A photo that circulated online last week confirms it: the Ukrainian army’s 142nd Mechanized Brigade is the latest unit to operate Leopard 1A5 tanks. The vehicles were built in the 1960s and heavily upgraded in the 1980s.
The 40-ton, four-person Leopard 1A5 boasts a reliable 105-millimeter main gun and accurate fire controls, but its armor—just 70 millimeters thick at its thickest—is thin compared to other tanks. That’s a third the protection a contemporary T-72 enjoys.
Still, “it is too early to write off this tank as scrap metal,” insisted the Ukrainian army’s 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion, which repairs damaged armored vehicles. “It just so happened that it first met the opponent it was designed to fight 60 years later—and it’s a completely different tank now, to be fair.”
It’s completely different because it now rolls into battle with at least two extra layers of armor: bricks of explosive reactive armor attached directly to the hull and turret and, over the reactive armor, a skirt of anti-drone netting.
The reactive armor explodes outward when struck, potentially deflecting explosive munitions. The netting catches incoming first-person-view drones before they can strike the tank.
The add-on armor works. Back in January, one Ukrainian Leopard 1A5 survived at least eight hits by Russian FPVs before potentially three more explosive FPV drones finally finished it off. It’s unusual for a single vehicle to draw the attention of 11 FPVs.
All that extra protection gives Ukrainian Leopard 1A5 crews the confidence to engage Russian troops at close range—something fewer and fewer tanks do in Ukraine as Russia’s wider war of aggression grinds into its 41st month.
The growing threat from tiny drones, which are everywhere all the time along the 1,100-km front line, compels tank crews on both sides to hide their vehicles in dugouts or buildings, rolling out only to fire a few rounds at distant targets.
Sniper mode
That’s a mode of fighting the Leopard 1A5 is pretty good at. The Leopard 1A5 works best as a “mobile sniper tank,” the 508th SRRB explained.
“A well-trained crew can fire 10 rounds per minute while its Russian opponents fire six to 10 rounds, the battalion noted. “Add a modern fire control system that allows accurate fire from a distance of 4 km during the day and about 3 km at night and you get a real hunter capable of taking down prey that doesn’t even know it’s being hunted.”
But as Russia extends its summer offensive, attacking all along the front line and making incremental gains in Sumy and Donetsk Oblast, some Leopard 1A5 crews have had no choice but to fight close.
On June 18, a powerful Russian force—around a dozen up-armored BMPs and other vehicles—rolled northeast from the village of Novoolenivka in Donetsk Oblast, heading for the village of Yablunivka, the next stop on the road to the town of Kostyantynivka, a top Russian objective in the east.
The Ukrainian 36th Marine Brigade and 12th Azov Brigade spotted the approaching vehicles—and hit them with drones and potentially other munitions, halting the mechanized attack.
But a few Russian infantry managed to sneak forward and gain a lodgement around Yablunivka. A drone from the Ukrainian 5th Heavy Mechanized Brigade spotted the Russians—and one of the brigade’s Leopard 1A5s counterattacked.
The tank engaged the Russians with its main gun from just meters away. “Clear work, accurate fire and cold calculation,” the 5th Heavy Mechanized Brigade crowed.
In addition to the 142nd Mechanized Brigade and 5th Heavy Mechanized Brigade, five other brigades or regiments possess Leopard 1A5s: the Rubizh Brigade, the 21st Mechanized Brigade, the 44th Mechanized Brigade, the 68th Jaeger Brigade and the 425th Assault Regiment.
It’s possible each unit has just a single company with a dozen or so tanks. Those 84 assigned tanks would account for almost every since Leopard 1A5 that’s currently active in Ukraine. A German-Dutch-Danish consortium has pledged 170 of the tanks, and around 103 have shipped. Of those, at least 13 have been lost in action.
Ukrainian troops might have to wait for more Leopard 1A5s to ship before they equip an eighth brigade or regiment with the swift, accurate-firing tanks.
