Justvseen on BBC
BBC’s OSINT must be pretty poor; this has been doing the rounds since last week.
I missed it as well
The gossip says that it hit a mine (though the damage to other vehicles in the formation might suggest an artillery strike), which immobilised it and set the fuel tank on fire, and it was then hit by a Lancet Loitering Munition which did the deed.
Crew, according to ‘defence sources’, walked away after the first hit.
According to the Telegraph’s excellent Ukraine: The Latest podcast, the crew survived and the tank may be recoverable. Although the hull was on fire, there were no secondary explosions from the ammunition in the turret, the turret remained on the hull, etc.
Despite being the first Chally 2 combat loss, I think this stands as an example of just how survivable they are: especially compared with all the burnt-out, turretless husks of Former Soviet Union tank hulls in Ukraine.
I’d heard similar, disabled by a mine, crew left it and then it was attacked by a drone.
I won’t be surprised if they are are all broken by winter, but I’d be surprised of many enter the Great Ukrainian Turret Throwing Contest.
The big problem for Ukraine is that they’ve got one Army, they are going to break it beating the Russians back, and they don’t have an Army waiting to replace it for next year’s fixture.
I don’t see much new gear being promised - that broadly what they’ve got is what they’re going to get.
It’s not enough.
I see the big issue as the one they’ve quietly admitted already; they lack air superiority.
The F16s might help with this, but do they have the numbers of pilots needed to gain the upper hand?
I remember hearing of a Challenger 2 being knocked out by an IED in Iraq during the later Op Telic counter-insurgency phase; earlier in that operation another had been immobilised by heavy fire supporting infantry operations in Basra during the initial occupation of that city. It was recovered under fire.
At Cambrai in 1917, 180 out of 386 British tanks were lost to all causes in one day of battle, and that was a great allied victory. The British ‘supplied’ around 180 tanks to the German Army through losses in WWI: the photos of MkVI tanks with Freikorps soldiers in German cities during the 1918-21 German Civil War are battle trophies, not post-WWI surplus sell-offs, which I once thought they were.
Tanks of all nations have always been highly disposable war materiel, even the good ones.
British Challenger 2 lost in GW 2 in a blue on blue incident.
Pretty sure the initial BBC report said all 3 things, but a mine then the drop shorts had a go and then a drone finished the job.
With only 1 Companies worth I actually expected them to be held in reserve to block gaps etc.
Have they been given much in the way of SAMS? The F-16’s will change the game a lot, but having the Russian air power thinned out first would really help, that plus a decent ARM to knock back the Russian AA capability.
Abrhams aren’t due until next year and the US has just confirmed that they will be coming with DU rounds for the main gun. Although US support going forward is somewhat conditional on who gets the nominations and who ultimately wins the election.
Off the top of my head I think they’ve been given Patriot and NASAMS. They’ve also been given HARM, but it will work much better when fitted to F-16s than botched retrofitted to MiG-29 FULCRUM.
An update to this topic is that Ukrainian Abrams tanks have been knocked out as well recently: I believe that was done by hitting the relatively vulnerable engine compartment first, making it a mobility kill. The crew could escape, and tank could be recovered provided the ground is in the hands of friendly forces. However the latter isn’t always an option for the Ukrainian Army - they lack both air superiority and armoured engineer and recovery vehicles.
An Abrams was mobility KO’d during the Thunder Run through the outskirts of Baghdad during the 2003 Invasion of Iraq. An RPG round hit the engine through the air intake: there’s not much protection one can put over that sort of weak spot, particularly against more powerful munitions.
Note that the T14 will not be deployed by the Russians to Ukraine, because they are worried that it will be captured by the other side.