Posts Tagged ‘Challenger 2’

The Tank Museum on The Tanks Going To Ukraine

Saturday, February 25th, 2023

The Tank Museum has a video up covering five tanks being sent to Ukraine (Challenger 2, T-72, Leopard 2, Leopard 1, and the M1A2 Abrams).

Some of this will be familiar to regular readers, but I did learn a few new nuggets:

  • Despite previous reports that we were sending M1A1 Abrams to Ukraine, we’re actually sending more modern M1A2s. No word on which SEP level, but I would bet against the most modern SEP3 package, as not all America’s own active armor has been retrofitted with that yet.
  • I didn’t realize Germany had also given the greenlight to ship older Leopard 1s to Ukraine. The 105mm rifled gun is probably undergunned vs. T-72 and newer Russian tanks, but should be able to punch through older tanks and pretty much all Russian BMPs. They’ll be useful for second echelon and infantry support roles. (And we might consider demothballing older 105mm gunned M1s to ship to Ukraine as well.)
  • I didn’t realize that only some 440 Challengers had been built.