Ukraine’s military has begun testing a tank created by a Belgian arms manufacturer by upgrading a 1960s-era German Leopard I chassis with modern systems and features designed to meet the demands of 21st-century combat, the leading Polish security publication Defence24 reported on Friday.
The privately held John Cockerill Defence (JCD), a longstanding military equipment manufacturer specializing in advanced turrets for combat vehicles, handed over a modified Leopard 1 tank fitted with a Cockerill 3105 turret to the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) in early March, the report said.
Ukrainian media reported the handover later in the month, but the Polish Defence24 platform was the first to report Ukrainian armed services testing of the tank had begun and was proceeding well.
The article cited a Belgian source stating that the tank following trials behind the lines would go the front for further testing in combat.
The Ukrainian independent news agency UNIAN in late 2025 reported transfer of a single Leopard 1 C3105 from Cockerill to the AFU was being planned for testing, including testing in combat. Ukraine’s Ministry of Defense does not make public its plans for and types of new weaponry for security reasons.
The Ukrainian Ground Forces in 2023 began operating a mid-Cold War version of the German-manufactured Leopard called the Leopard 1A5, and currently, about 120-150 of the vehicles are thought to be in service with combat units in the field.
The Leopard in its 1A5 configuration has developed a generally positive reputation with Ukrainian tankers who praise the tank’s speed, resilient engine and drive train, low weight, and relatively uncomplicated operation. However, its 105mm cannon, fire control systems, and armor are considered at least one generation behind modern Russian tanks, and more than two generations behind advanced NATO vehicles like the British Challenger 2 and German Leopard 2, also operated by Ukrainian forces.
The Cockerill-modified Leopard I retains the original chassis but replaces the Cold War era tank’s manned turret with a remote-controlled turret fitted out with a 105mm cannon and a machine gun, both of which are aimed and fired by an operator in the hull, enabling the tank’s crew to be reduced from the NATO-standard four personnel to three. The turret autoloader carries between 12 and 18 main gun shells, reports said.
Additional turret features include advanced day/thermal sights, full stabilization of the main cannon enabling accurate fire on the move, 360° external cameras, reduced weight by 3-5 tons thanks to a smaller turret and extensive use of aluminum instead of steel, and an increased vertical arc of fire for the cannon from -10° depression to +42° elevation, the highest angle for a production tank to enhance its ability to perform indirect fire from covered positions.
If customers wish, an additional machine gun or grenade launcher operated remotely may be fitted, as may, at additional cost, automatic protection systems like smoke grenades, laser warning, and anti-missile munitions.
Anton Gerashchenko, a Ukrainian political blogger often reporting on military topics, in a March 19 write-up of the vehicle said that the turret sensors can detect targets at a distance of up to 18 kilometers (11 miles) during the day and up to 15 kilometers (9 miles) at night.
The modernized tank’s overall armor protection level reportedly meets the STANAG 4569 Level IV rating, making the vehicle resistant to heavy machine guns and light auto-cannon and smaller-caliber weapons, as well as artillery and grenade splinters and low-order explosions.
Without the installation of additional armor, at that rating, the tank would have little or no chance of surviving a direct hit by a tank-fired main gun round, an anti-tank missile, or a first-person view (FPV) drone carrying an armor-piercing munition.
From the perspective of the Ukrainian Ground Forces, which has faced manpower shortages since 2023 in continuous combat against its much bigger opponent the Russian army, the Cockerill-modified tank has the great advantages of needing a three- rather than four-person crew, and digital-era fire control systems much easier for tech-savvy crew members born in the 21st century to learn, than 20th century legacy fire control systems.
The Belgian turret’s ability to raise the tank’s cannon to a high angle likewise would be considered an advantage by most Ukrainian tank commanders, because in combat in Ukraine, tank-to-tank battles are extremely rare, but use of a tank as an ad hoc artillery piece firing shells at a target with indirect fire is routine.
Modern communications aboard a vehicle, allowing reliable links with friendly drone operators that, in combat in Ukraine, are always present above a battlefield, would also be considered an advantage by Ukrainian tankers.
Views in the Armed Forces of Ukraine (AFU) on relatively light vehicle armor are mixed, with some operators saying the thicker the armor the better the chance of surviving a drone hit or a shell strike, and other saying the weight from thick armor leads a vehicle to getting stuck in the mud and a becoming a stationary target defenseless against drones or artillery able to batter a sitting vehicle to pieces.
However, practically all Ukrainian tankers see heavy armor designed to protect a tank from the hit of an anti-tank shell fired by another tank as wasteful, because in the Russo-Ukraine War, tank-to-tank duels take place only rarely, and when they do, happen at ranges so short that the armor-piercing munition fired will always defeat the armor of any tank.
Once the backbone of conventional armies, tanks in the Russo-Ukraine War have been pushed to the background by cheap drones, often costing less than $1,000, that are fully capable of destroying a modern main battle tank costing $15-20 million.
According to JCD news releases, an upgraded Leopard 1 with an unmanned turret was completed on December 2024. Industry observers spotted the modified vehicle at the Bedex 2026 arms expo held in Brussels from March 12-14.
Cockerill does not publish the price of its turrets. Based on the cost of comparable systems and the cost paid by Germany to modify Leopard 1s to the Leopard 1A5 standard, the price of a Leopard 1 modified to carry a Cockerill 3015 turret would probably be between $4-8 million, provided the customer felt expensive add-on armor was not necessary.