Ukraine’s Leopard 1A5s Have Already Seen Combat—In Hit-And-Run Fights

Ukraine’s German-made Leopard 1A5 tanks already have seen combat in snowy eastern Ukraine, according to French newswire Agence France-Presse. “We had combat tours,” a Leopard 1A5 crew member named Grigorii—presumably from the Ukrainian army’s 44th Mechanized Brigade—told AFP apparently this week.

The tankers AFP spoke with seemed to be happy with their 1980s-vintage Leopard 1A5s. This despite the 40-ton, four-person tanks with their 70-millimeter-thick turret faces being perhaps the least-armored tanks in Russia’s 22-month wider war on Ukraine.

AFP’s report hints at how the Ukrainians are mitigating the Leopard 1A5’s poor protection. “It [spots] targets at a distance of 3.5 to five kilometers,” or 2.2 to 3.1 miles, a crew member named Vitalii said.

German tank-maker Krauss-Maffei Wegmann gave the Leopard 1A5 what was, at the time, one of the world’s leading tank guns: the rifled 105-millimeter L7 from Royal Ordnance in the United Kingdom.

Forty years later, the L7 still is an effective weapon, if a bit less powerful than the latest 120-millimeter guns are. The L7 can shoot as far as 2.2 miles. Russian tanks’ own technology “does not allow them to engage in a long-range confrontation with us,” Vitalii claimed.

But it’s not the gun itself that makes the Leopard 1A5 such an excellent shooter. It’s the tank’s whole integrated combat system, which includes the gun and its stabilizers, the gunner’s optics and the tank’s computerized fire-control system.

On ex-German and ex-Danish Leopard 1A5s, the FCS is the EMES-18, which also equips the much heavier Leopard 2. Ex-Belgian Leopard 1A5s, which account for 30 of Ukraine’s roughly 200 pledged Leopard 1s, have unique SABCA fire-controls.

The EMES-18 after all these years still is one of the best tank fire-controls. It combines a laser rangefinder with a ballistic computer. To aim the gun while stationary, the gunner—peering through his optics—uses a joystick to lay his crosshairs on the target, triggers the laser to help the computer to calculate range and then fires the gun.

The FCS assists by automatically adjusting the gun’s elevation based on the range data the computer gets from the laser. No need for the gunner manually to calculate the right angle. And the computer is fast, requiring just a second after reading the laser reflection to adjust the gun.

Shooting accurately at long range, a Leopard 1A5 crew can squeeze off a few rounds then speed away before the Russians can zero in with longer-range weapons, Grigorii said. He even implied it’s feasible for Leopard 1A5s to conduct single-tank raids. “We can escape with one vehicle,” he said.

The weather currently is snowy, wet and cold in eastern Ukraine, where the 44th Brigade—the first of potentially several Ukrainian army Leopard 1A5 brigades—has been fighting a mostly defensive action against faltering Russian assaults.

The 830-horsepower Leopard 1A5 with its fast reverse gears works well in these conditions, according to a tank-driver named Rouslan. “It is very easy to control,” Rouslan, a former tractor-driver in civilian life, told AFP.

That’s fortunate for the crews of Ukraine’s thinly-armored Leopard 1A5s. Unless and until the army fits the tanks with explosive reactive armor, they will be extremely vulnerable to any Russian weapon more powerful than a heavy machine gun.

The Danish instructors who trained many of Ukraine’s Leopard 1A5 crews stressed the importance of moving fast, and frequently, in order to dodge enemy fire. The Leopard 1 “is made for driving and shooting,” one instructor said.