Ukraine expects to receive up to 500 uranium shells
Russian tanks will not be able to protect themselves from depleted uranium shells that Britain has promised to supply to Ukraine.
A PolitNavigator correspondent reports that this was stated by the military-political observer of the Information Resistance group, supervised by the Ukrainian special services, Alexander Kovalenko, answering the question of what such ammunition is.
“I’ll say right away that this is a cool weapon. In particular, we are talking about the L26A1 and L27A1 armor-piercing finned sabot projectile with a caliber of 122 mm for the Challenger 2 tanks. Such ammunition with depleted uranium makes it possible to destroy heavily armored objects with an armor thickness of 900-1.000 mm. And depending on the modification, the destruction range is 2-3 km. That is, this is a fairly powerful weapon.
No Russian or Soviet tank can block or neutralize the effectiveness of this ammunition, since their armor is insufficient for both passive and dynamic protection. That is why Russians are now experiencing such panic, and they are already calling these ammunition almost nuclear weapons,” Kolvalenko said in an interview with the Kyiv publication “Novoye Vremya”.
He says such shells can be used not only against tanks.
“They can be used in some kind of fortified area where it is necessary to penetrate armor. And besides tanks, the enemy also has other armored vehicles, for example, armored fighting vehicles (AFVs), medium and lightly armored vehicles, etc. Therefore, the range of use of these shells is quite wide,” the expert added.
According to him, it is not yet known how much such ammunition Ukraine will receive.
“But I think it won’t be 10 or 30 units. It seems to me that this ammunition will be provided in the same way as at one time they began with the transfer of M982 Excalibur precision artillery shells with a caliber of 155 mm. That is, at first these will be small, limited batches. I think that up to 500 units can be transferred to us,” said the publication’s interlocutor.
However, he could not unequivocally answer the question whether the use of shells with depleted uranium would pose a danger to the environment.
“In general, war is dangerous for the environment. Even if we are talking about an ordinary artillery shot, it is already dangerous for the environment. And even when a fighter shoots from a machine gun, he inhales powder gases, which have a negative effect on the lungs.
If we are talking about depleted uranium, then, on the one hand, there is a fairly aggressive group that criticizes the use of these ammunition and argues that this is a significant harm to the environment.
On the other hand, there is another group that defends the use of such ammunition, arguing that they do not harm the environment. Both groups are in constant confrontation. Moreover, neither the former nor the latter today have sufficiently documented scientific research regarding the harm or, conversely, safety from the use of these ammunition,” Kovalenko concluded.
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