3s, and maybe 800 Boxers, may not be able to support in any case. The current and future optimistic structures of the British are no better than the French one in that they won't be able to survive a major war beyond a couple weeks and are essentially built to fight colonial wars though.

Whatever army the British fight a major future war that somehow manages to avoid, or occurs after, a strategic bombardment/atomic blitz...it won't be the current one. It'll be the one made after the current one expends itself in combat, as was the case with Gort's BEF, with the OG BEF, the Flemish Campaign, etc.

Submarines also cannot operate without friendly air superiority after all, or else they are destroyed by maritime patrol aircraft.

This is a lesson of WW2 that applies to mainly to submersibles. Nuclear subs aren't nearly this dependent on/ vulnerable to air power.

It depends on the depth, tbh (deeper water is probably more annoying now unless you're British with the fancy LFA stealth shaping), but the Soviets seemed pretty convinced that nuclear submarines weren't especially survivable against supercarriers with S-3s and P-3s in support at any point. Destroying the MPAs was vital to ensuring submarine offensive operations. Dudes with the biggest nuke boat fleet may have just had over-the-hill syndrome though I guess, but no one else has operated against a significant maritime patrol threat either, so there's not many other data points to draw on.
 
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Britain is an island. It doesn't need an army. It needs an air force first and a navy second.
All nations require an army.

When it needs an army, it can build, buy, or borrow one.
Hysterical, really. Any idea how long that takes? Without an army to expand?
It has done this at every point in its history where it actually mattered, from Napoleon to Hitler. The British Army arriving on the continent, getting smashed, and coming back for a second or third or fourth round, is a historic tradition. Without an air force, Britain gets bombed into submission. Without a navy, Britain gets blockaded into starvation. Without an army, Britain has to wait a year or two before it can just make one out of thin air I guess?

The BAOR was an aberration brought upon Britain reneging on its global empire in favor of becoming a diminished regional power though.
BAOR is the reason you say we need no army? We NEED the full house, simples.
Britain only needs a standing army for purposes of colonial policing, as is the case of all island nations, as armies for nations without land borders are primarily instruments of imperialism. Secondarily they are police forces for internal security. Since Britain is neither an empire nor a anarchy anymore, well it no longer really needs an army, at least not a standing one. Some warehouses with some stuff in it might be useful. Conversely, it absolutely needs a standing navy and air force to survive, whereas an army can be forsaken if it means more flight hours for Typhoon or JSF pilots or more Astutes or Dreadnoughts for the Navy.

If Britain still had India or something I'd agree that it needs an army, because it would need to keep India safe from China and the Taliban. It doesn't, though. Which means it has no land borders with enemies. What's an army going to do for it now that a newly raised army in a year or two can't?

What the British Army does right now is mostly serve as a cadre for conscripts. Which is fine, at least for Britain, if a bit luxurious tbh. Spending the money on stuff like Ajax would have been better spent on putting the old 432s and Stormers in warehouses and slowly buying replacements, since FCS itself was just the US Army wringing its hands about transshipping an armored division to Kosovo, so it had no real applicability to Europe despite NATO slavishly copying it.
A cadre for conscripts? When did we last use conscripts?
That didn't happen though but it's not especially threatening to the British Army in either case, except it's returning to its historic roots of being a colonial police force/light infantry force, and playing second fiddle to the RN. It's no longer as important as it was in the 1980's, because Britain no longer has significant land commitments in Europe, nor would it be able to afford them.
We are part of the European block, even if we did pull a great escape from the eu. If someone attacks one of us they attack us all. NATO too, remember that?
I'm not sure if "armored cadre" really counts as an "army" though. Generally, you don't expect an army to be depleted in a single combat operation, which 150 Challenger 3s, and maybe 800 Boxers, may not be able to support in any case. The current and future optimistic structures of the British are no better than the French one in that they won't be able to survive a major war beyond a couple weeks and are essentially built to fight colonial wars though.
No colonial wars to fight, no colonies. Getting armoured vehicles to europe can be done. We have to consider our allies and not just ourselves or we are asking our allies to perform our defence, like the Irish republic has done for generations. THAT still sticks in my throat. Why would we be allowed to get away with that?
Whatever army the British fight a major future war that somehow manages to avoid, or occurs after, a strategic bombardment/atomic blitz...it won't be the current one. It'll be the one made after the current one expends itself in combat, as was the case with Gort's BEF, with the OG BEF, the Flemish Campaign, etc.

Submarines also cannot operate without friendly air superiority after all, or else they are destroyed by maritime patrol aircraft.

This is a lesson of WW2 that applies to mainly to submersibles. Nuclear subs aren't nearly this dependent on/ vulnerable to air power.

It depends on the depth, tbh (deeper water is probably more annoying now unless you're British with the fancy LFA stealth shaping), but the Soviets seemed pretty convinced that nuclear submarines weren't especially survivable against supercarriers with S-3s and P-3s in support at any point. Destroying the MPAs was vital to ensuring submarine offensive operations. Dudes with the biggest nuke boat fleet may have just had over-the-hill syndrome though I guess, but no one else has operated against a significant maritime patrol threat either, so there's not many other data points to draw on.
Too simplistic and an innacurate depiction of future events. Along the lines of, if we do not antagonise the Russians we will be OK.
 
It depends on the depth, tbh (deeper water is probably more annoying now unless you're British with the fancy LFA stealth shaping), but the Soviets seemed pretty convinced that nuclear submarines weren't especially survivable against supercarriers with S-3s and P-3s in support at any point. Destroying the MPAs was vital to ensuring submarine offensive operations. Dudes with the biggest nuke boat fleet may have just had over-the-hill syndrome though I guess, but no one else has operated against a significant maritime patrol threat either, so there's not many other data points to draw on.

Depends on where you sit. From my perspective, it was SOSUS and towed arrays that freaked out the Russian sub force. TACTAS was revolutionary for battle group ASW.

MPAs were just how those contacts got prosecuted.
 
No this is starting from a point of folly.
You start with the systems to generate an Army and sustain it for defence.
Without which you cannot understand or assess what is needed. Which ultimately only comes through experienc, not theory.

The Navy began as an adjunct of the systems of defence and became an instrument to project the Army offensively.
 
From my perspective, it was SOSUS and towed arrays that freaked out the Russian sub force. TACTAS was revolutionary for battle group ASW.
This and that if the Soviet Captain was in a Victor likely as not Jonesy could still track him while listening to Paganini in his earphones.
 
The Cold War line up in West Germany commited the UK to maintain a large army and air force in northern Germany. This was faced by sizeable Warsaw Pact formations in East Germany and Poland.
The new NATO fromtline is very different. Poland has strong armed forces as do Sweden and Finland if they join. The three Baltic States will need regular deployments by NATO including the UK The tradional reinforcement of Norway is also still required.
The make up of the British Army will be determined by these roles.
 
I accept that effective MPA are a key component of ASW but apart from the approaches to key Russian and Chinese naval bases I see no evidence that enemy MPA are available in the quantity and quality needed to deny the North Atlantic, Mediterranean, South China Sea or Taiwan Straits to western SSN
 
As far as I know, we only have one filling factory, in Cheshire.

Filling factory is in Wales at Glascoed, think you're either thinking of ROF Chorley which has closed. Or the SAA factory at Radway Green.

Thats it...no more propellant production in UK since BAE lost the contract to Denel in 1998. They shut ROF Bishopton down...

And artillery barrel manufacturing has ceased...4 years now..

And Barrow's involvement in M777 will cease if there are no further orders (fingers crossed to orders following Ukraine). But any might come too late...

It has to be said...BAE's stewardship of the Royal Ordnance business has been disastrous...tank production shut down, artillery propellant gone, after 5 centuries + of domestic artillery barrel production they manage to destroy it within 20 years....down to 1 filling factory...amongst other disasters...and all helped along by the good old MoD...
 
Russia's missile and drone campaign is something that it might at some point launch against NATO countries including the UK.
With only a modest number of Tomahawks available to the RN and no air defences to speak of in the UK apart from two Typhoon squadrons how would the UK respond.
Even a small Trident warhead would not be warranted.
 
Russia's missile and drone campaign is something that it might at some point launch against NATO countries including the UK.
With only a modest number of Tomahawks available to the RN and no air defences to speak of in the UK apart from two Typhoon squadrons how would the UK respond.
Even a small Trident warhead would not be warranted.
Storm shadow.

Russian missiles/drones would need a very long range to get to the UK.
 

Airports running ‘better than usual’ in ‘embarrassing’ blow to Border Force strikes

Government had been braced for disruption as a week-long strike by 1,000 passport staff at six airports began
www.telegraph.co.uk
www.telegraph.co.uk

As usual the Telegraph hasn't told the full story...

As the Army don't have access or training for a lot of the systems they have in effect been waving people through....they also don't have the legal power to detain anyone...
 
I wonder if M270A2 superstructures upon lengthened AMPV hulls would be feasible? The AMPV is in production, and M270A2 modernisation essentially involves stripping the M270A1 down to it's bare hull, so why not start with a modified AMPV hull, given that both it and the M993 Carrier Vehicle are derived from the Bradley?
 
I wonder if M270A2 superstructures upon lengthened AMPV hulls would be feasible? The AMPV is in production, and M270A2 modernisation essentially involves stripping the M270A1 down to it's bare hull, so why not start with a modified AMPV hull, given that both it and the M993 Carrier Vehicle are derived from the Bradley?
The M993 is itself a lengthened Bradley frame, notice how the roadwheels are in three groups of two. The M270A2 also introduces the 600HP Cummins in common with the AMPV.

In terms of new production, it seems like it’s still cheaper to pull from the hundreds of unmodernized M270s in Red River Texarkana. Alternatively, any tooling used to make the launcher/loader has been discarded or repurposed for M142 production?
1674449184024.jpeg


I'd certainly be all ears to scrap Ajax and replace it with AMPV mounting an unamanned CT40 turret!
 
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Russia's missile and drone campaign is something that it might at some point launch against NATO countries including the UK.
According to Piotr Butowski, the main threat (which is Kh-101) has had its number significantly reduced due to operations over Syria and Ukraine, with production backlog likely not being able to back those numbers up.
 

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