Bad news for Ukrainian interests comes from the battlefield. Russia has destroyed one of the British Challenger 2 battle tanks that the United Kingdom sent to Ukraine, according to a video circulating on social networks and echoed by the English newspaper Guardian.
The Challenger 2 is not just any armored vehicle; It is considered the ‘invincible’ tank, since, according to the aforementioned British media, it would be the first time that one of them has been destroyed in combat since it was deployed for the first time in 1994. There is only one precedent for the destruction of a Challenger 2 tank on the battlefield, but it was due to a friendly fire incident in Iraq in 2003.
In the video (recorded from a car trying to flee the battlefield) you can see how the Challenger 2, with its characteristic cannon, is engulfed in flames and thick gray smoke. This historic event from a military point of view has taken place, according to Russia, in the Zaporizhia region, where it assures that the situation is “tense.”
It was in January of this year when the Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, Rishi Sunak, confirmed the shipment to Ukraine of a batch of 14 of these tanks that, until now, were ‘invincible’.
A tank to destroy other tanks
The Challenger 2 is a tank whose main task is to destroy other tanks. Therefore, as stated The reasonone of its great virtues is its great firepower.
The armored vehicle has a 120 mm L30A1 rifled cannon as its main armament (it holds the distance record for destroying another battle tank). In addition, the strong protection that makes the Challenger 2 (almost) invincible, a world-class Dorchester 2 armor, is also notable.
Although the tank is slightly slower than others (59 kilometers per hour top speed), the precision and lethality offered by its leading global military technology more than makes up for that small lack of speed.
The weight of the Challenger 2 battle tank is 62.5 tons, although ready for combat it increases to 75 tons due to the incorporation of additional armor modules, and its autonomy is 550 kilometers off-road with internal fuel.
