‘This Tank Is Like A Sniper Rifle’

The 82nd Air Assault Brigade, arguably Ukraine’s most powerful brigade, waited six weeks to join the country’s long-anticipated southern counteroffensive. The brigade’s tank crews in their 14 British-made Challenger 2s—Ukraine’s rarest tanks—also waited.

That waiting ended three weeks ago. But we only now have gotten our first fleeting glimpse of the Challenger 2s on the front line.

When the 82nd finally joined the fight, in mid-August, it immediately made a huge difference. Rolling into battle just north of Robotyne, a key Russian strongpoint on the 50-mile axis toward occupied Melitopol, the 82nd and its sister 46th Air Mobile Brigade gave the Ukrainian southern command the momentum it needed to liberate Robotyne just a week later.

We quickly observed the 82nd’s ex-German Marder tracked fighting vehicles in action; we saw its American-made Stryker wheeled IFVs in the fight, too. We didn’t see any evidence of the brigade’s Challenger 2s in combat around Robotyne until Sunday, when the Ukrainian defense ministry posted a video featuring an 82nd Brigade tanker.

“This tank is like a sniper rifle,” the tanker said while standing next to his four-person, 83-ton Challenger 2.

British tanks are famous for their long-range firepower. In 1991, the crew of a British Army Challenger 1 tank fired its 120-millimeter rifled gun a distance of 3.2 miles to knock out an Iraqi T-55 , a record for tank-on-tank gunnery that apparently still stands.

The newer Challenger 2 has a superior 120-millimeter rifled gun and better optics and fire-controls than the now-retired Challenger 1 had, so it should be able to fire even farther.

The crewman compared the British-made tank to Soviet-style tanks including the T-64, T-72 and T-80. He said he was part of a T-80 crew before training on the Challenger 2.

That should come as no surprise. The Ukrainian air-assault force mostly uses gas-turbine T-80BVs, and assigned veteran tankers to the 82nd as the brigade was forming this spring.

A T-80 works best in close, violent assaults against enemy infantry, the crewman said. A Challenger 2 for its part should hang back and, working in pairs for mutual support, plink enemy armored vehicles from miles away. “It’s a machine designed to operate at long distance and target only machinery,” the tanker said.

That the Challenger 2 works best at range might help to explain why there isn’t yet any visual evidence of the type actually firing its gun in anger in Ukraine.

It’s possible—likely, even—that the 82nd’s Challenger 2s are providing supporting fires from well behind the assault forces in their Marders and Strykers. The tanks’ contributions to the 82nd’s operations along the Robotyne axis aren’t exactly cinematic. They’re working methodically, under concealment—and possibly mostly at night.

Ironically, the Challenger 2 still might make a better assault tank than, say, a T-80. That’s because, as the tanker stressed, the Challenger 2 stows its ammunition in blow-out compartments attached to the turret. So when enemy fire strikes a Challenger 2’s ammo storage, the resulting explosion vents outward, away from the crew and the tank’s vital components.

By contrast, a Soviet-style tank keeps its ammo under its turret. A direct hit can trigger a secondary blast that hurls the and its occupants into the air. “You’re sent flying somewhere in the fields,” the tanker mused. “You don’t stand much of a chance.”

With so few Challenger 2s in its arsenal, the 82nd Brigade apparently isn’t risking them in close attacks. That could change if the United Kingdom ever sends more than one company of Challenger 2s to Ukraine—and the tanks aren’t so precious that the Ukrainians strictly deploy them as long-range fires.

It’s worth noting that BAE Systems delivered 386 Challengers 2s to the British Army through 2002. 227 remain on the rolls, but the U.K. government has committed to upgrading just 148 for continuing service.

“A few more companies for our country—it would be quite good,” the tanker said. “If used correctly, [the Challenger 2] will be just, I don’t know, death and horror for [the Russians].”