It Took 19 Months for Ukraine's Allies to Send 58 Leopard 1A5 Tanks
That's pretty embarrassing
It took 19 months, but it seems Ukraine has received enough Leopard 1A5 tanks to equip nearly two battalions or six companies.
On Sept. 6, German defense minister Boris Pistorius told Der Spiegel Germany has sent 58 of the 40-ton, four-person Leopard 1A5s out of at least 155 of the tanks Germany, Denmark and Belgium have pledged to Ukraine.
At full strength, a Ukrainian tank battalion has 31 tanks. A company might have just 10. It’s possible ex-German Leopard 1A5s and ex-Danish 1A5DKs equip the Ukrainian army’s 44th Mechanized Brigade and 5th Tank Brigade; some ex-Belgian 1A5BEs apparently equip the 59th Motorized Brigade.
Nineteen months to deliver 58 tanks to no more than three brigades is pretty embarrassing, but not unusual for Ukraine’s ill-prepared allies. It took the United States nine months to hand over 31 M-1A1 Abrams tanks to the Ukrainian army’s 47th Mechanized Brigade.
The Danes blamed the Germans. “The reason is that we had problems repairing the tanks,” Danish acting defense minister Troels Lund Poulsen told Danish newspaper Jyllands-Posten in April. “The Germans were delayed with their repairs.”
But the Germans could argue that, after many years of storage, the 1980s-vintage Leopard 1A5s with their 105-millimeter main guns were in worse material shape than their donors expected. Worse shape than German firm Rheinmetall quickly could fix. Part of the problem has been a serious shortage of spare parts for tanks—a shortage that also afflicts Ukraine’s newer Leopard 2 tanks.
Late tanks are better than no tanks, and the Ukrainians surely welcome the delayed Leopard 1A5s. Up-armored with reactive armor blocks in some cases, the Leopard 1A5s are finally in action. We know this because the 44th Mechanized Brigade seems to have lost at least two of them so far this year in positional fighting in eastern Ukraine. Another Leopard 1A5 was damaged.
To support the delivered Leopard 1A5s, Rheinmetall has set up a repair facility somewhere in Ukraine. That means it’s probably unnecessary for the Ukrainian army to ship damaged Leopard 1A5s to foreign facilities like it’s had to do with its Leopard 2s and M-1s. Local support should get repaired tanks back into action faster.
In February, the consortium providing Leopard 1A5s to Ukraine will turn two years old. By then the pace of deliveries should have picked up. In announcing Germany had sent 58 Leopard 1A5s, Pistorius added that another 77 of the tanks were due to ship in the coming months.
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