Today, Western armies are debating the future of the Main Battle Tank, an expensive piece of kit and, as losses in Israel and Iraq show, vulnerable to anti-tank weapons.

Pre-2003, there was a move to gradually reduce the numbers of big tanks and switch to lighter, air-portable armoured vehicles that match the modern Western doctrine of "expeditionary warfare".

But operations in the Balkans, Iraq, and Afghanistan have shown that tanks remain a powerful deterrent and a much-needed weapon system on the modern battlefield.