Ukraine: a coup de théâtre

By Richard North - January 10, 2023

I don’t know whether to be entertained or appalled by the rash of “Boys Own” type stories in the current media on the claims that the UK government is considering supplying Ukraine with a batch of Challenger 2 tanks.

The original story seems to have been broken by Deborah Haynes for Sky News suggesting that “as many as ten” could be sent.

As that limited report went, it had an element of plausibility, telling us that discussions had been taking place for a “few weeks” and that the main reasons for sending them would be, apparently, to break the taboo on sending heavy armour to Ukraine, thereby encouraging other nations to join in.

It is a matter of common knowledge that the Ukrainian defence forces are particularly interested in acquiring large numbers (in the 100-plus range) of German-built Leopard 2 tanks, and the arrival of even a small number of Western-built main battle tanks from any source might be enough to convince a nervous chancellor Scholz that it would be safe to release his panzers.

So far so good, and if the scribblers had stuck to these basics, they wouldn’t have gone far wrong but the girlie boys in the Telegraph couldn’t resist embellishing the story to come up with the headline: “Britain could send Challenger II battle tanks to ‘knock the Russians out of Ukraine’”.

According to the Dominic Nichols, the paper’s associate editor, joined by Europe editor James Crisp in a later version of the story, these tanks “could provide Volodymr Zelensky with a ‘knockout punch’”, a claim which stretches credulity to breaking point, and not only because the number to be sent is so small.

But, if possible, the “paper of record”, The Times does even worse, assigning its version of the story to George Grylls a political reporter who has “written extensively about housing policy” and describes himself as a “failed architect”.

According to this knowledgeable hack, Britain “is considering sending tanks to help Ukraine stage a major counteroffensive in the spring”, although he has only 12 being sent. With the best will in the world, these can only constitute very limited assistance.

Presumably in a bid to talk up the value of the weapon, Grylls tells us that only one has ever been destroyed in combat, when it was hit by friendly fire in Basra during the Iraq war. And while this is strictly true, it was knocked out by another Challenger in the invasion phase, demonstrating its vulnerability to direct fire. And another Challenger was disabled by a Russian-made hand-held anti-tank weapon in al-Amarah in 2006.

Despite attempts to cover up the news, it emerged the following year when we learnt that a round from an RPG-29 fired by an insurgent had penetrated the front armour, taking off part of the driver’s foot and injuring two other crew.

The Russians have equally potent hand-held anti-tank weapons available, such as the RPG-30, as well as a range of ATGWs, with a proven capability against US Abrams MBTs and Israeli Merkavas.

As with any other weapon of its type, therefore, the Challenger, although well-protected, is no super-tank. Without the protection of combined arms formations, they would be as vulnerable as any other tank in the theatre.

But what makes any further discussion utterly fatuous rests with the original error is specifying the Challenger in the first place as the replacement for the Chieftain tank in the mid 1980s – then regarded by its users as the best tank in the world as long as it broke down in a good fire position.

The basic mistake was to choose for the main weapon, the Royal Ordnance L30 120mm rifled gun, as opposed to the Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore gun used on the Leopard 2 tank, which was the British Army’s favoured option.

Apart from its better performance, the great advantage of the smoothbore gun was that it used (and uses) Nato standard ammunition. The British gun required non-standard rounds manufactured to MoD specifications.

And therein lies the issue which renders the idea of Challenger 2s being of any use to the Ukrainian armed forces something of a joke. With the tank now nearly thirty years old, it is long overdue for a major upgrade, which has been under discussion since 2005. Even then, plans were being made to replace the main gun with the Rheinmetall smoothbore gun.

However, the upgrade programme parameters were not finalised until 2016, when the competition was started, the contract awarded to Rheinmetall in May last year, in partnership with BAE Systems.

In anticipation of the upgrade, though, the production line of the Challenger’s unique ammunition was closed on MoD instructions sometime around 2006. The Army was then to rely on existing ammunition stocks. When the programme was beset by delays, plans were made in 2009 to source ammunition from Belgium, but in 2014 that idea was dropped.

The British Army is thus in a situation where it is surviving on depleted stocks of ammunition which are barely sufficient to sustain peacetime live firing exercises and most certainly could not support the high expenditure incurred during combat operations.

Furthermore, only 148 tanks are to be upgraded to Challenger 3 standard, out of the 227 currently on inventory, not all of which will be in a serviceable condition.

The first six modified tanks will not start trickling off the production line until 2025, with the “Initial Operating” Capability not expected until 2027, when there will be enough to equip existing formations. Then, every single tank will be needed by the much depleted British Army tank corps. There is nothing in the programme of Ukraine and, even if available, any number delivered would be too little, too late.

Yet, even the Wall Street Journal seems partially taken in by the hype, remarking that the Challenger 2s are precisely the kind of powerful, heavily armoured tracked vehicles that Kiev has requested. Ukraine, the paper tells us, says it needs them to expel increasingly well-fortified Russian troops from the roughly one-fifth of Ukraine that they still occupy.

Nevertheless, the political significance of any such gift seems also to be understood, with the paper adding that the tanks in question “are decades old, require extensive training to drive and operate, and aren’t expected, by themselves, to change the trajectory of the conflict”.

Instead, it says, British officials argue that they could create political room for Berlin to approve the provision of its own, German-made Leopard main battle tanks, a shift that could lend significant momentum to Ukraine.

In that sense, if the UK government does decide to go ahead with the provision of Challenger 2s, it will not be so much an empty gesture as a coup de théâtre, designed to encourage the Germans to supply some decent kit. If the US also follows suit with some Abrams MBTs, all the better for the Ukrainians.

In the meantime, I suppose we must expect some gushing eulogies in the media about the merits of the Challengers, in the knowledge that should any actually arrive in Ukraine, they will be used for some high profile action film shoots, thence to be quietly retired, unused to an obscure military museum.

Certainly, it will not be worth the Ukrainians’ while to invest in the training and logistical infrastructure for a tank which will be almost impossible to supply with ammunition.

Leaving the last word to the Financial Times, it says that no final decision on whether to proceed with supplying the tanks has been taken.

This is according to one of the people familiar with the UK discussions, reflecting concerns about the complexity of the tanks and whether the Ukrainian military would be able to operate them. “There is no point in sending them something that they can’t use,” said one of the people, as cited by the FT.