An ex-Danish Leopard 1A5 tank belonging to a Ukrainian army brigade survived at least eight hits by Russian first-person-view drones before potentially three more explosive FPV drones finally finished it off.
Russian forces proudly posted a video montage of the lengthy bombardment, but it’s not entirely good news for the Russians—nor bad news for the Ukrainians.
While losing any Leopard 1A5 is painful for the Ukrainian forces that waited more than a year to receive numbers from the 1980 tanks from a German-Hand-Hold Consortium, which one of the Leopard survived a swarm of Russian drones In Ukrainian efforts to increase tanks seem to work.
Leopard 1a5 of 40 tons and 4 people is a fast and maneuverable tank with exact fireplace controls for its reliable 105 millimeter gun. Its greatest weakness has been its thin armor protection: the fundamental armor of a 1A5 leopard is only 70 millimeters. thick in its thickest form. A newer 2A4 leopard has 4 times more protection.
As the first few Leopard 1A5s—out of at least 155 the consortium has pledged—began arriving in Ukraine in late 2023, the Ukrainians immediately got to work addressing the tanks’ biggest flaw. “The problems of reinforcing the armor are already being solved by Ukrainian engineers,” Ukrainian ICTV reported.
During the next year, engineers have added explosive reactive armor layers, which explode out when it is hit to divert the incoming rounds. They also announced the hinge screens covered with networks that can FPV drones at this time before hitting.
All complementary armor turns out to have the 1A5 leopard that ate up to 11 Russian drones recently. After repeated hits, the tank still controlled to move, just to be persecuted through more drones. Finally immobilized, the tank was probably a general cancellation after the ninth, tenth or eleventh success.
We don’t know if the team of 4 has survived, but there are reasons to be optimistic. For the threat of 105 millimeters of bullets cooking in the turret after an enemy hit, Leopard 1A5 crews only inflicted some of the 42 turns of the tank in the turret: the others are located in the shell.
It’s a cumbersome arrangement. To reload, the tank “must roll back to a safe location,” one loader explained to a Ukrainian journalist. “This takes time.” The upside is that there are fewer rounds to cook off—and kill or maim the crew—when enemy fire penetrates the turret. It’s not for no reason that the loader said he felt “great” about crewing a Leopard 1A5 despite the tank’s thin base armor.
After canceling this Leopard 1A5, Harrssé de Drone, the eighth reservoir of this style that analysts showed as destroyed, the Ukrainians still have about Leopard 1A5s. 50 or 60 others arrive soon.
Expect all the newly arriving Leopard 1A5s to get the same add-on armor that resisted eight Russian drones.
Sources:
1. Pion 2S7
2. ORYX
3. ICTV
4. WarTranslated