In Ukraine, Drones Are Forcing Tank Crews to Become More Cautious. The Old German Leopard 1 Is Good For This Kind of Fighting.

The Leopard 1A5V works best as 'mobile sniper tank,' one battalion insisted.

A Ukrainian Leopard 1A5V. 44th Mechanized Brigade photo

The Ukrainian army’s 508th Separate Repair and Restoration Battalion retrieves, repairs and returns to the front line all manner of damaged armored vehicles.

Riding in American-made Oshkosh heavy trucks on tense recovery missions near the drone-infested front line, and then spending long hours bending metal and turning wrenches to fix battle-damaged tanks and fighting vehicles, the battalion has become intimately familiar with practically everything in the Ukrainian inventory that rolls on rubber tired or crawls on metal treads.

So believe the battalion when it praises a German-made tank with an otherwise mixed reputation: the 1960s-vintage Leopard 1, upgraded to A5-standard in the 1980s.

The 40-ton, four-person tank boasts a reliable 105-millimeter main gun and accurate fire controls, but its armor is thin compared to other tanks: just 70 millimeters thick at its thickest. That’s a third the protection a contemporary T-72 enjoys.

Still, “it is too early to write off this tank as a scrap metal,” the 508th SRRB explained in an official video. “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.”

A German-Dutch-Danish consortium has pledged 170 Leopard 1s to Ukraine, drawing the old vehicles from surplus Belgian, Danish and German stocks and refurbishing them for onward transfer. The Ukrainian army further upgrades the tanks with add-one reactive armor and anti-drone cages, transforming them into Leopard 1A5Vs.

The add-on armor weighs down and slightly slows the otherwise nimble Leopard 1—but that’s a small price to pay. “Drones are the biggest threat to tanks nowadays so we had to take necessary steps even though the extra weight slightly impaired mobility,” the 508th SRRB noted.

Of the hundred or so Leopard 1s the Germans, Dutch and Danes have delivered since late 2023, the Russians have hit 17 of them, destroying 13.

Acceptable losses

The 508th SRRB considers that an acceptable rate of loss—and credits the crews of the three or so army and national guard brigades that operate the tanks. “There are reasons to believe that they are being used properly,” the restoration battalion stated.

The Leopard 1A5V works best as “mobile sniper tank,” the 508th SRRB asserted.

“A well-trained crew can fire 10 rounds per minute while its Russian opponents fire six to 10 rounds. Add a modern fire control system that allows accurate fire from a distance of [2.5 miles] during the day and about [1.9 miles] at night and you get a real hunter capable of taking down prey that doesn't even know it's being hunted.”

Given the growing threat from tiny drones that are everywhere all the time along the front line of Russia’s 39-month wider war on Ukraine, tank crews on both sides tend to hide their vehicles in dugouts or urban areas, rolling out only to fire a few 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.

The Leopard 1 is good at this kind of combat. “After taking the shot that may disclose the tank’s position, a Leopard can quickly roll back to cover,” the 508th SRRB explained. “It is true the armor of the first Leopard is really weak, but it doesn't matter if the enemy even has no time to see it.”

While suited to quick fire missions from concealed positions, the Leopard 1A5V isn’t necessarily appropriate for other tasks that heavier tanks might perform: direct assaults on defended positions and close combat with enemy armor, for instance.

“It is safe to say that the concept of a mobile sniper tank is quite successful and effective, although not very versatile,” the 508th SRRB concluded.

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