Mark Urban

I think people quite rightly say, can the tank survive with that environment or in that environment?

It's a perfectly valid and open question.

We don't have the answer to it in a definitive sense.

I mean, you could argue if it's got no people in, but it's got tracks and armour and a turret and a weapon on it, it's still a tank, I guess.

But equally, I think you can argue that one of the questions I always ask people when I'm doing public events is, who's going to change the batteries?

on all these robots or uncrewed systems.

You know, in the end, and if the battlefield changes, one side suddenly loses 20 kilometres and you have to move your people who are controlling the drones and launching them, you have to move them up.

Well, you're still going to need some sort of vehicle to do that.

And if it becomes an armoured vehicle, okay, that's much more likely to survive than just a car.

And then if it becomes heavily armoured, you're going to need tracks so it doesn't sink into the ground.

And then you might as well put a weapon on it so it can shoot down drones that are trying to knock it out.

So you end up with something which might be a sort of battle taxi, but it's got tracks and a turret on it and a weapon on it.

So I think certainly for the foreseeable future, armoured vehicles of some kind, and we're speaking on a day...

that the British government has decided to press ahead with its Ajax armoured vehicle.

Very expensive, big, heavy thing.

Lots of criticism of it, but they just reckon that for the foreseeable future, there's no choice for the army, but they do still need armoured tracked vehicles.

Totally right.

And you know, one of the funniest things is about the Ajax.

I mean, it was originally commissioned after many false starts.

to replace something called the Combat Vehicle Reconnaissance Brackets, TRACT, better known to people who know a bit about these things as the Scorpion or Scimitar.