Free the Leopards

An Evaluation of Western Wunderwaffen in the Ukraine War (Part 4)

With only a few possible exceptions, no Western systems experienced a more bombastic and sustained hype cycle than the three modern Main Battle Tanks sent to Ukraine: the German Leopard 2, the British Challenger 2, and the American Abrams. Each of these vehicles has its own distinct story. Still, observers of the war will know that the Leopard's history in Ukraine is the most interesting and had the largest ramifications for both that war and modern peer war in general – because it is inseparable from the story of the 2023 Ukrainian Summer Offensive. I'll cover the Leopard 2 and the offensive in this article before providing a supplement that tells the story of the Challenger 2 and Abrams. Buckle up because this is a long one.

If you haven't seen the previous articles in this series, you can start with part one below.

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Krauss-Maffei Leopard 2 Kampfpanzer

• First referred to as a game changer: September 2022

• Appearance in Ukraine: June 2023

• Country of origin: Germany

• Unit Cost: $6M-11M

• Number sent: >84 delivered, 158 pledged

• Manufacturer market cap: Joint holding company, KMW annual revenue >$1.6B

The Hype

In a relative sense, Germany's posture in the initial stages of the conflict in Ukraine was one of moderation. Chancellor Olaf Scholz had shocked the country in a speech shortly after the war's inception by announcing a special $100B fund for the Bundeswher and that Germany would play a leading role in supporting Ukraine. However, compared to the Americans and British, Scholz's government hesitated to provide even heavy defensive weaponry like AA guns (like the Gepard) or MLRS systems (like the Mars). While these systems were eventually pledged to Ukraine in the summer of 2022, Scholz had already acquired a reputation as a waffler and foot-dragger by then.

There are countries from which we are awaiting deliveries, and other countries for which we have grown tired of waiting. Germany belongs to the second group. Dmytro Kuleba, MFA Ukraine, May 2022

Scholz and his party, the SPD, had been subjected to enormous domestic pressure from their opposition, the center-right CDU, and the other members of NATO. Member states were beginning to pledge weapons from their stocks, but many were made in Germany. Procurement agreements stipulated that the Germans had to sign off on transfers of those weapons, so the perception was that not only was Germany dragging its own feet, it was holding back much of Europe's ability to provide aid to Ukraine.

Every single weapon that reached Ukraine earlier could have turned the tide of war in favor of Kyiv. - Der Spiegel, June 2022

Scholz was adhering to a longstanding tradition in Germany – once called "The State with No Enemies" – and in much of Europe to err on the side of diplomacy over war. Economic matters played a role, too. German energy policy planning conceived under former Chancellor Angela Merkel had counted on a steady supply of cheap Russian natural gas to feed the country's vital manufacturing industry. With Germany's foreign intelligence service, the BND, predicting that the AFU defense was likely to collapse, there were hopes within the German government that those economic links might one day be restored. Without Russian energy, it wasn't clear how the German manufacturing colossus would thrive as it had in preceding decades.

Supplying heavy weapons, especially ones that could be used in offensive operations, might escalate the war, alienate the Russians, and result in a permanent rift between East and West. From Scholz's perspective, doing this might not be in Germany's strategic interest. A response from the Russians was also a concern. Even if a direct attack on Germany was unlikely, cyber-attacks, industrial sabotage, and assassinations were possibilities. The Germans were well aware they were within Moscow's reach.

The Russian attack on Ukraine has led Germany to reverse decades of foreign and security policy. Suddenly, Europe's pacifist giant has been forced to adopt a more military posture - Der Spiegel, September 2022

But with more eager partners like the Netherlands waiting for their approval, Scholz's government was caught between a rock and a hard place. When the Americans began applying pressure, it became too much for Scholz to bear. The Germans were forced to break the longstanding taboo, and started allowing countries like the Netherlands to transfer German-made howitzers and missiles to Ukraine at the same time they announced they'd start sending their own.

Scholz and Zelensky in Berlin

Western-made tanks and IFVs, however, remained off-limits. This "tank embargo" was universal among Ukraine's Western partners. The German, American, French, and British governments issued similar statements saying MBTs wouldn't be sent. This was an especially hard line for the Germans, who knew they didn't have the same political influence over the Ukrainians that the Americans and British had. If German tanks somehow found their way onto Russian territory for the first time since the 1940s, the specter of Germany's past could be conjured up again in a way it hadn't in decades. The Ukrainians requested them all the same, calling out Leopard 2A7s specifically in a wishlist they sent the Germans in early May.

As a compromise, the Germans offered "swap deals" in which partner countries with old Soviet tanks could send them to Ukraine in return for replacement Leopards from the Germans. But these countries also wanted the latest 2A7 Leopards, and the Germans had only a few dozen of the model themselves.

To make matters worse, the aid the Germans had pledged to Ukraine seemed to take months longer than it needed to arrive. Each new pledge began to mean less and less, and Scholz's reputation for dragging his feet failed to improve. Pressure mounted steadily in the media, from his political opposition, and even within his own party. The Greens – who before the war had rejected aid to conflict zones on principle – and the FDP adopted full-throated rhetorical postures on Ukraine and began publicly criticizing Scholz. Economics Minister Robert Habeck said they were ready to deliver weapons before the summer's end, and his fellow Green Party members had no issue with weakening the Bundeswehr to do it. The Greens publicly stated they believed Germany's geopolitical interests were being defended at the cost of Ukrainian lives.

Leopard 2s in the Krauss-Maffei production facility in Munich

This may have been true for the Greens – who oppose fossil fuels as a core policy position and at the cost of most else. But for Scholz, who felt responsible for securing Germany's economic future, it wasn't. The pressure campaign would need to be ratcheted up to force his hand.

Murmurs in the Western press said that Scholz's leadership was under question and that he was damaging Germany's reputation as a NATO partner permanently. Oddly, despite having a significant military-industrial complex of their own, the French weren't being subjected to the same pressure. In mid-June, Spain pledged 40 mothballed Leopard 2A4s which had been sitting in storage for a decade. The German government blocked the transfer. The optics were not good – all that was standing between Ukraine and its first modern Main Battle Tanks was Olaf Scholz.

Protesters outside the chancellery in Berlin, January 2023

“Free the Leopards now!” the crowd chanted outside Olaf Scholz’s office on Friday evening. It is a demand that is being made with increasing urgency across Europe, as pressure mounts on Germany to send its prized tanks to Ukraine. - FT, Jan 2023

As NATO planners hashed out the details of Ukraine's still then-secret 2023 counter-offensive, the need for deliveries of MBTs became undeniable. With the UK having pledged their Challenger 2s in early January, criticism of Scholz's obstinance towards sending Leopards reached a fever pitch. His stance was described as "cowardice." Germany had become "a basket case" that was "out of line with the centre of gravity in the EU," and was beginning to look "increasingly lonely." Scholz's leadership was a "catastrophe."

2,000 Leopards were sitting in storage in Europe – much greater numbers than the UK's stock of Challengers – and multiple countries were willing to send them. The clock was running out, too, as Ukraine's supply of ammunition which was compatible with their Soviet tanks would eventually be exhausted. With the embargo on IFVs having been broken already, and the Germans having pledged their Marders, few excuses remained.

Opinion in Germany was split on the matter, but the hawkish minority in the public piled into the pressure campaign against Scholz. The media began to publish photos of crowds holding signs that implored him to "free the Leopards." They said they had invented a new term: "Scholzing," which meant “communicating good intentions, only to use/find/invent any reason imaginable to delay these and/or prevent them from happening." A Twitter account dedicated to posting scantily clad women in leopard print counted the ways to "love your leopard."

With the consistently belligerent UK having already pledged their Challengers, Scholz entered into a game of chicken with the US – who had been reluctant to pledge their Abrams – by demanding the Americans commit first. Scholz didn't want to thumb his nose at Moscow without the US taking some of the heat. The Americans stonewalled, saying that the Abrams was far too complex for the Ukrainians to be trained on. Tensions between Washington and Berlin began to escalate as the Germans applied a pressure campaign of their own to the Americans. Scholz's game of chicken was leaked to the press. Pentagon insiders said they thought Scholz was just looking for another excuse to delay. Voices were raised between the two parties in a watershed meeting at Ramstein Air Base.

In late January of 2023, Scholz finally broke.

"These warmongers! These hawks!" - Olaf Scholz in an internal meeting in January 2023

Scholz announced that 14 Leopard 2A6 – the most widely available variant made after the turn of the millennium – would be arriving in Ukraine in a few months. He had, at least, managed to get the Americans to commit to delivering a batch of Abrams. He also authorized the Poles to send their Leopards to the front. Modern Western MBTs were headed to Ukraine, though the Abrams might not make it there until the end of the year due to their exceptionally grueling training requirements.

Western support for Ukraine has thus reached yet another new level, both militarily and politically. Pressure on Russian President Vladimir Putin will rise, but so too, perhaps, will the chance of pushing Russia completely out of Ukraine.

[Leopard 2s] are widely considered to be top-of-the-line battle tanks. They could, people in several Western capitals believed, then as now, be enough to turn the tide. - Der Spiegel, January 2023

Spain and Sweden joined in, and Ukrainian tankers were dispatched to locations across Europe to train on the platform. The European Council on Foreign Relations eased the discomfort with the idea of German tanks rolling through Ukraine once more by dubbing the effort a sign of European unity and the "Leopard Plan." The excitement in the press was palpable. The Leopard 2's presence in Ukraine didn't just represent an opportunity to demonstrate the superiority of Western armor, it was a chance to show the world the efficacy of NATO combined-arms tactics. The Leopard would be joining Germany's Marder IFV, American M2A2 Bradley IFVs, and French AMX-10 RC tank destroyers. Ukrainian commanders underwent multi-week training programs to learn how to orchestrate offensive operations with their new equipment.

Widely considered to be one of the best MBTs in service today, the Leopard 2 tank could be the game changer Ukraine is hoping for at this point in the invasion. Since the Leopard was initially designed to counter some of the most formidable armored vehicles the Soviet Union produced, the influx of these variants to Ukraine will be paramount to the country’s success. - 1945

The Leopard 2 alone was a game changer, but the sum of all the other vehicles and the tactical training had the potential to not just turn the tide but win the war.

The world had watched in the previous year as Russian tanks were destroyed in droves. Even their most advanced model, the T-90M, had fallen victim to Ukrainian anti-tank weapons and drones. OSINT analysts documented enormous losses of Russian tanks, some counting well into the thousands by mid-2023. The West now saw what would have happened had the unthinkable occurred during the Cold War: the Russian tanks didn't stack up.

“It is clear that battle tanks could provide a game-changing capability to the Ukrainians.” (Ben Wallace, UK Defense Secretary

The Western armor was different, commenters said. While the Leopard 2A6 wasn't battle-tested to the same degree as the Russian tanks, they put the Russian vehicles to shame. The 2A6 didn't have the latest version of the secret "Chobam" armor (rumored to be nigh-invincible) the Challenger 2 and Abrams did, but its own armor was something of a secret, and there were rumors it could go toe-to-toe with the Chobam in terms of durability. It also had blow-out panels on its ammunition storage to ensure its turret wouldn't be launched into the air in the event of an ammo cookoff, like T-72's turret tended to do because of its carousel loader.

Ukrainians training on the platform told the Western press that the Leopard 2A6's significant weight (62.5 tons, 15 tons more than a T-72B) didn't affect the handling, which was "Mercedes-like." Its reverse speed was excellent compared to the T-72's creeping 5 km/h. The automatic gearbox of the Leopard was more like a car's than a huge piece of military machinery's, and the engine started right up like a car's did too. Many older Russian tanks used in the conflict lacked thermal sights, but the 2A6 had 3rd-generation cooled thermals with excellent range and resolution. The Ukrainians said the vehicle was "a sniper rifle." Popular Mechanics called it "badass."

The Leopard's main gun – a Rheinmetall Rh-120 120mm smoothbore was served by "one of the most advanced fire-control systems in the world." The stabilization system of the gun platform was impressive, and videos showing it off were shared widely.

“Imagine a boxer who cannot move freely in the ring, but only in one direction,” he said. “The other boxer, who can move in all directions, has a big advantage and that it is the case with the Leopards.” (Ralf Raths, Pazner Museum)

The Leopard series boasts advantages not just over Russian tanks but Western armor options as well. Its engine runs on diesel, unlike the exceptionally thirsty turbine engine of the Abrams, which prefers jet fuel. Its smoothbore gun has a broader range of ammunition compatibility than the Challengers 2's rifled barrel. And it was available in more significant numbers than the French LeClerc or the Challenger 2.

if you were the enemy, the impressive deep grumble of the tank would have made you aware that something terrifying was headed your way - R.W. Zimmerman

The Ukrainians said they needed 300 modern MBTs to push the Russians out of the country. The International Institute for Strategic Studies said a mere 100 could have a "significant effect" on the war. "In small numbers or large, the Leopard 2 would be a much better tank than anything fielded by the mighty Russian Armed Forces," said Popular Mechanics.

With similar numbers of tanks on both sides, Leopards 2 and similar tanks could give Ukraine the upper hand, especially given the poor tactical performance of Russian troops during the war, [Raths] said. "The Ukrainians shine through creative, dynamic and often very clean warfare," Raths said. "So it could well be that if Ukraine's operational offensive were to begin, the Russians would have real problems countering it."

Now that MBTs were on their way, rumors began to appear that the Ukrainians were preparing for a significant counter-offensive for the spring, which would beat the Russians back and retake Crimea. But the Ukrainians would ideally need months to train on their Leopard 2s and Bradleys. The spring start date came and went, and American officials predicted an early summer kickoff.

The situation was strange. Everyone seemed to know that the counter-offensive was coming, and even Zelensky himself made public statements explaining the delay, saying they hadn't yet amassed enough Western arms deliveries to appropriately guarantee they would take minimal casualties. On the battlefield, modern ISR ensured nothing went unnoticed, so perhaps we were simply seeing how modern warfare looked for the first time. Commentators compared the anticipation to a video game release delayed at the last moment

It was logical, then, that the Russians were preparing. But ISR indicated that they were doing so "using the same type of trench warfare tactics used in World War I." (PBS). Putin's best troops had mostly been wiped out in the previous year of brutal attrition warfare, and the ones holding the WWI-style trenches were poorly trained.

The Russian soldiers had to make do without body armor, shoes, or even, in some cases, food, said The Telegraph (note: this article is a fascinating time capsule). Their commanders had few reservations about throwing away their lives in unsupported mass infantry charges straight into Ukrainian machine gun fire, gruesomely called "meat wave attacks." They went weeks without a bath, and their shabby, Chinese-made clothing typically disintegrated while they were still wearing it. Reports said there weren't enough uniforms to go around, and secondhand outfits still painted red with their previous owner's blood were presented to the next wave of "meat."

Even Russian troops who survived the human wave charges didn't stand much of a chance of doing much damage to the Ukrainians because they were often armed with WWI bolt-action Mosin-Nagant rifles. It was no surprise, then, that the Ukrainians reported the Russians were suffering a staggering 3:1 casualty rate to their Ukrainian counterparts, who were equipped with the latest Western kit. By May of 2023, the Russians had taken a shocking 170,000 casualties, said the Ukrainian MoD. 4,000 Russian tanks had already been destroyed – nearly as many as the United States had in its entire inventory.

“They just charge straight at us, with no infantry discipline at all, and no sense of fear either,” says one US volunteer fighting alongside Ukrainian forces. “Quite often they keep going even after being shot a few times, which makes you wonder if they’re on drugs.”

Russians outside the infantry didn't fare much better than the grunts in the trenches. Corruption was so extensive in the Russian armed forces that the Explosive Reactive Armor meant to protect their tanks had long been stripped off and sold on the black market. The Russian soldiers were stealing from the Ukrainian civilians, too, packing up their washing machines, an appliance many of them had never seen before, and shipping them back to their families. Their rations tasted "like dog meat," said the Ukrainians. Desperate Russian troops ransacked Ukrainian grocery stores, which were "well stocked" with food the Russian soldiers had no chance of getting in their meager rations.

Morale was in the gutter. The Telegraph suggested that a Russian soldier's best hope of escaping the slaughter was for the inevitable collapse of his army to happen as soon as possible. The Russians deployed blocking detachments as they had in WWII to gun down anyone who dared to retreat. The British Ministry of Defense said in May that the Russian army was so degraded that it was no longer capable of conducting major operations at all.

Western tanks — such as the US M1 Abrams, Britain’s Challenger 2 or the German-built Leopard 2 — would give the Ukrainian army additional firepower to smash through Russian defensive lines and seize the military initiative before Moscow can. Moreover, western tanks would give Ukraine an advantage over Russian ones because they have superior armour, more accurate cannon and better control and navigation systems — enabling night-time operations, for example. - FT, Jan 2023

So while the Russians had some warning that a counter-offensive may be coming, the odds were good that Putin's conscripts would simply flee when confronted with a Ukrainian spearhead composed of modern Western MBTs and IFVs using NATO combined-arms maneuver warfare tactics, commentators said. And if they didn't, or their barrier troops forced them back into the fight at gunpoint, their fate was sealed. The Russian defensive lines would be "pulverized" by Ukraine's armored fist, and "Putin's conscripts" would be "swept aside."

The media said that months of training in NATO countries had deprogrammed Ukrainian commanders and overwritten their robotic Soviet training. While the Soviets and their modern Russian counterparts planned operations from the top, ignoring the assessments of their commanders on the ground, NATO training preferred autonomy and adaptability. Soviet doctrine was inflexible, and if things started to go wrong, their units had no choice but to stick to their orders, even if the plan was doomed. This explained their embarrassing failures so far in Ukraine, but with the introduction of Western military vehicles, those failures could prove fatal and end the war permanently. It was clear to the Western commentariat from dispatches from the front lines that the Russians and Ukrainians couldn't be more different. The Ukrainians had the intelligence, morale, and freedom-loving nature to implement NATO doctrine.

The Challenger and Leopard tanks leading the spearhead vastly outmatch what’s left of Russia’s heavy armour, while sophisticated precision artillery is providing withering fire for the advance. Conversely, Russian recruits appear to be given a few days of training, a little ammunition and are then thrown into the meat-grinder with a life expectancy surely measured in days. They might as well be gunning them down on the training fields; it would be faster, cheaper and about as combat effective. - Hamish De Bretton-Gordon, The Telegraph, June 2023

A key element of NATO doctrine was missing: air superiority. But the Russians didn't have it either – their pilots were "hiding in the officers' mess" to avoid certain death from Ukrainian Stingers.

An attacking force of around 60,000 AFU troops, organized into twelve brigades, started to move towards the Zaporozhye direction. Nine of these brigades received extensive deliveries of Western equipment and training from NATO countries. In early June, the Ukrainian government released what was described as the very first "trailer" for a military operation. The video asked the world to join the Ukrainians in operational silence in preparation for their attack, with now-famous images of AFU soldiers putting their fingers to their lips and emitting a shush. The Leopards – several dozen of them were in the hands of the AFU by this time – were about to be let loose.

The Reality

On the 8th of June, 2023, a series of photos and images taken from Russian reconnaissance drones spread across Telegram, and then social media at large. Just as observers had been shocked to see Russian units helplessly struck by TB2 drones a year earlier, they were now confronted with something they'd never seen: massive pileups of disabled and destroyed Western armor, which was left smoking in crater-pocked fields in Zaporozhye oblast.

The reaction to these images was explosive, and the media and commenters online weren't sure how to make sense of it. Perhaps the video was fake, or the tanks were some of the Leopard 2A4s the Ukrainians also had, they said. That variant had been introduced way back in 1984, so it could theoretically be possible that even the Russians could destroy one. As clearer images from the battlefield emerged, tank enthusiasts quickly determined that no, one of the tanks in the pileup was the Leopard 2A6. Could it be that this destroyed grouping was simply armored reconnaissance rather than the actual attack? Ukrainian officials claimed the true counter-offensive had yet to begin. Even into July, Ukrainian Defense Minister Aleksy Reznikov said that the first month was merely "some kind of preparatory operation." But after more evidence of Ukrainian armor losses appeared, the AFU had no choice but to acknowledge that this was the much-anticipated 2023 Counteroffensive. What had gone wrong?

The Ukrainians had been playing a delicate public relations game with the West from the beginning of the war. It was vital to manage Western expectations – due to their dependence on military aid – and this meant painting a picture gloomy enough that their partners would feel the pressure to deliver aid as soon as possible but hopeful enough of eventual victory that the Ukrainians wouldn't be given up on. To achieve this objective, they had fed intelligence to NATO decision-makers that the Russian army was on the verge of collapse. Leaked documents revealed that those same NATO commanders were relying on so-called "Open Source Intelligence" sources to validate the Ukrainian reports. But the OSINT analysts were themselves relying on battlefield images and reports from the Ukrainians. Many of those analysts had also been criticized for double or even triple counting Russian vehicular losses or counting Ukrainian losses as Russian ones (they mostly used the same equipment, after all).

Hawks in NATO and their partners in the defense industry were incentivized to exaggerate the capabilities of their hardware, as they were in an intra-organizational competition to determine who – the Germans, the French, or the Americans – would be providing the bulk of NATO's next-generation tank fleet. The result was an ouroboros of white lies, self-deception, and wishful thinking. And while the West and Ukrainians were convincing themselves that victory was within their grasp, the Russians had been preparing.

Source: Reuters

Russian planners formalized a medium-term strategy in the autumn of 2022: they would dig in and wait for the Ukrainians to attack them. The direction of attack wasn't difficult to predict. The distance from the front line in Zaporozhye to the Sea of Azov was relatively short – only 55 miles in places – and if the Ukrainians could break through Russian defenses and make it to the water, they'd cut the Russian grouping in two and leave Crimea isolated. If the Kerch Bridge, long a target of Ukrainian sabotage operations, could also be taken out, the Russian position in Crimea could become dire.

To prepare, the Russians made a series of painful withdrawals to consolidate their lines, pulling out of a precarious logistical situation in Kherson city. The media portrayed this as a Ukrainian victory, but AFU troops on the ground were confused by the sudden retreat and thought it may have been some kind of trap. Simultaneously, the Russians built the so-called "Surovikin Line," named after the overall commander of their forces in the war, Sergey Surovikin.

Surovikin, or as he was nicknamed because of his strategic missile campaign, "General Armageddon"

The line which protected the Zaporozhye direction was incredibly dense. Over nine months, the Russians steadily mined the open agricultural fields, using remote mining systems to avoid detection. They hid fixed ATGM systems, like the formidable 9M133 Kornet, in the treelines surrounding the fields. While the delays in the start of the offensive ran past the spring of 2023, the fertile Ukrainian soil produced overgrowth that reached over the average soldier's head. Beneath the flora, hundreds of thousands of mines were invisible.

When Ukrainian armored groupings ran headlong into the Russian lines, the results were disastrous. Russian tank ditches and obstacles, which were thought to compose the first line of defense, actually laid behind an additional hidden forward line, which caught the Ukrainians by surprise. While the AFU was attempting to implement combined-arms doctrine offensively, the Russians were implementing it defensively. Ka-52 Alligator attack helicopters, lightly used because they had been proven vulnerable to MANPADS shoulder-fired anti-air missiles like the Stinger, suddenly reappeared in droves. While the Ukrainian armor entered a "fire bag" on the ground, they lurked just over the treetops, miles behind the front and out of reach of Ukrainian AA, engaging the AFU armor with ATGMs. Russian drone teams joined in – sometimes striking the Western equipment half a dozen times to ensure it was indeed destroyed – and producing videos of the mayhem which were shared widely online.

Instead of finding starving, demoralized conscripts manning the Southern Front, the AFU encountered units of the 8th Guards, 49th, and 58th Guards Combined Arms armies, Spetsnaz operators, a brigade of Russian marines, and significant numbers of VDV paratroopers. These units were deployed in a series of interlocking defensive lines designed to follow the local terrain and direct the Ukrainian offensive into kill zones. The operation quickly became bogged down. Instead of big arrow maneuvers pulverizing the Russian lines, the most successful Ukrainian units penetrated only a few kilometers before getting stuck in the same "meat grinders" seen along other parts of the front. The Institute for the Study of War said the troops of the Russian Southern Military District demonstrated an "uncharacteristic degree of coherency." US military officials described the Russians as "more competent" than they had anticipated.

The main thing is this is a completely obvious overestimation of the potential [Leopard 2s] would add to the armed forces of Ukraine. It is yet another fallacy, a rather profound one. These tanks will burn down just like all the other ones. -Dmitry Peskov, Kremlin spokesman

The AFU lost six of their approximately 20 Leopard 2A6s in the first eight weeks of the counteroffensive. Kills were claimed by drones, Krasnopol guided artillery shells, and ATGMs. By late August, Russian Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu said every Leopard 2A4 delivered by Poland and Portugal had suffered at least minor damage.

The results of [NATO] training were mixed. Early on, less experienced units got lost, delayed attacks, in cases lost advantages like the element of surprise, and struggled to make the most of advanced US weapons. Just weeks after the counteroffensive began, Ukrainian forces set aside elements of its Western training, reverting back to its own tactics of using overwhelming firepower and infantry on foot as it struggled to blaze a path through Russian minefields, a necessity for actually retaking ground. - Business Insider

Analysts were hesitant to say the Leopards had underperformed, and they were probably right. While the platform had its shortcomings, it wasn't clear that any tank could have driven over dozens of mines while being struck by ATGMs and drones without suffering the same fate. The Ukrainians hadn't received a complete training course, either. The most die-hard of the believers in Western technological superiority said perhaps the Ukrainians were simply too Soviet in nature to properly execute NATO tactics and use NATO weapons, no matter how long they had been trained.

It was more common to see recent variants of the Leopard disabled rather than destroyed, indicating that its survivability was good, as advertised. A more severe and common failure mode of the platform was for it to "burn down" after being struck, especially from above by FPV drones, making it undriveable. Due to its size, only specialized recovery equipment was capable of retrieving the tanks after the fire damage. But when disabled tanks were left sitting out in the open in the gray zone between Russian and Ukrainian lines, the Ukrainians stood little chance of recovering them.

"Russian helicopters, Russians jets fire at every area, every day." - Ukrainian soldier interviewed from the Southern Front

The Leopard's (and the Bradley's) primary opponent in the Southern Direction was the humble landmine. The Russians had created the most extensive and densest system of minefields seen anywhere since WW2. Anti-tank mines overlapped with anti-personnel mines. Brutal videos of stranded AFU soldiers, unable to move a foot in any direction without risking lost limbs after abandoning their vehicles, were posted by Russian Telegram channels.

While analysts had highlighted the Leopard's advantages over Russian tanks in optics, accuracy, and mobility, observers of the war knew that tank duels were exceptionally rare – to the point of being major news when they were caught on video. The Leopard's slight technological edge was irrelevant when confronting one of the oldest weapons in the world. Mine clearers, including models based on the Leopard, had little luck cutting a path through the Russian minefields. Rollers that had been designed to withstand half a dozen mine detonations were destroyed after only one, because the Russians were stacking mines "on top of each other," the Ukrainians said.

A total loss of a Leopard 2A6 during the Ukrainian counteroffensive

We saw in Normandy in the Second World War that it took seven, eight, nine weeks for the allies to actually break through the defensive lines of the Germans. And so, it is not a surprise that it is not going fast. - Rob Bauer, NATO Military Committee Chair, July 3rd, 2023

Western officials began to publicly acknowledge the reality on the ground by August. The ISW published a rebuttal to their assessments on the 19th, saying that Ukraine still had "many options" for strategic success and that any declaration of failure was "premature." After the end of August, however, mappers found that it had been the most static month in terms of territorial changes of the entire conflict.

The counteroffensive culminated sometime in the late summer or early fall, and the Ukrainian government wound up admitting failure six months after it began. The small gains they had achieved were eventually mostly rolled back by the Russians through the rest of 2023 and 2024. AFU chief Valery Zaluzhny angrily said that NATO calculations had shown that the AFU would be able to advance by 30km a day. A video interview of an incredulous Ukrainian who had undergone NATO training appeared:

We had drills together and we asked the Germans: 'How do you pass through a minefield?' They answered: 'We go around it.' On their maps minefields are 200m by 100m. Here it is nothing like that. We're talking about hectare after hectare after hectare.

There was perhaps some degree of truth to the idea that the Ukrainians had imperfectly implemented NATO tactics. The non-hierarchical organizational structure of the AFU allowed for even less inter-unit cooperation than the famously autonomous NATO militaries planned for. Orchestrating an offensive featuring tens of thousands of soldiers and thousands of armored vehicles is one of the most challenging tasks imaginable, and most of the coordination fell to the Ukrainian High Command rather than mid-level commanders. The result was small groups attacking the defensive lines one at a time, never enough to overwhelm the Russians.

The German Leopard 2 battle tanks, projected to be the palpable presence on the western frontline, are virtually invisible. It was widely envisaged that these tanks, boasting of superior armor, precision firepower, and remarkable mobility, would spearhead the breakthrough in Russian defenses in Southern Ukraine. Yet, the Leopard 2s, which were dubbed a ‘game-changer’, have unexpectedly retreated from their intended role on the frontline. - Die Welt

Even if the Ukrainians hadn't been perfect modern NATO tacticians, their task may have been an impossible one. No army had attempted to do what they had, ever. The modern battlefield was a complete departure from the Cold War or the World Wars before it. The game had changed, but the Main Battle Tank mostly had not. Their role in this war was fundamentally different than the one that had been envisioned by Cold War planners. The Russians and Ukrainians had found them most useful for engaging infantry. As the counteroffensive receded into history, the AFU's remaining Leopards began to run low on High Explosive shells, and anti-tank sabot munitions remained mostly untouched.

Not counting very recent (in the past two months) deliveries of 2A4 models to the front, Ukraine has by now lost the majority of its Leopard 2 fleet. Lost Armour documents the total losses as follows:

• 19 out of 30 Leopard 2A4

• 10 out of 21 Leopard 2A6

The American Abrams had avoided the counteroffensive entirely, as US trainers said it needed much more instruction for Ukrainian crews to stand a chance of operating it properly. The British Challenger 2 was spotted from time to time behind the front lines, but it didn't appear to have participated. The Germans had wound up sticking their necks out after all, but this "red line" would be rendered quaint by the escalations that were to follow. The Americans had taken advantage of the situation, selling Abrams to the Poles in the interim.

As ammunition began to run low and losses mounted, the Leopard 2 mostly disappeared from the front in Ukraine. It was an enormous burden on Ukrainian logistics to recover disabled systems and send them back to Poland or Germany for repair. More savvy analysts in the West had predicted the Leopard stood little chance of fundamentally changing the reality on the ground. 100 tanks, or even 300 – as the Ukrainians had requested – had little chance of exceeding Russian military production. But the average "low-information" observer had been swept up by the media narrative. The Russians recovered multiple Leopard 2s and put one on display in Moscow to demonstrate the reality of the situation.

Some commentators postulated that the results of the 2023 counteroffensive proved that the Main Battle Tank had become obsolete. It isn't clear that this is the case, as both sides continue to make use of them. What was more likely to have been proven out of date was NATO's conception of modern warfare. The Ukrainians seemed to realize this, and it's easy to understand their frustration. At this point in the conflict, they had more peer war combat experience than all of NATO combined. Decades of counter-insurgency operations and the memory of the first Gulf War had locked the West into a deceptive picture. The Ukrainians began to revert to their old "Soviet" military doctrine, but it was too late to undo the consequences of 2023.

Above all, the Western planners and the AFU had made one crucial mistake, which led to all the others, and one as old as human conflict: they had underestimated their opponent.

Game Changer Rating: 1/10