It Took Nearly Two Years, But Large Numbers Of German-Made Leopard 1 Tanks Are Finally Arriving In Ukraine
Almost as many of the tanks shipped between September and December as shipped between September and the summer of 2023.
David Axe
Forbes
December 27, 2024
It took German industry an eyebrow-raising 19 months to refurbish and deliver the first 58 of at least 155 Leopard 1A5 tanks a German-led consortium has pledged to Ukraine. But the three-country consortium—Germany, The Netherlands and Belgium—has apparently resolved parts shortages and is finally picking up the pace.
Since those first 58 Leopard 1A5s arrived through early September, an additional 45 of the 40-ton tanks have been shipped.
The delivery schedule matters. The four-person Leopard 1A5 is set to become the most numerous Western-made tank in Ukraine, outnumbering the 104 newer German-made Leopard 2s, 80 American-made M-1s and paltry 14 British-made Challenger 2s.
Moreover, the Ukrainian general staff has already assigned the Challenger 2s, M-1s and Leopard 2s to their respective brigades. The Leopard 1s are the only Western tanks that are available to equip the dozen or so new heavy brigades the Ukrainians have formed in recent months. A Ukrainian mechanized brigade typically has a single tank battalion with 31 tanks.
Berlin announced the delivery of the most recent batch of 15 Leopard 1s on Monday. Along with the tanks, the Germans shipped armored trucks, artillery, air-defense equipment and substantial quantities of ammunition—adding to the nearly 7 billion Euros in aid Germany has sent to Ukraine since Russia widened its war on the country 34 months ago.
The 1980s-vintage Leopard 1 isn’t a new tank, but neither is it the oldest tank in the Ukrainian inventory. And while it’s light—and lightly armored—compared to, say, a 69-ton M-1, it boasts a reliable 105-millimeter main gun and an accurate EMES-18 fire-control system. The Ukrainians have done their best to mitigate the type’s greatest flaw, its thin protection, by adding blocks of reactive armor and anti-drone netting.
The additions appear to be helping. Of the 58 Leopard 1s the Ukrainians received between July 2023 and early September, just six have been confirmed destroyed. At the same time, it’s apparent the Ukrainians have been reluctant to send the Leopard 1s to the most dangerous sectors of the front. For recent local counterattacks in Kursk Oblast in western Russia, Ukrainian brigades rounded up their few surviving M-1s and Leopard 2A6s.
The Leopard 1 crews have expressed confidence in their German-made mounts, flaws and all. To reduce the risk of 105-millimeter rounds cooking off in the turret after an enemy hit, Leopard 1
crews stow only a few of the tank’s 42 rounds in the turret: the rest are tucked into the hull. To reload, the tank “must roll back to a safe location,” one loader explained to a Ukrainian journalist. “This takes time.”
Still, the loader said he felt “great” about crewing a Leopard 1. That’s fortunate, as he’ll soon have a lot of company in Ukraine’s growing Leopard 1 corps.
David Axe – Forbes Staff. Aerospace & Defense. He is a journalist, author and filmmaker based in Columbia, South Carolina. Axe founded the website War Is Boring in 2007 as a webcomic, and later developed it into a news blog. He enrolled at Furman University and earned a bachelor’s degree in history in 2000. Then he went to the University of Virginia to study medieval history before transferring to and graduating from the University of South Carolina with a master’s degree in fiction in 2004.