Ukraine is getting a special Leopard tank from Belgium—an old German-made Leopard 1A5 with a new automated turret designed to outmaneuver Russian drones. It’s a test asset that could revolutionize Ukrainian tank warfare against Russia’s drone threats.
If Ukrainian troops like it, and Kyiv can afford it, this Belgian-modified Leopard 1A5 could lead to a whole new class of Ukrainian tanks better equipped for drone warfare.
Belgium has pledged an additional $1 billion in military aid to Ukraine. This aid package includes medical equipment, portable drone-detection equipment, night-vision goggles, 16,000 guns, 20 Cerberus counter-drone systems, and what the newspaper De Tijd described as “a Leopard battle tank with a new gun turret for testing purposes.”
This Leopard 1A5 upgrade represents Belgium’s contribution to Ukraine’s evolving anti-drone tank strategy.
Leopard 1A5 gets Belgian upgrade for drone warfare in Ukraine
It’s a clear reference to the Cockerill 3105, a product of John Cockerill Defense in Belgium. The Cockerill 3105 is a plug-and-play turret combining a 105-millimeter main gun with a machine gun, day and night sensors and smoke grenades and other defenses, all in a two-person aluminum turret with an autoloader for the main gun. This upgrade could give Ukrainian Leopard 1A5 tanks a critical advantage against Russian drone swarms.
The Belgian firm has sold similar turrets to India and Indonesia, but this marks the first deployment in Ukraine’s drone warfare environment.
Where most Western-style tanks have four crew—a commander, a gunner, a loader, and a driver—a Leopard 1A5 with a Cockerill 3105 turret has just three crew. The one-person reduction in crew, along with Cockerill’s decision to use ballistic aluminum instead of steel, shaves tons of weight off a vehicle fitted with the new turret.
For Ukrainian tank crews facing Russian drones, this weight reduction could be life-saving.
A lighter Leopard tank is nimbler—and that’s critical for Ukrainian crews. Russian drones are everywhere all the time over the 700-mile front line of Russia’s 39-month-long war on Ukraine—and they’re now the biggest threat to Ukrainian tanks, including the Leopard 1A5 fleet.
“No Russian tank would survive”: German Leopard 2A4 withstands 10 FPV drone strikes in Ukraine
Ukrainian tank tactics against Russian drones
Ukrainian tank crews tend to hide their Leopard tanks, leaving protective shelters only briefly to fire a few rounds against Russian positions.
The speedy Leopard 1A5, which owing to its thin armor weighs just 40 tons—21 tons less than a better-protected Leopard 2A4—is particularly suited to this kind of combat against Russian drones, according to the Ukrainian army’s 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion, which retrieves, repairs and returns to the front line all manner of damaged armored vehicles.
“After making the shot that may disclose the Ukrainian tank’s position, a Leopard 1A5 can quickly roll back to cover,” the 508th SRRB explained. “It is true that the armor of the first Leopard is really weak, but it doesn’t matter if the Russian drone operators don’t even have time to see it.”
A lighter turret would make the Ukrainian Leopard 1A5 even faster against Russian drones.
“We are responding to a gap in the needs of the armored land forces,” Frank Jansens, the General Manager of Weapon Systems at John Cockerill Defense, explained at a trade show. “You have light armored vehicles up to 30 tons, and then you have the very heavy main battle tanks—50, 60 tons and up. We are in the middle.”
As a bonus, the Cockerill 3105’s gun elevates up to 41 degrees. That’s 20 degrees higher than the gun on a standard Leopard 1A5.
“No other 105- or 120[-millimeter] cannon can do that,” Jansens said. “This gave us the ability not to have only direct fire but also indirect fire—we can fire in artillery function. We can hit targets up to a distance of 10 kilometers.”
That’s several kilometers farther than an unmodified Leopard 1A5 can fire, giving Ukrainian forces a significant range advantage in the drone warfare environment.
Shooting from farther away helps protect Ukrainian Leopard tanks from the most dangerous Russian first-person-view drones, which tend to range just a few kilometers under normal circumstances before they outdistance their command signals. Radio repeaters fitted to Russian drones or balloons can extend the FPVs’ effective range, but these repeaters are expensive for Russian forces.
Ukraine’s growing Leopard tank fleet
Ukraine is getting 170 of the 1980s-vintage Leopard 1A5 tanks from a Danish-Dutch-German consortium and adding additional armor and anti-drone cages before assigning them to front-line brigades against Russian forces. In the approximately 18 months since the first Leopard 1s arrived in Ukraine, the Russians have hit 17 of the tanks, destroying 13.
Even taking into account a steady drumbeat of losses to Russian forces, the old German Leopard 1A5 is set to become Ukraine’s most numerous Western tank.
That makes these Leopard tanks prime candidates for deep upgrades against Russian drone threats, potentially in the form of the new Belgian turret.
It’s unclear how much a hundred or so turrets might cost to upgrade Ukraine’s Leopard 1A5 fleet, however. India is spending nearly $6 million apiece for several hundred new light tanks with Cockerill 3105 turrets, but that price includes the hulls, as well.
Kyiv might not be terribly eager to spend potentially tens of millions of dollars on new turrets for their Leopard tanks when that money could pay for more urgent wartime needs against Russian forces: manpower, for instance.
The calculus might be different in peacetime, however. If most of Ukraine’s Leopard 1A5 tank fleet survives the wider war against Russia, new turrets might prolong the Ukrainian tanks’ usefulness in a post-war environment where drone warfare capabilities continue to evolve.
Technology is Ukraine’s chance to win the war. This is why we’re launching the David vs. Goliath defense blog to support Ukrainian engineers who are creating innovative battlefield solutions and are inviting you to join us on the journey.
Our platform will showcase the Ukrainian defense tech underdogs that are Ukraine’s hope to win in the war against Russia, giving them the much-needed visibility to connect them with crucial expertise, funding, and international support. Together, we can give David the best fighting chance he has.
Join us in building this platform — become a Euromaidan Press Patron. As little as $5 monthly will boost strategic innovations that could succeed where traditional approaches have failed.
