2023-08-18 01:05:52
01:05 GMT, 18 August
The Russian Army recently confirmed that Ukraine has deployed its 82nd Ukrainian Air Assault Brigade to Zaporozhye. This elite unit is known to be armed with British Challenger 2 tanks. What are the strengths and weaknesses of these main battle tanks and what challenges will they face once morest Russian forces?
Read on SputnikThis group of 2,000 soldiers suffered their first casualties this week when trying to attack Russian defenses near the village of Rabotino. The Russian Defense Ministry reported that Ukrainian troops lost more than 200 soldiers, five tanks, six infantry fighting vehicles, two armored fighting vehicles, two other vehicles and two Msta-B howitzers. Forces from the Eurasian country reportedly repelled three attacks carried out with tanques Challenger 2 and two Msta-B howitzers. Moscow did not specify the type of tanks destroyed. However, it is believed that the Ukrainian elite brigade is armed with some or all of the 14 Challenger 2 main battle tanks sent to Ukraine by the UK earlier this year, along with reservations from the controversial depleted uranium ammunition for its main guns. The UK confirms that its Challenger tanks will arrive in Ukraine in the spring
The pride of the British Army
He Challenger 2 has been the pride of uk troops since its commissioning in the late 1990s. The media bragged that the tank had suffered no battlefield casualties (not counting a friendly fire incident during the 2003 invasion of Iraq) and predicted confident that, in Ukrainian hands, the Challenger 2s, along with the German Leopards and Leopard 2s, would cut through Russian defenses like a hot knife through butter.
Shortly following kyiv launched its summer counteroffensive in early June, Western observers began to recognize the folly of these assumptions, and it was reported that Ukrainian forces they had completely withdrawn their german panzers Heavies from the front a few days into the counteroffensive, following the giants became trapped in Russian minefields and proved vulnerable to Russian artillery fire as well as air capability in flat, open fields from Zaporozhye and Kherson.
As for the Challenger 2s, Russian troops have not reported any contact with them in the last two and a half months. Zelensky’s army published in June a video without context of one of those tanks driving on a dirt road, as well as a promotional video in which one of the tanks is seen immobile in a field, apparently without a fixed direction, turning its turret.
The UK plans to supply Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine
early warning signs
The Ukrainian military received its first warning signs of the combat potential of its British armor in January, when senior officers of the British Armed Forces explicitly told their Kiev counterparts to avoid deploying the tanks in areas where might be captured or destroyed by Russia.
“The first step is training and working with mission planners to try to ensure that Challengers are not used in scenarios where they think defeat is a realistic possibility. The second step is to make sure, on a tactical level, that that the Ukrainians are trained to recover a tank under fire,” a UK Defense source said at the time.
Demands placed on Ukrainian tankers to take extra care with their expensive materiel raised questions regarding whether they might even use them at the front, given the constant risk of destruction and capture as Moscow continues to amass enough North Atlantic Treaty Organization materiel ( NATO) captured to create a small Army.
a weight problem
Another problem that will inevitably affect the Challenger 2 deployment of the 82nd Brigade is artillery and air battle, two areas in which Russia, even by Western officers’ admission, has succeeded. overwhelming superiority.
This is a problem that inevitably affects all Ukrainian military vehicles, troops and fortifications, whether near the front lines or in rear areas. But the Challenger 2 poses two special challenges in this regard, related to its size and weight.
Weighing between 64 and 75 tons (depending on armor configuration), Challenger 2 is one of the heaviest cars from the NATO arsenal. That means getting around, especially in areas unsuitable for heavy tanks due to mud, rivers, narrow streets and bridges, and other natural and man-made obstacles, can be challenging. In addition, to be transported long distances they will need the help of special tanks, bridges and engineering services that must always be kept close, and once more at the risk of Russian artillery or air strikes.
The deployment of Ukraine’s elite brigade will not change the fortunes of kyiv in its counteroffensive
To this must be added the dimensions of the tank. At 8.3 meters long, 3.5 meters wide and 2.49 meters high, the Challenger 2 not exactly a stealthy tankand can be seen approaching from several kilometers away in open country (and much more from the air).
Assuming effective communications between Russian reconnaissance units and artillery and air support, Russian forces should be able to counter any Ukrainian armored push, even using Challenger 2s, which, whatever advanced capabilities they may have, are not impervious to enemy attacks at ranges too long to even return fire.
Anti-tank vulnerabilities
Even once morest conventional anti-tank weapons (such as enemy tank guns and man-portable anti-tank missiles), the Challenger 2 will be under constant threat from Russian forces. On the one hand, the Challenger 2 has a L30A1 120mm main gun less accurate and powerful than its Russian analogues, and incompatible with NATO tank gun ammunition.Second, while Challenger 2’s few operational deployments have limited opportunities for enemy forces to test Due to their defensive armor and active protection systems using man-portable anti-tank missiles, comparable main battle tanks such as the Leopard 2, Abrams and Israeli Merkava have proven as vulnerable to Russian anti-tank systems like the Kornet or any other vehicle. armored mass production. Leopard 1 tanks cause problems for Kiev even before delivery
Can the Challengers turn the tide of the counteroffensive?
Russian military observers hope that the entire Ukrainian Challenger 2 tank company (plus the complement of engineering and recovery vehicles) attached to the 82 Brigade will be grouped into a single unit, since dividing the company into platoons and using them in various directions would dilute its fire potential and cause headaches related to repair, logistics and evacuation.
Given the loss of hundreds of Ukrainian tanks in the past two months, including up to 30 Leopard 2s of various modifications, 14 Challenger 2s alone cannot be expected to turn the tide of Kiev’s faltering counteroffensive, says military intelligence veteran , Hero of Russia and reserve colonel Rustem Klupov.
“Most likely, these tanks will be destroyed in the same way that the Leopards have been burned. Because in modern warfare, having 14 tanks on the battlefield cannot solve anything, and secondly, it cannot provide a picture objective whether it is a good or a bad machine,” Klupov told Sputnik.
If the tanks are lost, they will be lost foreversince neither the Ukraine nor the United Kingdom (whose defense industry no longer produces many of the components of the tanks) are able to replenish the losses in time.
And while it is hypothetically possible that the UK will send additional batches of Challenger 2s, a recent defense review has revealed that the island country currently only has 157 combat-ready tanks. British defense personnel have already privately complained that aid to Ukraine and the failure to allocate new defense resources to the army have “emptied” the British military, and it is unknown how they might react if even more of the dwindling resources UK defense forces are sent to fight in the Ukraine.
Who is responsible for Ukraine’s failed counteroffensive?
The Ukrainian Challenger 2s were supposed to be a strategic reserve, “to be introduced during a decisive advance,” Klupov noted. “Military science teaches us that first there is an advance and then the best mechanized units with the most powerful types of weapons are brought into it to carry out enveloping or dissection maneuvers over a wide distance. This is what the Germans did and the Soviet Army during World War II”.
But in Ukraine’s proxy conflict, Russian defenses have “mixed up all the cards.” [del enemigo]”, and the Ukrainian forces, for a “series of both objective and subjective reasons”, have not only failed to break through the Russian positions, but “not even overcome the security strip” that separates the Ukrainian lines from the Russian ones, Klupov summed up. .
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