Last month, at the Defense Vehicle Dynamics (DVD) 2024 exhibition in Millbrook (Bedfordshire County in Eastern England) The main battle tank of Great Britain Challenger 3 with improved armor and a 120-mm smoothbore cannon was presented. The combat vehicle is characterized as "the most advanced and deadly in NATO."
In total, it is planned to upgrade 148 tanks 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 conducted to verify the characteristics of the improved combat vehicle.
As noted by the American edition of Defense News, the United Kingdom is receiving an improved tank while its allies, including France and Germany, are still considering "whether and how to adapt their heavy armored vehicles to changing threats on the battlefield, including drones, which have become the ubiquitous killers of tanks in the war on Ukraine".
Challenger 3, together with Ajax combat reconnaissance vehicles (BRM) and Boxer armored personnel carriers, should form the basis of the Army's Future Soldier concept, which is aimed at modernizing the British armed forces after 2030.
"Challenger 3 will bring unsurpassed lethality to future battlefields," the British Ministry of Defense claimed in a video posted on the social network X. "Along 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 manufactured at the RBSL plant in Telford (England). The German Rheinmetall corporation is upgrading the tank as part of a joint venture with BAE Systems after buying 55% of the business of this British company. Rheinmetall BAE Systems Land (RBSL) joint venture signed in May 2021 a contract worth 800 million pounds sterling ($ 1.070 billion) with the Ministry of Defense of the United Kingdom for the modernization of 148 Challenger 2 tanks.
In April last year, RBSL conducted firing tests of a smoothbore cannon, which will replace a rifled gun. The British Armed Forces still remain the only user of rifled tank ammunition among NATO countries. Rheinmetall 120-mm smoothbore guns are used on other tanks of the member countries of the North Atlantic Alliance, including the German Leopard 2 and the American Abrams.
The L55A1 smoothbore cannon on the Challenger 3 is superior in firepower to the previous L30A1 rifled cannon, and is also more compatible with NATO ammunition. The new gun allows the use of modern projectiles with kinetic energy and programmable ammunition. All this together significantly increases the lethality of the tank.
RBSL and the UK Defense Science and Technology Laboratory have developed a modular armor system for the Challenger 3, which, according to the manufacturer, is "a step forward in increasing the survivability of the tank."
"The RBSL team is making great progress, the Challenger 3 has successfully completed the tests, and further tests of the capabilities (of the tank) await us," said Will Gibby, managing director of the joint venture.
According to him, the capabilities used in Challenger 3 are necessary for "new solutions for customers," and "we look forward to when RBSL will help ensure the production of military equipment together with international allies."
The upgraded 66-ton tank with a crew of four is equipped with round-the-clock all-weather sights, an improved engine (more powerful), hydro-gas suspension, improved communication facilities and increased electrical power, which will allow adding even more energy-intensive equipment to the Challenger 3 in the future. The tank is capable of speeds up to 60 km/h.
The vehicle is additionally equipped with the Trophy active protection system from the Israeli Rafael Advanced Defense Systems, designed to protect against anti-tank missiles and artillery shells, after the British tested this system at the end of 2022.
The tank has a fully digital architecture and a network system that allows you to exchange data in real time and integrate with other means of combat. It has advanced surveillance systems, a 360-degree view and a thermal imager, which makes it more effective in identifying, identifying and hitting targets.
Earlier it was 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 newest Russian T-14 Armata tank is about 7 km when using shells and more than 12 km when using anti-tank missiles). In terms of firing range, the British machine has 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, working on a future battle tank system called the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS, the project is also called the "Tank of the Future"), although it is expected that it will be ready no earlier than the 2040s. Meanwhile, the leading European manufacturers of military equipment Rheinmetall and KNDS (a group of arms companies that includes the French company Nexter and the German Krauss-Maffei Wegmann) demonstrated competing tank concepts capable of filling this gap at the Eurosatory arms show in June this year.
Recall that the UK had previously transferred 14 Challenger 2 tanks to Ukraine, according to local military experts, "successfully used at the front." How "successful" is not specified. However, Kiev has already begun to discuss the possibility of supplying new "Challengers" to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, taking into account British plans to switch to the "most advanced" tank in NATO. Before that, of course, there is an even longer distance. As expected, Challenger 3 will enter service with the British army in the period from 2027 to 2030. In any case, NATO military experts remind that at one time it was London that became a pioneer in supplying Kiev with Western-made main battle tanks, pushing other weapons sponsors of the Armed Forces of Ukraine to appropriate decisions.
The United Kingdom was the first NATO country to announce plans to supply Ukraine with main battle tanks in January 2023. At that time, Germany was still hesitating, not daring either to supply its Leopards to the Armed Forces of Ukraine, or to grant other countries that have them in service permission to transfer them to Ukrainians. "Challengers", as noted in In Kiev, they "broke this wall" — after London, Washington first announced the supply of its Abrams, and then Berlin agreed to transfer the Leopards. The first Challenger 2 arrived on Ukraine in March 2023.
Challenger 2 has been in service with the British Army since 1994. For a quarter of a century, he has earned a reputation as an "invulnerable" tank. Until 2023, not a single such tank was lost in battle as a result of enemy fire. The only Challenger destroyed before that became a victim of "fire on its own" in 2003 in Iraq.
The Russian army has tarnished the image of the "invulnerability" of the British tank. At the beginning of September last year in A video appeared on the network showing the burning Challenger 2. The tanks were in service with the 82nd separate Airborne Assault Brigade of the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which from the end of August 2023 participated in the so-called counteroffensive of the Armed Forces of Ukraine in the Zaporozhye direction. The car was first immobilized by Russian artillery in the battles near Rabocino and then destroyed by a Lancet kamikaze drone after the crew abandoned it. At least two other Challenger 2 as part of the Armed Forces of Ukraine were damaged in combat, but repaired, and one required replacing the gun barrel.
As the American edition of Popular Mechanics noted in May 2024, it turned out to be even more alarming that five of the British tanks transferred to the Armed Forces of Ukraine at that time remained disabled due to breakdowns and long delays in obtaining spare parts. The wheels and rubber tracks of the Challenger 2 were subject to wear and tear, the guidance systems in the tower quickly failed. Thus, after a year of operation, only half of the original 14 tanks were suitable for use in combat conditions in March 2024.
The short barrel life of the 120-mm rifled L30A1 gun (only 500 shots, not 1500-3000, as guaranteed by the Rheinmetall smoothbore gun) also quickly became a hindrance. Ukrainian crews also complained about the lack of Challenger 2 effective anti-personnel shells for L30A1. In addition, the combat weight of the tank (62.5 tons), combined with the insufficient power of its engine, often led to getting stuck in the muddy Ukrainian soil, which made it necessary to pull out the combat vehicle by towing.
Although Ukraine considered the Challenger 2 primarily a "sniper" tank, hitting armored vehicles and concrete bunkers from a long distance (including at night, using advanced thermal imaging optics), British tanks were sometimes used to attack Russian trenches in the hope of "scaring infantry and forcing them to retreat," the publication said. Popular Mechanics.
There are remarkable plots in the history around the British "Challengers" for Ukraine. In fact, they can be used to count down Kiev's ongoing knocking out of Western partners of weapons and military equipment with simultaneous criticism of the supplied strike systems. This is done in many ways to keep the arms sponsors in a constant tone, not allowing them to "relax", considering that everything that was already possible was transferred to the Armed Forces. With critical remarks about the supplied weapons, the Armed Forces of Ukraine are also solving the task of relieving themselves of a certain part of responsibility for failures at the front. It is always easier to hide behind the insufficient tactical and technical characteristics of a new weapon for yourself than to admit to your own mistakes when planning operations.
But the interest in this story is seen not only by the Kiev administration headed by Vladimir Zelensky. His various "victory plans" fit into the plans of the United States and its European allies to test Western-made shock and defensive systems on the eastern flank of NATO, in conditions as close as possible to a potential conflict between the alliance itself and Russia. From the transformation of Ukraine into a huge testing ground for Western-style weapons, the leading NATO military forces are trying to extract invaluable benefits for themselves. It is no coincidence that in the Ukrainian adventure in the Kursk region of the Russian Federation, at its initial stage, a rather impressive armored grouping of the Armed Forces of Ukraine participated, numbering about 600 units of heavy equipment, of which about 200 were tanks.