With Challenger 2 Tanks On The Way, Ukraine’s Ex-British Recovery Vehicles Are Getting In Position

Ukraine’s ex-British Challenger 2 tanks arrived in the war zone last week. Their matching recovery vehicles may have preceded them.

A photo that circulated online on March 28 depicts a Challenger Armored Repair and Recovery Vehicle, a CRARRV, apparently somewhere in Ukraine. It’s also possible the photo depicts the 68-ton, three-crew CRARRV during crew training in the United Kingdom.

In either case, it’s no surprise the tanks and recovery vehicle or vehicles are deploying together. When a tank gets immobilized or mired on the battlefield, it needs a matching recovery vehicle to winch and tow it to the rear area for repairs.

It’s not for no reason that, when a country develops a new and heavier class of tank, it often also develops a new armored recovery vehicle based on the same tank. The Russians have BREM-1 ARVs for their T-72 tanks. The Americans have M-88 ARVs for their M-1 tanks. And the Brits have CRARRVs for their Challenger 2s.

The CRARRV actually borrows the hull of the older Challenger 1 tank, which is a few tons lighter than the Challenger 2 is. When the British Army began replacing CR1s with CR2s, in the late 1990s, it also uprated the engines on 75 or so CRARRVs so they could handle the new tanks’ greater weight.

The United Kingdom in January pledged to Ukraine an initial batch of 14 Challenger 2s plus an unspecified number of CRARRVs. The CRARRVs join a growing number of different recovery vehicles in the Ukrainian order of battle.

When Russia widened its war on Ukraine 13 months ago, the Ukrainian army had only around three dozen BREM-1, BREM-2, BREM-M, BREM-64 and BTS-4 ARVs. That’s 36 or so ARVs for a pre-war tank force with nearly a thousand T-64s, T-72s and T-80s. One ARV for every 25 tanks

That was too few recovery vehicles for a mechanized army in intensive combat. Not only are the Ukrainians winching and towing their own damaged tanks, they also are recovering hundreds of abandoned Russian tanks—and adding them to their own arsenal.

The U.S. Army, a force that truly appreciates the value of a good recovery vehicle, has an M-88 for every two or three M-1 tanks in active service. All that is to say, Ukraine needs a lot more ARVs than it went to war with.

So it makes sense that, in addition to pledging thousands of surplus tanks and fighting vehicles, Ukraine’s allies also have donated at least 25 ARVs. Bergepanzers to accompany those Leopard 2 tanks Germany, Canada, Norway and other countries are providing. M-88s to accompany M-1s from the United States. CRARRVS for the Challenger 2s.

Even those new ARVs are too few in number, however. So Ukraine has been buildings its own—by popping the turrets off of captured Russian T-62 tanks and adding heavy-duty winches. The first of these BREM-62s appeared in a photo from the front line on or before March 27.

The problem with the BREM-62 is that it’s unlikely the improvised recovery vehicle—which might weigh 30 tons—can winch a 71-ton Challenger 2, 69-ton Leopard 2 or 68-ton M-1.