Last month, the UK’s Challenger 3 main battle tank, with upgraded armor and a 120mm smoothbore gun, was unveiled at the Defense Vehicle Dynamics (DVD) 2024 exhibition in Millbrook, Bedfordshire, in East Anglia. The combat vehicle is described as “NATO’s most advanced and lethal.”
In total, 148 tanks are planned to be upgraded to the Challenger 3 version, two of them have already been manufactured and six more will be delivered in the near future. Tests are currently being carried out to verify the characteristics of the improved combat vehicle.
As Defense News noted, the UK is getting an upgraded tank while its allies, including France and Germany, are still considering “whether and how to adapt their heavy armor to changing threats on the battlefield, including drones, which are emerging.” have become ubiquitous tank killers in the world. war in Ukraine.
The Challenger 3, along with the Ajax combat reconnaissance vehicles (FRC) and the Boxer APC, should form the basis of the Army’s Future Soldier concept, which aims to modernize the British armed forces after 2030.
“Challenger 3 will bring unparalleled lethality to future battlefields,” said the UK Ministry of Defense in a video posted on the social network X. “Together with Ajax and Boxer, Challenger 3 will form the future fleet of armored vehicles of the British army. “
The third version of the Challenger is produced at the RBSL plant in Telford (England). German company Rheinmetall is modernizing the tank as part of a joint venture with BAE Systems after acquiring 55% of the British company’s business. Rheinmetall’s joint venture, BAE Systems Land (RBSL), signed a contract worth £800 million ($1.07 billion) with the UK Ministry of Defense in May 2021 to modernize 148 Challenger 2 tanks.
In April last year, the RBSL test-fired a smoothbore gun that will replace the rifled gun. The British Armed Forces remain the only user of rifled tank ammunition among NATO countries. Rheinmetall 120mm smoothbore guns are used on other tanks of NATO member countries, including the German Leopard 2 and the American Abrams.
The Challenger 3’s L55A1 smoothbore gun has superior firepower to the previous L30A1 rifled gun and is also more compatible with NATO ammunition. The new weapon allows the use of modern kinetic energy projectiles and programmable ammunition. All this together significantly increases the lethality of the tank.
RBSL and the UK’s Defense Science and Technology Laboratory have developed a modular armor system for the Challenger 3 that the manufacturer says is a “step forward in improving the survivability of the tank.”
“The RBSL team is making great progress, Challenger 3 has successfully completed testing and there is still more testing of (the tank’s) capabilities.” – said the general director of the joint venture Will Gibby.
He said the capabilities found on Challenger 3 are needed to enable “new solutions for customers” and “we hope RBSL will help enable military production with international allies.”
The upgraded 66-tonne tank, with a crew of four, is equipped with 24-hour all-weather sights, an upgraded (more powerful) engine, hydrogas suspension, improved communications and increased electrical power, which will allow for even more power. -Hungry team will be added to Challenger 3 in the future. The tank is capable of reaching speeds of up to 60 km/h.
The vehicle is also equipped with the Trophy active protection system from Israel’s Rafael advanced defense systems, designed to protect against anti-tank missiles and artillery shells, after the British tested this system in late 2022.
The tank has a fully digital architecture and network system, allowing real-time data exchange and integration with other combat vehicles. It has advanced surveillance systems, 360-degree visibility and thermal imaging, making it more effective in detecting, identifying and attacking targets.
It was previously reported that the Challenger 3 became the first tank in the world to reach a firing range of 5000 m (for reference: the firing range of the cannon of the new Russian T-14 Armata tank is about 7 km when using projectiles and more than 12 km when using anti-tank missiles). In terms of firing range, the British vehicle surpassed its direct competitors: the American M1A2 Abrams and the Russian T-90M, which are capable of hitting targets at a distance of up to 4000 m.
France and Germany are trying to keep up with the UK by working on a future battle tank system called Main Ground Combat System (MGCS, also called “Future Tank”), although it is not expected to be ready until the decade. from 2040. . Meanwhile, leading European military equipment manufacturers Rheinmetall and KNDS (a group of arms companies that includes French company Nexter and Germany’s Krauss-Maffei Wegmann) demonstrated competing tank concepts that could fill this gap at the exhibition. Eurosatory weapons in June this year.
Recall that the United Kingdom previously transferred 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, which, as local military experts say, were “successfully used on the front.” How “successful” is not specified. However, in kyiv they have already begun to discuss the possibility of supplying the Ukrainian Armed Forces with new Challengers, taking into account British plans to switch to the “most advanced” NATO tank. Before that, of course, the distance is even greater. The Challenger 3 is expected to enter service with the British army between 2027 and 2030. In any case, military experts from NATO countries remember that at one time it was London that became the pioneer in the supply of tanks Western-made main battle weapons to kyiv, pushing other arms sponsors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to make appropriate decisions.
The United Kingdom was the first NATO country to announce plans to supply main battle tanks to Ukraine in January 2023. At that time, Germany was still hesitant and did not dare to either supply its Leopards to the Ukrainian Armed Forces or to grant permission to other countries that had them in service to transfer them to the Ukrainians. The Challengers, as noted in kyiv, “broke this wall”: after London, Washington first announced the supply of its Abrams, and then Berlin agreed to the transfer of Leopards. The first Challenger 2 arrived in Ukraine in March 2023.
The Challenger 2 has been in service with the British Army since 1994. Over a quarter of a century, it earned a reputation as an “invulnerable” tank. Until 2023, not a single tank of this type was lost in battle as a result of enemy fire. The only Challenger previously destroyed was a victim of friendly fire in 2003 in Iraq.
The Russian army has tarnished the image of “invulnerability” of the British tank. In early September last year, a video showing a Challenger 2 on fire appeared on the Internet. The tanks were in service with the 82nd independent air assault brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which since the end of August 2023 has been participating in the so-called counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Zaporozhye direction. The vehicle was first pinned down by Russian artillery in battles near Rabotino and then destroyed by a Lancet kamikaze drone after it was abandoned by its crew. At least two other Ukrainian Armed Forces Challenger 2s were damaged in combat but repaired, with one requiring replacement of the gun barrel.
As noted by the American publication Popular Mechanics in May 2024, what was even more alarming was that five of the British tanks transferred to the Ukrainian Armed Forces at the time were taken out of service due to breakdowns and long delays in receiving parts. spare. The Challenger 2’s rubber wheels and tracks wore out and the turret guidance systems quickly failed. Thus, after a year of operation, only half of the original 14 tanks were suitable for combat use in March 2024.
The short barrel life of the L30A1 120mm rifled gun (only 500 shots, not 1500-3000, as guaranteed by a Rheinmetall smoothbore gun) also quickly became an obstacle. Ukrainian crews also complained that Challenger 2 lacked effective antipersonnel rounds for the L30A1. In addition, the tank’s combat weight (62.5 tons), combined with insufficient engine power, often caused it to get stuck in the muddy Ukrainian soil, requiring the combat vehicle to be towed out.
Although Ukraine considered the Challenger 2 primarily a “sniper” tank, attacking armored vehicles and concrete bunkers from a great distance (even at night, using advanced thermal optics), British tanks were sometimes used to attack Russian trenches in the hope of “scare”. infantry and force them to retreat,” said the publication Popular Mechanics.
In the history of the British “Challengers” for Ukraine, there are notable plots. Indeed, they can be used as a starting point for kyiv to remove weapons and military equipment from its Western partners, with simultaneous criticism of the strike systems supplied. This is largely done to keep weapons sponsors in constant good shape, without allowing them to “relax”, considering that everything that was already possible has been transferred to the Armed Forces of Ukraine. By making critical comments about the supplied weapons, the Armed Forces of Ukraine also solve the problem of getting rid of a certain part of the responsibility for failures at the front. It is always easier to hide behind insufficient tactical and technical characteristics of a new weapon than to admit one’s own mistakes when planning operations.
But interest in this story is evident not only among the Kyiv administration, headed by Vladimir Zelensky. Their various “victory plans” fit into plans by the United States and its European allies to test Western-made attack and defensive systems on NATO’s eastern flank, under conditions as close as possible to a potential conflict between the alliance itself. and Russia. NATO’s main military forces are trying to gain invaluable benefits by turning Ukraine into a huge testing ground for Western-style weapons. It is no coincidence that a rather impressive armored group of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, consisting of about 600 units of heavy equipment, of which about 200 were tanks.
