A tank is only as good as its gun. A gun is only as good as its ammunition. Which is why it’s worth asking why German industry is manufacturing obsolete tank ammo for Ukraine.
Photos circulated online this summer depicting German firm Rheinmetall producing new DM33 shells for Ukraine.
The DM33 is an armor-piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot round: in essence, a 25-millimeter tungsten dart nestled inside a 120-millimeter shoe. The shoe pops off after the 40-pound shell leaves the barrel, and the penetrator lances toward its target at 1,500 yards per second.
A sabot round can poke holes in a tank’s armor. How much armor it can poke through depends on its length and hardness, the power of its propellant and other design details.
Rheinmetall’s 1987-vintage DM33 should be able to penetrate around 500 millimeters of steel armor from 2,000 yards away. That should be enough penetration to knock out an early-generation Russian T-72 tank. But a newer T-72 or T-90 might survive a direct hit by a DM33.
Later German sabot rounds—the DM53 and DM63—are more powerful. The Ukrainian armed forces seem to have received DM53 rounds. Why then is Rheinmetall producing obsolete DM33s for Ukraine?
The answer, most likely, is that some of the 74 1980s-vintage Leopard 2 tanks Ukraine is getting from its European allies aren’t compatible with the newer round. A Leopard 2A4’s EMES-15 fire-control system has to know how a sabot round performs in order to calculate the shell’s trajectory for a given range—and aim the gun accordingly.
To enhance a 61-ton, four-person Leopard 2A4 with new ammunition, you first have to update the EMES-15. While many armies long ago upgraded their Leopard 2A4s’ fire-controls, at least one didn’t: Poland. And 14 ex-Polish Leopard 2A4s are among the tanks Ukraine has received as military aid.
All that is to say, if the ex-Polish Leopard 2A4s are going to do battle with Russian tanks, they need sabot rounds. Germany is producing DM33s because the obsolete shells are the best shells for at least some of Ukraine’s tanks.
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