i was hoping it didnt get to the point where i would have to make a thread because i’ve never done this before and i’m just gonna freestyle it so apology’s if its a bit sloppy.
please vote here
Should the Challenger’s be reworked again
- Yes
- No
- fix just the main problems instead
but currently and especially after this major update the Challenger 2 series of tanks have gone from bad to unplayable and quite frankly useless, this is because of the way gaijin has implemented the tanks so in this thread i’m going to do a few things
1: most importantly i’m gonna talk about the issues and the fixes that i personally think gaijin should prioritize.
2: try my best to clear up a few misconceptions people have about the tank.
3: i’m going to outline the issues and inconsistency’s on the vehicle in-game
this isn’t the first thread about the challenger 2’s and probably wont be the last.
(the main challenger 2 discussion thread)
(the “challenger 2 overhaul” thread posted by @Morvran every major)
as always ill try keep it civil and anyone who talks in this topic should do the same
anyways.
ingame performance
before the “heavy cavalry” major update the challenger 2’s werent in the worst state as back in october of 2025 gaijin buffed the engine power of all tanks with a perkins CV12-6/9A engine from 1217HP to 1314HP and the tank was overall performing not bad, but with the introduction of this major update the challenger has been hit with a truck load of modules that overall leave the tank being quite terrible
The enginge buff includes the
Challenger 2 (2F TES OES Black Knight)
Challenger 2 LEP (Challenger 3TD)
Challenger 1 (all variants)
FV4030/3
Khalid
The “Turret Basket”
while being smaller than your average abrams or leopard the challengers basket still has the EXACT same issue that before if you got shot yo low your turret drive would still work however with this new basket module if someone shoots your upper side of the hull you lose the turret drive and if someone shoots the lower side of the hull you also lose the turret drive making any side shot even deadlier than beforehand
Spoiler
The “FCS” or “Fire Control System” module while not saying it does anything in the XRAY if this module gets shot out you will lose access to your Thermal Sights, Stabilizer, and your Laser Rangefinder and this module can and will be shot out by anything
and last but definitely not least it got access to the “Power Electronic” module which in my opinion is the WORST addition to the tank as when shot out it will disable your Horizontal Turret Drive and Vertical Turret Drive and as the breech Armour got nerfed and now a single 30mm dart through the breech will disable your turret drive completely.
with the addition of all these modules along with the tanks multitude of issues and quite poor performance its makes the entire challenger 2 series in my personal opinion unplayable as it is slow has a bad ROF a bad round and now even worse survivability with not great Armour it makes you wonder if theirs any reason to play them over the new Abrams the UK just got through Australia and i can tell you now, there isn’t.
(a 30mm dart from a puma disabling my turret drive through the breech)
Before i go into the next bit i would like to clear up a few misconceptions.
this image that you might have seen on forums or someplace else is a challenger 2’s turret disconnected from the hull and a lot of people have been saying that is all there is and that this basket implementation is unrealistic and even i was fooled by this but unfortunately it is a realistic addition.
The Challenger 2 utilises a rotating floor in the Hull and if this were to be shot IRL the floor would most likely become unusable meaning if the turret turned the crew wouldn’t and that would cause a few issues, so you might ask if its a realistic addition then why am i against it?
Gaijins Scheduling
The Challenger 2’s modules came in at a time where it needed them the least with britain and to be fair the rest of NATO performing quite poorly i ask and im sure other people are asking why did the Challenger 2’s modules get prioritized over the T-series tanks for example?
well you’ll have to talk about that in this thread :)
Gaijin implemented these modules at a time where the challengers were already in quite a poor state despite the slight engine buff with a lot of old bug reports to help them out seemingly collecting dust, which is what ill talk about next.
The Bug Reports
I have gathered a few of the bug reports for the Challenger series of tanks and i would like to share them and talk about them
Armour:
Spoiler
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Firepower:
Spoiler
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Other:
Spoiler
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
Community Bug Reporting System
i would like to talk about a few of these reports and what i think are the most important for gaijin to implement
The Ready Rack Report
The Challenger 2’s ready rack size in warthunder is a disappointing 4 shells, this is very incorrect.
Spoiler
The Challenger 2 while being a much newer and upgrade of a tank over the Cheiftain Series of tanks keeps a similar ammo layout.
Spoiler
in real life the crew takes ammo from the back of the turret first and there is video proof of this, another thing to back this up is the ammo count being incorrect
On the Challenger 2 TES and OES variants they removed some ammunition on the side of the turret for more electronics (i believe its electronics anyway) however in game they only removed a single piece of ammunition and made a random shell down in the hull part of the ready rack
Spoiler
the random shell for anyone interested
Spoiler
Compared to the normal challenger 2’s
Spoiler
the Ready Rack ingame should be around 24 on the Challenger 2’s not the 4 that it is currently (this should transition to the challenger 1 and most likely the vickers mk7 to)
The Spall Liners
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/S3xGexRIXPBx
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/uKfLG2d5jfoW
Back in december of 2023 the new at the time T-90M and the Leopard 2A7V received spall liners, and later on the challenger 2 received spall liners in the turret and upper front plate but they missed spall liners on the lower front plate and the sides of the hull
the report has now been up and accepted for around 2-3 years and nothing has been done, which is odd considering we have photographic evidence of them.
The Mantlet Armour
after its rework in 2024 the challenger 2 on dev server had a realistic amount of protection around the cannon breech giving it around 560mm of armour
we then get to the live server where this was seemingly almost cut in half going down to around 370mm, and the response from a community manager on this said it wasnt finished. but what unfinished thing led to it getting halved?
then with the “heavy cavalry” major update the challenger 2 on the first dev server got a decently significant buff to the mantlet going from around 370mm to 480mm
Spoiler
this however was removed due to an apprent bug giving the challenger 2 trunnions, but it is now missing even more armour than it had before this update going from around 370mm to around 250mm meaning it went from missing about 200mm of armour to missing about 320mm of armour on the breach
Spoiler
this is due to gaijin supposedly fixing the trunnion pins and then well removing them again.
these were made by someone on here i think but i cant find you so if there yours please message me and ill edit this and give you credit :)
you can very clearly see the difference from these photos which are a realistic representation of it and the current ingame model
the trunnion model is very clearly incorrect and leading to it missing quite a lot of armour around mantlet.
The L27A1 Problem
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/bMbEJftRqiSp
https://community.gaijin.net/issues/p/warthunder/i/v74dMmcFpRxu
During the dev server for this major update a friend (i hope) of mine named @Kobes-Kamov with the help of a few others made a report for the anti ERA capability of the L27A1 round and it was denied initially for not having specific information of the time frame of the documents acquired and then after that denied again because the devs didn’t believe it had the capability due to the round struggling to pen the T80 ufp without K5 in game, as you could guess there is many issues with that
1: there is a seperate report of the rounds raw penetration as i linked above and it is quite known that L27A1 is underperforming to an extent
2: it is also quite known that russian ERA (Kontakt 5 and Relikt) are over performing by quite a large extent in game
3: gaijin refusing primary documents from the british ministry of defence because it cant do it in game is probably the weirdest thing ive ever heard as its basically them trying to say “we know more than the ministry of defence” which i think we all know isnt true.
There is more issues but these are the ones i have outlined as what i believe are the most important
These tanks are now in the worst state they have ever been in and as a british person it is sad to see so please leave your thoughts on the subject and anything i have missed and make sure to vote on the poll at the top of the post if you feel like it, thank you.
(ps this post was done on an overheating pc while boiling hot and very tired so ignore any incorrections in spelling or stuff like that and i will now be taking a well deserved cold shower but enjoy the yap)