Challenger 2 Tank: Strengths, Weaknesses, and Lessons from Ukraine

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Key Points: The British Army’s Challenger 2 tank, lauded for its robust Dorchester armor and crew protection, has proven effective against Russian tanks in Ukraine but also exposed limitations. Its unique rifled main gun requires specialized ammunition, complicating NATO logistics.

-While the tank’s armor and protection capabilities remain standout features, its heavy weight affects mobility and range.

-Deployment in Ukraine validated its ability to protect crews, even in extreme scenarios like landmine strikes.

-The upcoming Challenger 3 aims to address key shortcomings, including transitioning to a NATO-standard smoothbore gun, enhancing ammunition interoperability, and ensuring relevance in modern conflicts.

Challenger 2 in Ukraine: A Testament to British Tank Design

The British Army’s Challenger 2 is a robustly armored platform but no panacea. Instead, the Challenger 2 has shown some limitations on the modern battlefield.

The Challenger 2 reflects the type of warfare it intended to carry out: one that emphasized crew protection and precise and effective firepower over maneuverability or speed. The Challenger 2 has been tested in conflicts in the Middle East as well as in Ukraine — validating the design concepts that went into the British platform — but also raising questions about the Challenger’s continued applicability to contemporary conflicts.

Design with an Eye Toward Protection

In contrast to the smoothbore main guns of the United Kingdom’s NATO-member allies, the Challenger 2 employs a rifled main gun, necessitating ammunition unique to rifled main gun barrels. Though of roughly comparable performance to the smoothbore main guns of other main battle tanks like Germany’s Leopard 2 or the United States’ Abrams, the break with NATO standardization is notable.

The Challenger 2 is, however, among the best-protected of main battle tanks operated by the 32 NATO member allies, thanks to its Dorchester armor. The armor, itself an evolution of the United Kingdom’s Chobham armor, is a multi-layered composite material, thought to be made of several kinds of metals, ceramics, and possibly other types of materials that are a tightly guarded British secret.

Robust though the Challenger 2’s armor may be, one of the oft-cited drawbacks it has faced criticism for is the logistical challenge presented by increasingly heavy main battle tanks. Like its American counterpart, the M1 Abrams main battle tank, the British Challenger 2’s mobility and range suffer from an effective but heavy armor protection package.

In Ukraine, a Mixed Bag

The Challenger 2’s battlefield deployment to Ukraine afforded the platform a rare opportunity for real-world testing against a peer or near-peer adversary — and one that the Challenger 2 was tailor-made to counter: Soviet main battle tanks and other armored vehicles.

One obvious advantage of the Challenger over its Soviet-turned-Russian counterparts is the Challenger’s more robust armor package, offering tanker crews a greater degree of protection than Russia’s T-series tanks.

A Challenger 2 main battle tank (MBT) is pictured during a live firing exercise in Grafenwöhr, Germany. Exercise BAVARIAN CHARGER was the first of three large contingency operation exercises being undertaken by 20th Armoured Brigade between May – October 2013. Contingency Operations training is known as Hybrid Foundation Training or HFT.

Leaked intelligence documents from April of 2023 showed that Challenger 2 tanks had been supplied only to Ukraine’s 82nd Air Assault Brigade, considered an elite unit and provided with more advanced western-donated equipment than comparable brigades.

Still, despite the advantages of the Challenger 2s in Ukraine, there have been notable losses.

A video shared widely across social media from September of last year showed a British-made Challenger 2 tank in flames on the side of the road somewhere in Ukraine. An analysis of the video later by the BBC concluded that the tank had been immobilized by some kind of land mine, causing the tank’s rear fuel tank to ignite and the four-man crew to abandon their vehicle.

Proof of Concept

Although the Challenger 2 did not see the kind of widespread combat in Ukraine, it was intended for as a break-out, defensive line-penetrating platform during the counteroffensive, its more limited performance did validate one of Challenger 2’s core principles: crew protection.

According to the BBC analysis, the entire four-man Challenger crew managed to escape and bail from their British tank, later struck and destroyed by a Russian Lancet loitering munition.

Still, the Challenger 2’s rifled main gun, necessitating Challenger-specific ammunition, adds logistical complexity to a country already fielding a vast array of weapon systems from countries around the globe.

Into the Future

The fourth edition to the Challenger lineup, the Challenger 3, slated for introduction into British services sometime next year, addresses one of the Challenger 2’s most significant shortcomings: its rifled main gun. The move should simplify ammunition interoperability between NATO members, a boon to logistics.

A joint venture between the UK’s BAE Systems and Germany’s Rheinmetall, details about the project are limited.

However, the British Army details some of what is publicly known about the Challenger 3.

About the Author: Caleb Larson 

Caleb Larson is an American multiformat journalist based in Berlin, Germany. His work covers the intersection of conflict and society, focusing on American foreign policy and European security. He has reported from Germany, Russia, and the United States. Most recently, he covered the war in Ukraine, reporting extensively on the war’s shifting battle lines from Donbas and writing on the war’s civilian and humanitarian toll. Previously, he worked as a Defense Reporter for POLITICO Europe. You can follow his latest work on X.