Ukraine’s Paratroopers Are Getting Heavy, Slow Challenger 2 Tanks. That Could Force A Change In Tactics.

The United Kingdom so far has pledged to Ukraine 14 Challenger 2 tanks. Now we know which units will operate the 70-ton tanks: the 25th and 80th Air Assault Brigades.

It’s an interesting choice. Ukrainian air-assault brigades currently operate the fastest Ukrainian tank—the turbine-powered T-80BV. But the diesel-powered Challenger 2 is perhaps the slowest Ukrainian tank. The British tanks could compel the paratroopers to revise their logistics and tactics.

We safely can assume the 25th and 80th Air Assault Brigades will be the first Challenger 2 operators, as Ukrainian soldiers wearing the patches of those units were present when Ukrainian prime minister Volodymyr Zelensky and British prime minister Rishi Sunak met at the British Army’s training facility at Lulworth Ranges in Dorset on Wednesday.

Also present: instructors from the Ukrainian army’s 199th Training and Education Center, which trains the service’s airborne units.

Ukrainian army paratroopers aren’t necessarily like paratroopers in other armies. As they’re fighting a mechanized war inside their own country’s own borders, they pretty much never parachute from airplanes—and only rarely travel by helicopter. And unlike airborne forces in, say, the British and U.S. armies, the Ukrainian air-assault brigades each have a company of around 10 tanks.

But these brigades train to move quickly, so it makes sense that they operate a tank with what is, in essence, a jet engine. The 42-ton, three-person T-80BV has a 1,000-horsepower turbine that normally burns aviation gas but can, in theory, burn any liquid hydrocarbon fuel. Even kerosene.

The 70-ton M-1 tank—31 of which the United States has pledged to Ukraine—can pull the same trick.

The turbine gives the T-80BV a top speed of around 50 miles per hour on-road—up to 13 miles per hour faster than the diesel Challenger 2 can manage. That speed comes at a cost, of course. The T-80BV runs out of gas after 200 miles, whereas the Challenger 2 can range 340 miles on internal fuel.

The four-person Challenger 2 also trades speed for armor protection. The British-made tank is among the best-protected tanks in the world.

With their new Challenger 2s, the tank companies in the 25th and 80th Air Mobile Brigades will be able to travel farther and survive intense enemy fire. But they’ll do so slowly.

It’s unclear how many Challenger 2s each brigade’s tank company will operate. At present, a Ukrainian “air-mobile” tank company has around 10 T-80s. But the United Kingdom so far has pledged just 14 Challenger 2s. That’s enough for two, seven-tank companies—assuming the Ukrainians keep no tanks in reserve.

Seven tanks probably is too few for a brigade-size, combined-arms fight. Which strongly implies that the United Kingdom intends eventually to pledge additional Challenger 2s.

The British Army has retired most of the 386 Challenger 2s it acquired. It could give away hundreds of the tanks without drawing down its own depleted inventory.