To Win With Their Leopard 1 Tanks, Ukrainian Crews Need To Think Like Snipers

Ukraine is getting at least 100, and as many as 237, surplus Leopard 1A5 tanks from Germany, The Netherlands, Denmark and potentially Belgium.

The Leopard 1 isn’t a great tank. It’s not a terrible tank. It’s a tank with particular strengths and weaknesses—and one that, with the right handling, can survive and win.

Fortunately for the Ukrainian army, the Brazilian army still uses the Leopard 1A5. And one Brazilian officer has strong ideas about the best ways to deploy the tank.

“Seize the high ground,” Capt. Adriano Santiago Garcia wrote in a 2020 issue of Armor, the U.S. Army’s official tank journal. “Use camouflage.” “Proper terrain-use.”

The 42-ton, four-person Leopard 1A5 combines a hull and turret from the 1960s with optics and fire-controls from the 1980s and a modern, 105-millimeter main gun.

The classic tank’s biggest weakness is its armor. Its steel armor is just 2.75 inches thick on the front of the turret and less than half an inch thick on the sides and back of the hull.

Lacking the tungsten or uranium elements that make modern tanks’ armor mixes especially tough, the Leopard 1 is so lightly protected that, in 2023, some observers don’t even categorize it as a “tank.” Rather, they consider it a “mobile gun.”

After all, its gun is its greatest strength. The British-designed, 52-caliber rifled gun can fire the whole range of modern NATO rounds out to a distance of 2.5 miles—and accurately, in the day or night, thanks to the Leopard 1A5’s EMES-18 fire-controls.

“Work with what you have,” Garcia stressed. When it comes to the Leopard 1A5, that means putting the tank in a position to snipe at enemy forces with its highly accurate gun while making every possible effort to protect the tank from return fire.

Camouflage the tank. Hide behind hills. Don’t be afraid to go off-road. “Tank commanders must study how to maneuver their own vehicles,” Garcia wrote. “Approach enemy positions while protected at points that permit shooting; and disappear with steady and synchronized maneuver to gain terrain or just create damage.”

The crew of a better-protected tank such as a German Leopard 2A6 or an American M-1A2 might be tempted to barrel straight toward the enemy, trusting their armor to deflect all but the luckiest shots.

A direct assault is even more tempting for the crews of these tank types because the tanks are heavy—around 70 tons—and tend to sink in soft ground. M-1 and Leopard 2 crews could stick to roads, roll right through the inevitable pre-sighted gunfire and fearlessly close on enemy positions.

For a Leopard 1 crew, these same tactics are suicide. So while M-1s or Leopard 2s attack along the roads, Leopard 1s should thread hills and valleys, peek over hilltops with just their sights and guns, fire a few accurate shots then speed away to the next defilade firing position. Tanks as hilltop snipers.

This is all well and good in theory, of course. In practice, in the heat and chaos of battle, it’s all too easy for a stressed, terrified tank crew to forget these elegant tactics.

Thus training is critical. NATO trainers must drill into Ukraine’s Leopard 1 crews that their vehicles might look a lot like M-1s or Leopard 2s—but appearances can be deceiving.

Fighting and winning in a Leopard 1 means using the tank in ways that emphasize its strengths and minimize its weaknesses. And drilling on those tactics until they’re second nature. “You do [the] hard work in training,” Garcia wrote.