Challenger 1

I dare say, this page is delightfully British. Spot of tea?

Base Model

ROMOR Battle Package. AKA the toughest of nuts

The Challenger 1 is the British third generation main battle tank that takes the concepts of the Chieftain but updates it for a network centric battlefield. Seeing action in the Gulf War under the crews of the Desert Rats, the 1983 system was a fast, hard-hitting tank with an L11A5 cannon, a Rolls-Royce diesel engine, and the first Chobham armor introduced to the world: a composite of ceramics and steel that would become the standard for all tanks across the Western world.

Unlike the Chieftain, the Challenger was designed to be a fully stabilized tank that could fire accurately on the move. Equipped with the armour to serve the British preference for defensive positions and the speed and firepower to outmatch the East’s armoured forces, the concept would remain used until the modern day with successors like the Challenger 2.

In Team Yankee

Tally Ho!

This is the camper's Leopard 2. The premier tank of the Brits serves as the harder, costlier cousin of the Chieftain. World War III in 1985 has caught the British Army's tank forces in a state of transition, as the Challenger had only entered service in 1983 and was experiencing some "technical issues" in those early years. The few tank crews using the Challenger in 1985 would strictly speaking have been the luckiest of their fellows, getting the newest and most advanced tank, but the Chieftain was a far more proven design, and British Army logistics would have had far more parts on hand for it. Still- bloody Russians want a war, they're ruddy well getting a war.

Trading cost-efficiency for being one of the most heavily-armoured tanks in the game, the Challenger is like a Chieftain turned up to 11 points. The near doubling in cost gets you Front Armour 20, Chobham Armour, Theral Imaging and and increased dash speeds. On the downside the high cost means you're always going to struggle not to get flanked because of low numbers. They still suffer the same weakness as Chieftains, namely being completely useless on the move. Offensively they carry the same ROF 2/1 AT22 FP2+ L11 gun as the Chieftain, with all the tank and infantry mulching goodness.

For an extra 2pts per tank, you can upgrade them to ROMOR. This ups the front armour to a mighty 21 and the side armour to 10. This means you can ignore nearly all tank guns at long range, however, you still retain the weaknesses of vulnerable flanks and being outnumbered.

Park them at the back, shoot them and blitz them, at this point you are paying a lot of points for a bunker with paper sides. They will lose to nearly all other tanks if flanked.

The Formation HQ comes in units of 1-2 (remember HQs always pass their last stand); the Combat Unit comes in squadrons Troopsof 2-3. All that has been written about the Leopard 2 being cripplingly costed applies to the Chally 1 as well. Also remember, at long range the Milan shoots just as good (AT wise).

In Real Life

Scuse me, pardon me, tank coming though

Obviously the Challenger is the successor to the Chieftain.

Team Yankee starts in 1985, and the Challenger 1 was introduced in 1983, and still hardly a mainstay vehicle during the period depicted in TYV2. The turret of the Chally was extra thick: there were no guns at the time that could penetrate it. When introduced Britain was keen to show the new tank off to NATO allies so entered two teams of them into the Canadian Army Trophy, considered the premier inter NATO tank gunnery competition. Due to varying levels of fail, including rushing tanks straight off the production line without the proper gun sights and not giving crews time to train, the shiny new much hyped tank placed last and Britain decided never to enter the completion again while the government cut funding and quickly started looking for an alternative tank, even considering purchasing German Leopard 2s. The tank finally got to prove itself in Operation Granby, the UK operation in the 1991 Gulf War, despite huge doubts around reliability, concerns it was outclassed by Iraqi T-72Ms, and only 22% of tanks being operational due to a crippling lack of spare parts as well as manufacturing faults. Despite a bit of teamkilling by the US 1st Infantry, the Challenger performed well, including scoring the longest tank on tank kill at 5,110 metres against an Iraqi tank.

The Challenger has been succeeded by the Challenger 2. The latter is a complete redesign and only three percent of their parts are interchangeable, despite a similar outward appearance. Both are contemporaries of the Leopard 2 and the M1 Abrams. Considering how expensive the Challenger 2 is, any replacement during the 2040s would likely to be a foreign platform if common sense was used, but British pride being what it is (and the fact they are a blockadable island), they're likely to give another crack at making a local model. Chally 2 is currently undergoing an extensive Life Extension Program to bring it up to modern specs, this includes swapping the 120mm L30 rifled gun with a 120mm smoothbore Rheinmetall gun (which is also planning for the Challenger 3 upgrade), the same gun on Leopard 2, for logistical (unify ammunition with other NATO countries) and supply (the factory making HESH for the British Army shut down) reasons.

These tanks are now being sent to Ukraine along with the M1 Abrams and the Leopard 2. The Challenger is unique compared to the other two in that some British war analysts note that there have been a shortage of spare parts for Challengers for some time now. So they are concerned that this might be the equivalent of sending a Panther to the Japanese in 1945. We'll have to see how this develops.