Brits Dissect Russian Tanks After Challenger 2s Fail to Save Ukraine’s Offensive

The UK sent 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine this spring, with the armored behemoths spotted in promotional videos a couple times, but yet to be seen trying to break through Russian entrenchments. Ukraine’s counteroffensive, launched on June 4, has bogged down, costing Ukraine up to 26,000 troops and 20 percent of its NATO-provided equipment.

Britain has taken delivery of Russian tanks destroyed in fighting in Ukraine, and is picking them apart at the top secret Porton Down lab in southern England to try to learn their secrets, a senior British military official has revealed.

“We have the scientists that unpick the detail that another nation might have to a really forensic level and that helps us to understand how does their equipment work,” UK chief of Defense Staff Tony Radakin told media at a joint press event alongside outgoing Defense Secretary Ben Wallace on Monday.

“It is really important because we are in a club of nations that, when we get hold of Russian kit or other nations’ kit that might be a danger to us in the future, we share that knowledge,” Radakin added.

Radakin called the NATO-Russia proxy war in Ukraine a “wake-up call” for his forces, saying that "we are in a technological race – to be more aggressive in terms of how we look after our own nation and to strengthen our resilience.”

Wallace agreed that Ukraine is serving as a kind of “battle laboratory” for NATO weaponry against Russia, but appeared to pour cold water on Radakin’s push for “bold” and “aggressive” steps to rearm, saying the UK simply does not have enough money to increase the size of its ground forces amid a budgetary crunch. Wallace asked where the £5 billion pounds ($6.5 billion US) would come from to grow the force by over 9,000 troops, as requested by the top brass. “Or am I going to give them pitchforks?” he asked.

Instead, the government plans to fork out £2.5 billion ($3.2 billion) to replenish its armory after draining it sending some £5.6 billion ($7.4 billion) in weapons and ammunition to Ukraine over the past eighteen months.

West’s Wunderwaffe Fail to Work Miracles

NATO powers have delivered hundreds of repurposed T-72, PT-91 and M-55S tanks to Ukraine left over from former Warsaw Pact stocks, plus close to 300 of the main battle tanks Western military observers spent over three decades boasting were superior to anything the former Soviet Union or Russia had. Britain ‘did its part’, committing 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Kiev.

However, hundreds of the gifted tanks have now been destroyed, with Kiev reportedly resorting to pulling its reserves of Western-made main battle tanks from the battlefield soon after its long-awaited counteroffensive began in June, when a batch of Leopard 2s got mauled on Russian minefields.

US media reported this week citing US and European officials that upwards of 20 percent of the weapons that Ukraine sent to the battlefield were either destroyed or damaged in the first two weeks of the offensive.

Most Pampered Western MBT

As for Challenger 2s, they too haven’t been spotted since last month, when the Ukrainian military published a promotional video of one of the British-made tanks driving down a dirt road, without providing any further context. The tank has apparently been resigned for use in PR, with the Ukrainian military also putting together a clip of a Challenger 2 just standing stationary near a field and rotating its turret interspersed with footage of Ukraine’s Soviet-made helicopter gunships aimlessly firing off flares.

True to its royal origins, the Challenger 2 is known as perhaps the most pampered tank in NATO’s arsenal, having only ever been deployed on combat missions in the former Yugoslavia and Iraq. Britain has touted the tank’s “zero loss” rate, a feat not difficult to achieve if you avoid sending it into combat or refuse to export it abroad (besides the UK and Ukraine, the Royal Army of Oman is the Challenger 2’s only other operator).

UK defense officials have made it explicitly clear to Kiev that they don’t want to see their Challengers lost in fighting, with the Army’s top brass reportedly pressuring their Ukrainian counterparts to try to avoid deploying the Challenger 2 in areas where they might risk capture or destruction. This effectively limits the main battle tank’s ability to live up to its designation.

Taking a Cue From Russia

In the lead up to the West’s tank deliveries this winter and spring, Sputnik repeatedly pointed out that commander competence, crew skill, artillery and air support, strategic and battlefield intelligence and most importantly, the ability to effectively conduct combined arms operations, matter far more than a handful of Western super tanks.

Furthermore, the losses Ukraine’s tank forces have taken over the past month-and-a-half have shown that even when it comes to direct tank-on-tank assessments, Russia has cards up its sleeve superior to anything NATO’s got, including the T-90 Proryv (lit. ‘Breakthrough’), which has the same kind of, powerful main cannon, composite armor and electro-optical active protection system as some of the latest Western MBTs do, but is also smaller, sleeker, easier and cheaper to manufacture on a mass scale.