One Ukrainian Leopard 2A4 tank somewhere in eastern Ukraine survived what would have been certain death for any Russian tank—10 first-person-view (FPV) drone strikes that triggered an ammunition explosion. The tank rolled another 500 meters before coming to a stop, according to the 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion.
“No Soviet/Russian tank would survive after an ammo detonation,” the battalion observed. The tank “will return to the battlefield after repairs.
Ukraine has received, as donations from a consortium of its NATO allies, as many as 73 German-made Leopard 2A4 tanks. On no fewer than 50 occasions since the first of the 61-ton, four-person tanks reached the front line, they’ve run over Russian mines or been struck by Russian anti-tank missiles, drones, or artillery.
But the analysts at Oryx, who scrutinize battlefield imagery to confirm vehicle losses, believe the Ukrainians have lost just 12 Leopard 2A4s. The other 51 are still active, equipping at least two brigades, the veteran 33rd Mechanized Brigade and the newly organized 155th Mechanized Brigade.
The merits of Western-style tanks, and their advantages over the Soviet-designed contemporaries, are well-known. Western tanks such as the Leopard 2A4 tend to have better optics and fire controls. But it’s their protection that makes them so durable. And no one understands that better than the soldiers with the Ukrainian army’s 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion, whose job it is to fetch damaged tanks, fix them up, and return them to the front line.
The 508th SRRB has worked on most if not all the Ukrainian army’s many tank models, including German Leopards, Soviet T-64s and T-72s and, of course, the Leopard 2A4s the army converted into uniquely Ukrainian Leopard 2A4V models by adding reactive armor blocks and bolt-on anti-drone cages.
But as the battalion has noted, it’s the Leopard 2A4’s ammunition stowage that’s the key to its survivability. Unlike Soviet tanks that keep their 125-millimeter main gun rounds in a carousel directly underneath the turret, the Leopard 2A4 keeps its own 120-millimeter rounds in two spaces: a compartment in the hull near the driver, and another compartment in the back of the turret.
Most crews decline to use the hull stowage. They prefer the safety offered by solely using the turret stowage, even if that means a reduction in the tank’s 42-shell capacity. Unlike the hull compartment, the turret compartment has a blow-out panel. When a Leopard 2A4 gets hit and the ammo cooks off, it explodes outward instead of inward—toward the crew and the tank’s electronics and engine.
It doesn’t always work, as the Turkish army discovered when it lost some Leopard 2A4s in Syria. Popular tank Youtuber Broń Pancerna Świata noted one damaged Turkish Leopard that continued to burn even after its ammo burst through the blowout panels. Apparently unattended by the crew, which bailed out, the fire spread to an adjacent electronics space and burned out the tank.
Lucky tank
One Ukrainian Leopard 2A4 somewhere in eastern Ukraine was luckier—or better looked after by its crew. The 508th SRRB retrieved the tank after it was hit by 10 Russian first-person-view drones that triggered a blast in its turret ammo stowage.
The durability of Ukraine’s German-made tanks—several hundred Leopard 1A5s, Leopard 2A4s, Leopard 2A6s, and Strv 122s—helps to sustain Ukraine’s armor corps as Russia’s wider war on Ukraine grinds into its fourth year.
But that doesn’t mean the tanks are decisive in Ukraine’s defensive efforts all along the 700-mile front line. As small drones improve and proliferate, tank crews on both sides are becoming more and more paranoid—and spending more time hiding in built-up areas between brief missions, firing a few main gun rounds at distant targets.
It’s a new “era of the cautious tank,” according to David Kirichenko, an analyst with the Center for European Policy Analysis in Washington, D.C. Recognizing that, the Ukrainian army is poised to significantly reduce its tank force structure as it reorganizes into a new corps-based force in the coming months. Perhaps by half.
