he British Challenger 2 is the worlds best tank and heres why!

Firstly it was crowned last year's best NATO main battle tank, winning the iron spear for 2023. It beat the other two main contenders with the Leopard 2 coming in second and an M1 Abrams coming in third.

On top of that only 1 challenger 2 has ever been destroyed by enemy forces. This took place in Ukraine last year, the whole crew survived. To put this into perspective, 3 M1 Abrams and at least 11 Leopard 2s have been destroyed in Ukraine so far.

This is partly down to its Chobham armour which, although makes the tank rather heavy and slow, provides incredible protection. It’s reported that one challenger 2 survived around 70 rpg hits in Basra and still survived the ordeal.

Many point to the rifled main armament and two piece ammunition as a major flaw in the Challenger 2. However, it does have some upsides, applying spin to the projectile improves the flight and therefore accuracy of the round. Allowing it to more consistently hit targets further away. It also allows the tanks to fire High Explosive Squash Head Rounds more effectively.

All of this means that a Challenger 1 with a 120mm rifled main gun achieved the longest tank kill in history at around 3 miles. Ukrainians currently using the Challenger 2 also call it and I quote a “Sniper Rifle Among Tanks”.

But it has no autoloader right, isn’t that a downside? Well a highly trained loader, such as those in the British army can outmatch an autoloader in a shorter combat. Although there is some point here as in longer confrontations a human loader will start to fall behind and it requires a larger crew size and space inside the tank.

Now, all if this isn’t to say the tank is still a little outdated, it’s almost 30 years old after all and doesn’t have great protection against loitering munitions. You can point to the Abrams X or KF51 and state they are the best tanks but they’re still in the prototype stage plus that’s why we’re making the challenger 3 right, so we’ll see who's the top dog in a few years.


For example, the existence of guided munitions makes the rifled barrel less relevant and it still doesn’t have great protection against loitering ammunition/drones.