Ukraine Could Send Its New Challenger 2 Tanks To Fight Russia’s Best T-90 Tanks

It’s beginning to make sense why the Ukrainian army is equipping two fast-moving air-mobile brigades—the 25th and 80th—with lumbering, British-made Challenger 2 tanks.

The brigades have been operating in the forests around Kreminna, 10 miles north of Lysychansk in eastern Ukraine’s Donbas region. It’s the same sector where the Russian army has concentrated its own best T-90 tanks and BMP-T fighting vehicles.

It’s possible planners in Kyiv specifically intend for the Challenger 2s to engage the T-90s and BMP-Ts.

There’s not a lot of tank-on-tank combat in Ukraine. There are major exceptions, of course. During the heady early weeks of the war, the Ukrainian 1st Tank Brigade hid its T-64 tanks in the forest around Chernihiv, 60 miles north of Kyiv. The old, ex-Soviet tanks engaged passing Russian tanks at point-blank range.

Mostly, the Russians and Ukrainians are deploying their tanks in combined-arms groupings that also include infantry and fighting vehicles. The infantry protect the tanks, which in turn blast enemy fortifications that block the infantry.

But once Ukraine’s first 14 BAE Systems Challenger 2s arrive around Kreminna, as early as next month, there could be tank-on-tank fights pitting the 25th and 80th Air Mobile Brigades against the Russian 90th Tank Division.

The 90th operates many of Russia’s dwindling fleet of new T-90 tanks, as well as the nine surviving examples of the latest BMP-T fighting vehicle.

The sole BMP-T company just suffered its first combat loss. The 45-ton, three-person T-90s likewise aren’t having a great war. The Ukrainians so far have destroyed or captured 50 of the roughly 400 T-90s that tank-maker Uralvagonzavod has built for the Russian army.

Still, the T-90s on paper are better than the Ukrainian army’s T-64s and T-72s are. All the more reason for the Ukrainians to avoid tank battles.

The 70-ton, four-person Challenger 2, on the other hand, outsees and outshoots the T-90 and boasts better armor protection, too. The Challenger 2 is armed with a rifled Royal Ordnance L30 main gun firing 120-millimeter shells out to a distance of up to three miles.

A T-90 crew probably can’t even see three miles, much less shoot that far with its 125-millimeter smoothbore gun—not even when the gunner is peering through Russia’s best Sosna-U day-night sight.

Fourteen Challenger 2s isn’t a lot of Challenger 2s, however. The 25th and 80th Air Mobile Brigades each could form a single under-strength company with three fewer tanks than a Ukrainian air-mobile brigade usually possesses. It wouldn’t take many break-downs or losses to render a seven-tank company incapable of sustained combat.

And that’s why it’s safe to assume the United Kingdom ultimately will donate to Ukraine additional Challenger 2s. There could be a hundred or more T-90s in the woods around Kreminna. Those Ukrainian paratroopers won’t beat them with just 14 tanks.