A recent RAND study concluded that it would take a month or more for the U.K., Germany and France to generate a combat-ready armored brigade[.]
I assume that means each would have that problem and not that they could collectively field a brigade. The former is bad enough.
Consider that Russia's AstroTurf separatists in the Donbas reportedly have 700 tanks. So they have more fielded tanks than France (240), Germany (225), and Britain (156) have in combat units combined.
Russia has 2,800 in combat units plus many more in reserve.
It is hard not to conclude that if fighting enemies rather than disorder is the mission of NATO, then NATO needs more heavy armor, as I wrote in 2002 about our armor plans that envisioned replacing the Abrams with a 19-ton Future Combat Systems (FCS) vehicle with lethality and survivability equal to the Abrams tank (see article starting on 28):
Barring successfully fielding exotic technologies to make the FCS work, the Army must consider how it will defeat future heavy systems if fighting actual enemies and not merely suppressing disorder becomes its mission once again. The tentative assumptions of 2001 will change by 2025. When they do, the Army will rue its failure today to accept that the wonder tank will not be built.
We didn't replace the tank with a wonder tank; but we did get rid of tanks as if they aren't really needed anymore.
That was a bad idea given that fighting actual enemies is again the mission.
