Ukrainian soldiers are installing steel plates on the front of the Challenger 2 tank's undercarriage to protect this vulnerable point from Russian anti-tank rounds.
A video that surfaced on social media last week showed Challenger 2 main battle tank number 506, belonging to Ukraine's 82nd Airborne Brigade, moving in the southern part of the country. A notable feature of the Challenger 2 in the video is a steel plate attached to the sloping front undercarriage.
Forbes editor David Axe noted that the Challenger 2 is one of the best-armored tanks in the world , with Dorchester protection on the turret equivalent to 1,400 mm of rolled steel. However, due to Britain's decades-long policy of deploying tanks in fortified positions, the sloping front underside of the tank only has thin armor.
The British Army later added supplemental armor to protect this position, but apparently the Challenger 2s they supplied to Ukraine lacked such accessories, leaving them highly vulnerable to frontal underbody fire. "British officials almost hoped that Ukraine would use these Challenger 2s for defense," Axe wrote.
However, on the battlefield, the Ukrainian 82nd Airborne Brigade, the only unit operating the 14 Challenger-2 tanks supplied by the British, is advancing along the Rabotino axis in a large-scale counteroffensive. Therefore, Ukrainian soldiers have to install homemade underbody armor for the Challenger-2 tanks.
A Ukrainian Challenger 2 tank with homemade steel armor is shown in a video released on September 23. Video: X/Military Land
The improvised armor may have overcome the Challenger 2's inherent weaknesses on the front, but Russian soldiers appear to have discovered another vulnerability in the turret's roof against the 9M133 Kornet anti-tank missile.
This is what a Ukrainian Challenger 2 suffered during the battle near the village of Rabotino, which Ukrainian forces recaptured in mid-August.
The Challenger 2 apparently struck a mine while moving from Rabotino to the nearby village of Verbovoe. Russian soldiers fired a Kornet anti-tank missile, hitting the top of the Challenger 2's turret and burning the tank to ashes.
"The missile operator appears to have used the air-to-air attack capability. The multi-explosive Kornet missile was activated above the Challenger 2 turret, a location with thin armor and no additional protection," wrote editor Axe.
The attack appears to have ignited the Challenger 2's artillery shells, which were stored in a special compartment designed to prevent secondary explosions. However, this compartment seems ineffective, as the shell explosion caused the Challenger 2's turret to be displaced from the hull, although it wasn't blown away like on the Russian T-72 tank.
"This is a bad situation for the Challenger 2, as it took two consecutive hits. The first was an anti-tank mine damaging the tracks, rendering the Challenger 2 immobile, followed by a hit to the top of the turret," Axe wrote. "This appears to be a tactic for destroying Challenger 2 tanks that Russian soldiers have discovered."
A Challenger 2 tank is destroyed near the village of Rabotino, Zaporizhzhia province, in a video released on September 5th. Video: Twitter/OSINTtechnical
The Challenger 2 main battle tank, developed by the British in the late 1980s, is equipped with a 120 mm main gun. It is the only NATO tank to use a rifled barrel, as the British Army preferred the use of high-explosive flexible hull (HESH) rounds over the armor-piercing fragmentation projectiles (APFSDS) commonly used with smoothbore guns.
HESH rounds have a superior range compared to APFSDS, achieving high effectiveness against fortified structures or lightly armored vehicles such as enemy infantry fighting vehicles. However, their penetration capability is inferior to kinetic energy rounds and they are almost ineffective against the composite armor of modern main battle tanks.
This tank model weighs 62.5 tons and is equipped with a V-12 diesel engine producing over 1,200 horsepower, allowing it to reach a top speed of 59 km/h on paved roads and 40 km/h off-road.
Nguyen Tien (According to Forbes )
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