THE SIMPLER, THE BETTER.

A British regimental commander of tanks, Colonel Hamish de Bretton-Gordon, repeats an old lesson.  "German tanks are failing in Ukraine for the same reasons they lost the Second World War."  It's the same lesson a sedan driver learns the first time he goes off-roading.

The leaked report from the German Defence Ministry about the shortcomings of the Leopard 2 tank in the Ukraine should come as no surprise to anybody who even has a cursory understanding of German tank history, or even western tank history in general.

It is certainly no surprise to me. I spent thousands of hours in the ancient British Chieftain tank as well as the current Challenger 2 (CR2). The uninitiated may think that we’re seeing the end of the rule of tanks after 110 years as the kings of the battlefield, but this would be a failed assumption. Nonetheless, with the new British tank – imaginatively called Challenger 3 – about to arrive, its designers must take on board the identified shortcomings of Leopard 2 or it too will fail.

The Leopard 2 is a technical marvel, with echoes of the German Tiger tank in WW2: perhaps the most dangerous tank of the war. Leopard 2 has a very complex fire control system, an outstandingly powerful MTU power pack (the engine to the “non tankies”), and an excellent 120mm smoothbore gun. However it is very susceptible to drone and “top” attack and very difficult to fix if damaged or broken down. Worse still, like the Tiger of WW2, it is very few in numbers. The Russians have lost thousands of T-72s, T-80s and T-90 tanks. Just 18 Leopard 2s have been supplied to Ukraine!

The first issue identified is how difficult it is for Ukraine soldiers to mend these tanks and keep them battle worthy. If the engine breaks down it must be taken hundreds of miles for repair in a specialist facility, whereas the old, simple engines of the Russian tanks can be easily fixed by any automotive mechanic, in situ if necessary. The first tank I commanded was a Chieftain, designed in the 1950s, which had a “London bus” engine to power it. The engine frequently stopped when the fuel injection solenoid got stuck shut.  This was simply remedied using a clothes peg to keep it open! A similar problem with a Leopard 2 or CR2 would require a new engine.

The fortunes of war might not be on the side of the resilient, but that is the way to bet.

Would you rather go to war, dear reader, with tanks that epitomized Platonic perfection and precision engineering, or would you take your chances with tanks machined to something less than precise tolerances, and where it would be wise to drop the oil pan 50 kilometers out of the works, to drain the metal shavings from the oil sump?

Those of you who are familiar with the War will recognize in the former the imposing looking German super-tanks that had an annoying habit of throwing a sprocket when the tread was digging into snow, and in the latter the Soviet T-34s that shrugged off tundra and steppe and mud all the way to the Elbe.

Leave aside the vulnerability of tanks of any kind to drone attack (or Smart Pigs?) and consider how resilience at scale pays off.

The Germans lost WW2 because they could not match the mass the Allies could generate. For instance, in the later stages of the war the Allies produced around 60,000 Sherman tanks, which eventually overwhelmed the more sophisticated and capable Tiger and Panther tanks because the Germans only had a few thousand of these. Likewise the 18 Leopard 2s and the 14 CR2s we have sent barely scratch the surface in Ukraine today. The report does state that the much more numerous, older and simpler Leopard 1s are highly effective.

Those who do not remember the past! "We must avoid the same old German tank story from WW2. We must avoid the temptation to make our tanks too complex, too easy to hit, too difficult to maintain and too few."