- Ukraine is getting 170 Leopard 1A5 tanks from a European consortium
- Most fight as tanks, but some are becoming air defense vehicles—built in Rome, paid for with frozen Russian money
- A second program swaps in an unmanned Belgian turret and drops the crew to three
- Europe's warehouses hold enough spare hulls to feed both
Ukraine has lost a quarter of its German-designed Leopard 1A5 tanks. But it could get many more of the nimble, 40-ton tanks. And some could have brand-new turrets that make them lighter, faster, farther-shooting, and more survivable.
The hulls are 1980s West German. The refurbishment is done in Germany, the air defense turrets are built in Rome, the tank turrets are designed in Belgium, and one of the two programs is paid for out of frozen Russian assets. Ukraine's newest armored vehicles are being assembled from the leftovers of a war Europe spent forty years preparing for and never fought.
In 2023, a German-Danish-Dutch consortium pledged 170 Leopard 1A5s to Ukraine. The 1980s-vintage tanks have come from German, Danish, and Belgian surplus stocks.
Refurbished in Germany by tank-maker Rheinmetall and fitted with add-on anti-drone armor in Ukraine, the first 135 or so Leopard 1A5s now equip at least five units: the 44th Mechanized Brigade, 5th Heavy Mechanized Brigade, the 425th Assault Regiment, the 142nd Mechanized Brigade, and the 13th National Guard Brigade.
Losses have been heavy. The Russians have struck no fewer than 37 of the four-person tanks, destroying at least 30 of them. The 44th Mechanized Brigade, which is fighting a defensive action south of the cities of Kramatorsk and Sloviansk in eastern Ukraine's Donetsk Oblast, has been hit the hardest. The brigade has written off around half of its original allotment of 31 or so Leopard 1A5s.
Another 35 Leopard 1A5s from the 2023 pledge should eventually reach Ukrainian units, potentially making good those losses.
But Kyiv is diverting some of those initial 170 Leopard 1A5s to a pair of conversion programs that are reinforcing Ukraine's air defense while also re-equipping the ground forces with a new generation of tank.
The first conversion program, overseen by Rheinmetall, plucks the old turrets with their 105-millimeter cannons off some Leopard 1A5s and drops in a new turret with a faster-firing 35-millimeter anti-aircraft gun. Effectively a next-generation Gepard, the resulting Skyranger 35 is a mobile, armored drone-killer that can post up between Russian drone launch sites and Ukrainian cities in order to down incoming Geran drones before they can strike.
Its revolver cannon fires 1,000 rounds a minute out to 4 km, using airburst ammunition that scatters tungsten pellets in the path of an incoming drone. An unnamed EU country is paying for the systems out of proceeds from frozen Russian assets, and Rheinmetall builds them at its subsidiary in Rome. Germany's own army has ordered 19 and is discussing hundreds more; Ukraine's arrived first.
The first imagery of a Skyranger 35 in Ukrainian service circulated online this week, with the 1020th Anti-Aircraft Missile Regiment.
Old tank, new turret
The second conversion program won't produce combat-ready vehicles for another year or so. This program will swap out the turrets on 31 Leopard 1A5s. The new turret, produced by John Cockerill Defense in Belgium, is unmanned: the commander and gunner move down into the hull alongside the driver, and an autoloader replaces the human loader. That drops the crew from four to three and takes everyone out of the part of the tank most likely to be hit.
The new turret is welded from ballistic aluminum instead of steel, shaving three tons off the tank's 40 and freeing weight for reactive armor, anti-drone netting, or electronic warfare kit.
As a bonus, the 105-millimeter gun in the multi-million-dollar Cockerill 3105 turret also elevates far higher than the gun in the existing turret—42 degrees, against roughly 20 on the original. That confers greater range when a tank functions as artillery, firing its cannon at targets over the horizon: Cockerill says no other Western main battle tank can shoot indirectly the way this one does, and Ukrainian trials reached 10 km from a covered position.
Kyiv has ordered 30 of the turrets and holds one more it bought for testing last year. Some time in 2027, that is a battalion of new medium tanks: a cutting-edge turret on a chassis built when Leonid Brezhnev was alive.
To provide hulls for the 31 Cockerill-converted Leopard 1A5s while also sustaining the Skyranger 35 program, Ukraine must make a choice. Combined, the two programs need potentially 50 or more tank chassis, but just 35 Leopard 1A5s from the initial 170-tank pledge are still in the queue for delivery to Ukraine.
Russia took the cages off its newest tanks. The new Arena-M shield bought them a few minutes.
Ukraine's ground forces are already short on tanks; taking Leopard 1A5s from the five brigades and regiments that operate the type could deprive those units of desperately needed firepower. Fortunately for Ukraine, there are still hundreds of old Leopard 1A5s in warehouses in Europe and farther abroad—and Rheinmetall is pulling the Skyranger hulls from storage rather than from Ukraine's active fleet.
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French historian Stevius made a count and concluded "the stocks in Europe are far from exhausted." As recently as 2022, German firm Flensburger Fahrzeugbau Gesellschaft held 99 Leopard 1A5s. Rheinmetall held 88 of the tanks in 2022 and, in 2023, bought 50 more from OIP Land Systems in Belgium. That's 237 tanks: 67 more than the Europeans pledged to the Ukrainians in 2023.
Some of those 67 excess Leopard 1A5 hulls are unusable owing to rust and other wear and tear. Even so, there should be enough Leopard 1A5s left in Europe to feed the Skyranger and Cockerill conversion efforts. And once those run out, there are still some ex-Italian and ex-Greek Leopard 1A5s that Ukraine could acquire.
And if it can secure the financing, Ukraine could convert those additional tanks—or even some of its existing ones—into faster, farther-firing Leopard 1A5s with Cockerill C3105 turrets. Cockerill has already proposed doing the whole active fleet, around 100 tanks.
