Challenger Tanks

The challenger tank has been used in warfare since 1983 but got a major overhaul with the introduction of the Challenger 2 tank in the 90’s. The challenger tank was originally developed by Royal Ordnance Factories, which was then bought out by Vicker Defense Systems, and then most recently changed to BAE Systems Land Systems.

The original challenger was full of revolutionary features including its suspension and Chobham armor. It also had a much more accurate firing mechanism than most other tanks on the market at that time. Unfortunately, its accuracy was matched with slowness of fire causing it to get one of the lowest ratings on the market. Using the tanks weaknesses as improvement points, Vickers designed a new tank dubbed Challenger 2 which was then selected as an MBT (Main Battle Tank) and is still used in the field of warfare today.

Challengers are usually armed with a 20 mm tank gun on a turret that can spin 360 degrees in only nine seconds and in most cases fires HESH (High Explosive Squash Head) rounds. The tank is also equipped with a chain gun and a machine gun for anti air defense as well as L8 smoke grenade launchers for close combat. As for its defenses, the challenger tank uses Chobham armor, the details of which are still classified information.

Each tank carries a crew of four members; though it can run on a crew of three if the tank incorporates an auto loader verses a human loader for its ammunition systems. When fully loaded with ammunition and crew this tank can operate at speeds as high as 75km/h on the road and 40km/h cross country.

The tank has seen action in just about every conflict since the mid 1980’s including the gulf war, Kosovo, the March 2003 invasion of Iraq, and even more recently Basra in 2007. Even through all of its battles only 2 challenger tanks have been damaged and one destroyed in battle, with one of those being caused by friendly fire from another challenger tank.

The challenger tank still continues to morph into different offshoots of vehicles to fill the needs of today’s army. These remodels include the Titan, Trojan, CRARRV, and the Challenger 2E. The Titan helps to deploy tanks across bodies of water, the Trojan for combat engineering, the CRARRV for the repair and recovery of damaged tanks in the field, and the Challenger 2E with a substantially upgraded weapons and stability system. As you can see, the Challenger Series of tanks has left quite a history as well as is paving the way for future generations of warfare.