Kovalenko discusses the shortcomings of the “cardboard” Leopard 1 tank and suggests ways to eliminate them

In April 2022, the first information appeared that Ukraine would receive Leopard 1 tanks. At that time, many accepted this news with optimism, but, unfortunately, many confuse Leopard 1 with Leopard 2. The difference between them is significant, and it is important to realize that harm or benefit from their use can affect not only the enemy, but also the defenders of Ukraine, especially if used incorrectly.

So what is wrong with this tank and can the situation be corrected? Let's figure it out.

As I already noted, the first information that Leopard 1 would be transferred to Ukraine appeared in April 2022. But only in 2023 did we see the first tanks of this type, and then not immediately in the combat zone. And if we compare it with the delivery of Leopard-2 to Ukraine, then from the confirmation of the transfer of these main battle tanks at the end of January 2023 to their first use in the combat zone in June, less than six months passed. The journey of Leopard-1 to the database zone took almost a year and a half. A fact that’s worth thinking about, isn’t it?

I do not hide the fact that from the first day I heard about the possibility of Ukraine receiving these tanks, I opposed this idea. And she did not change her opinion, despite the fact that there were a lot of her supporters and adherents of the Leopard-1 cult. Apparently, because from the sofa it is very convenient to judge what a “good” tank it is, without risking being included in its crew to carry out a combat mission on the line of combat contact (LCC).

But still, in order to dot all the “i”s, I decided to pay maximum and, perhaps for the last time, attention to the shortcomings and advantages of the tank, erroneous judgments about it, as well as what can be done to improve what is already hopeless - but it's better to try than to do nothing.

And I’ll start with erroneous judgments usually used by amateurs to justify Ukraine receiving this tank.

Inappropriate comparisons

Very often, when I write about Leopard-1 (and these are mostly unflattering notes), I come across excuses like: “Something is better than nothing!”, “It can be used as an infantry fighting vehicle!”, “French wheeled tank AMX- Is 10RC really better?”, “Well, of course, it’s better on a pickup truck than on a tank!”, “Did we have another choice?”, “This is a sniper tank, you don’t understand the tactics of using it!”

Let's look at each misconception separately.

“Something is better than nothing!” I don't really understand the meaning of this statement. What does “nothing” mean? When we started talking about Leopard-1, we received the T-72M1 from Poland, and negotiations were underway on the transfer of the RT-91 Twardy. And in this case, mentioning the argument “Did we have another choice?” - yes, we had it. After all, we were able to receive T-72 tanks not only from European users - they even brought them to us from Morocco! And in 2023 they were able to put the finishing touches on the tank coalition, eventually receiving Challenger-2 and Leopard-2.

That is, there were opportunities to put pressure on getting tanks of a different type, the question is how much effort was made and why, when there was a prospect of getting normal tanks, someone gave the green light to the “cardboard suicide box.”

“It can be used as an infantry fighting vehicle!” No you can not. Because a tank is a tank, and an infantry fighting vehicle is an infantry fighting vehicle designed to transport troops and securely deliver them to the site of a combat mission. A tank, unless it is a Merkava, can only transport troops on armor, and amateurish statements about infantry fighting vehicles only highlight the lack of understanding of the functionality of such equipment.

“Is the French wheeled tank AMX-10RC any better?” For those who are in a tank, and there are many of them, the “wheeled tank” class does not exist. The AMX-10RC is an infantry fire support fighting vehicle that, due to the functionality of the tank, is foolhardy to use. And this also includes the statement “Well, of course, it’s better in a pickup truck than in a tank!”, since a pickup truck has its own functionality, and therefore this comparison is inappropriate and once again emphasizes the underdevelopment in these matters of the one who is comparing.

“This is a sniper tank, you don’t understand the tactics of using it!” Perhaps, in the realities of modern warfare, where tank duels are not even 5% of the total use of tanks in a combat zone, where there is an extremely high risk of being in the field of view of a drone with an operating radius greater than a sniper shot from a “cardboard box”, I wonder -I don’t understand. Or is the fact of artillery dominance inappropriate when mentioning clashes on the LBS?

In fact, in modern realities, the sniper properties of Leopard-1 are neutralized by modern threats. Don’t forget, we are fighting not in the 1960s, but in the 2020s.

These and many other misconceptions make it difficult to adequately evaluate Leopard-1, its advantages and disadvantages, and how to fully exploit the former in any attempt to limit the latter. Leopard-1 should be taken for what it is, and more on that later. And I’ll start with the good – with the advantages.

Advantages of Leopard 1

Leopard-1 has an excellent gun, even by modern standards. This is a 56 caliber rifled 105mm L7A3. The choice of rounds is standard, allowing you to cover the destruction of a variety of targets, namely: sub-caliber APDS-T, cumulative HEAT and armor-piercing high-explosive HESH/HEP.

Despite the 105 mm caliber, the gun poses a serious threat to Russian T-72, T-80 and even T-90 if it hits their weakened zones. And not getting hit is a difficult task for L7A3. But tank duels, as I noted above, are rare, isolated cases.

Also among the advantages of the tank, I would include its four-stroke ten-cylinder liquid-cooled diesel engine MB 838 SaM-500, with a power of 830 hp. With. This allows this main battle tank to be very mobile, and speed is one of its paradoxical advantages, because it later turned into its main disadvantage.

That's probably all. Yes, you are right, this concludes the section on the merits of Leopard-1.

Disadvantages of Leopard 1

The main disadvantage of Leopard-1, which only the lazy did not talk about, is its armor. Or rather, its absence.

Earlier, I described this drawback in detail, noting that the armor, especially on the turret and side projections, is so weak that it can easily be penetrated not only by the entire line of Russian ATGMs or RPG-7, but even by 30-mm armor-piercing weapons for the BMP-2 automatic cannon . Would you like a comparison with the BMP-2? Receive. A tank that can be converted into a 2A42 sieve. How is this comparison?

In addition, if a high-explosive fragmentation artillery shell explodes within a radius of 15 meters from the tank, the MBT can receive serious damage. And just the other day, on November 28, we saw one of these moments when sniper tanks that had driven out into the open field (which, according to the tactics gurus, were supposed to operate from closed positions) found themselves under direct artillery fire and were immobilized.

In July, a case was recorded when a 152-mm Krasnopol shell hit an M-55S tank (the Slovenian equivalent of the T-55), after which the vehicle remained on the move and left on its own for repairs. After this, speculative statements began to appear about how wonderful the M-55S is, how it holds a punch!

In fact, the Krasnopol OFS should not have penetrated the M-55S turret at all, and therefore this was not surprising. But I remembered this episode for the reason that if there had been a Leopard-1 instead of the M-55S, there would have been a penetration and the crew would hardly have been able to escape.

And this is not even working in an area with an extremely high presence in the airspace of drones and Lancet loitering ammunition, for which Leopard-1 is a cardboard box on tracks. And it is vulnerable not only to drones or BBs, but also to mines.

Leopard-1 has rather mediocre mine protection, which does not guarantee the survival of the crew when colliding with, for example, a TM-62. In this regard, the Soviet T-62 is an order of magnitude safer than the Leopard-1. Although in fairness it is worth noting that neither the T-72, nor the T-80, nor the T-90 could do better mine protection than the 62nd.

In addition to this, the tank has a number of other disadvantages. In particular, its unreliability. We are used to the fact that everything German is reliable, but not in this case. For example, its off-road operating limit did not exceed thousands of kilometers, after which repairs were required. And this is in the best of times, but tanks are coming to us that have exhausted their service life, which even after repairs are not always combat-ready. Let me remind you that we recently refused one such batch .

There are also features of some modifications when it is necessary to replace spare parts in the tank that are no longer produced. For example, as was the case with the purchase of 49 Belgian Leopard 1A5BE. The Leopard 1A5BE features Belgian-made SABCA TI multi-channel sights, an automated fire control system and a specific turret. As it turned out, this equipment did not work on some Belgian tanks.

Now, in order to send serviceable and combat-ready Leopard 1A5BE to Ukraine, it is necessary to cannibalize a number of other such tanks, because the unique Belgian equipment installed on them is no longer produced.

A tank that will require regular repairs, and it will not always be possible to carry them out, since equipment that has not been produced for a long time may fail. And this is not to mention the fact that Ukraine, in principle, is not a repair base for Leopard-1!

The disadvantages of Leopard-1 also include its advantages. In particular, the L7A3 cannon. After all, with all their advantages, almost all guns have exhausted their service life, and durability with their active use is a very pressing problem for crews. It is as relevant as ammunition, the shortage of which is obvious, and shots should be saved.

The problem with Leopard-1 is not only its armor, but also a number of other issues, the correction of which is hardly possible. But at least something can be done about the level of security, since we are talking not so much about equipment, but about the life of the crew?

Correction of deficiencies

Not long ago I paid attention to the issue of increasing the survivability of Leopard-1 tanks. In a detailed review , I gave several examples of how the survivability of the “cardboard box” could be increased.

In particular, as the main example of increasing the level of armor, I took the Canadian modification of the Leopard 1C2, equipped with an additional MEXAS-M armor kit with combined composite elements produced by the German company IBD Deisenroth Engineering.

MEXAS-M is NERA class armor, which is passive protection against cumulative ammunition and consists of a ceramic layer and organotextolite based on high-strength Kevlar or Dynema fibers. The ceramic layer ensures the destruction of bullets and shells by distributing kinetic energy over a larger base area, the residual energy is absorbed by the granite-textolite layer. In terms of durability, this type of combined armor, having the same mass as steel armor, is twice as strong.

It would also be useful to cover the tank with a cape to reduce the visibility of the vehicle in a wide range of wavelengths.

Of course, a tank vulnerable to RPG-7 and other range of weapons simply needs anti-cumulative shielding and an additional body kit of Kontakt-1 dynamic protection.

In the case of action in a densely mined area, the presence of a trawl or a mine plow.

At the same time, even taking into account the implementation of all these protective equipment, the tank will still lag behind modern MBTs in terms of security. But at least it won’t be “cardboard”.

Of course, there was hope that at least some of these methods for increasing the survivability of a tank would find their application and be implemented. But in November, the first photos and videos of “naked” Leopard-1 began to appear - without dynamic protection, without anti-cumulative grilles... Without anything .

And the very first use of a pair of Leopard-1s eloquently and quite expectedly ended in their loss of combat effectiveness.

conclusions

The shortcomings of Leopard-1 have been known for a long time. This is not to say that they cannot be solved entirely; there is a partial solution. But as a series of November videos showed, for some reason completely incomprehensible to me personally, none of them were implemented. Didn’t you find the Kontakt-1 rembat? Or was welding busy to weld the gratings?

Instead, a video was shown on TV showing the crews praising the tank - again, with an emphasis on the quality of the barrel, sniper accuracy and complete ignorance of the problem of using this tank in the described format.

Of course, whatever the command told the crew to talk on camera, that’s what he said. But that’s just before the first arrival. Although it has already taken place. The countdown of the disabled Leopard-1 has begun , fortunately without the loss of the crew. But I am not optimistic about this.