Ukraine’s verdict on the Centauro: great gun, worrying armor

Ukrainian paratroopers operating Italian-supplied B1 Centauro wheeled tank destroyers say the vehicle shoots straighter than anything they have used before and can reach 105 kilometers per hour on a road, but its armor will not stop a heavy machine gun round from the side and would be shredded by the shaped-charge warheads packed into the FPV drones that now saturate the front. That tension, between a capable and highly mobile fire platform and protection levels that belong to a different era of warfare, sits at the center of how Ukraine’s 78th Separate Air Assault Brigade is learning to live with its newest Western vehicle.

Ukraine’s Armiya Media recently released footage of the brigade conducting combat training exercises on the Centauro, providing the first detailed public look at how Ukrainian crews assess the platform in their own words. The soldier speaking in the video has experience on Soviet-era T-64 and T-72 tanks, and his assessments carry the weight of direct comparison rather than manufacturer brochure language.

The Centauro B1 is an Italian wheeled tank destroyer jointly developed by Iveco, the truck and vehicle manufacturer, and Oto Melara, the defense subsidiary that built the gun. Rather than sitting on tracks like a conventional tank, it rolls on eight large wheels arranged across four axles, giving it road speed and strategic mobility that no tracked vehicle can match. The vehicle weighs approximately 24 tons, roughly half the weight of a modern main battle tank, which allows it to move over roads and bridges that would be impassable for heavier armor and to be transported by military cargo aircraft if needed. The crew numbers four: a driver, a commander, a gunner, and a loader. Italy’s army operates more than 250 of them, and has been transferring an undisclosed number to Ukraine as part of its ongoing military assistance program, with visual confirmation of the vehicles in Ukrainian service first appearing in November 2025 when the 78th Air Assault Regiment released footage marking its Airborne Forces Day.

The primary weapon is a 105mm Oto Melara rifled cannon, an Italian-licensed version of the British L7 gun that has armed Western tanks since the Cold War. The vehicle carries 40 rounds in four types: fragmentation shells for personnel and light equipment, hollow-charge anti-armor rounds, and kinetic energy penetrators that the crew describe informally as “armor-piercing crowbars.” Unlike Soviet-era tanks such as the T-72, which use a separate propellant charge and projectile loaded by an autoloader mechanism, the Centauro’s 105mm rounds are unitary, meaning the propellant and warhead arrive as a single self-contained cartridge that the human loader handles directly. There is no autoloader. Every shot requires the fourth crew member to physically place the round into the breech.

The gunner’s station has impressed the crew. The fire control system synchronizes two separate optical channels: the gunner’s sight and the commander’s independent panoramic sight, which rotates a full 360 degrees regardless of where the turret is pointing. The commander can monitor the full circle around the vehicle while the gunner tracks a target, and can override the turret to engage threats personally if needed. The fire control computer stores firing data, enabling the gunner to return to a previous target location without re-acquiring it manually. A built-in thermal imager and an optical filter suite allow engagement in darkness, rain, direct sunlight, and low-visibility conditions. The crew report the system is significantly more precise than what they previously operated, and one soldier confirmed a successful engagement at 11,100 meters firing from a concealed position, which is an exceptional range for a direct-fire weapon used in indirect mode.

The vehicle’s speed carries genuine tactical value in today’s Ukrainian battlefield, where repositioning after firing is increasingly a matter of survival rather than tactics. At 105 kilometers per hour on a suitable road, the Centauro can move between firing positions faster than most drone operators can redirect their aircraft, and it does not require tank transporters or special permits to cross bridges and pass through towns the way tracked armor does. Reverse speed reaches 30 kilometers per hour, fast enough to extract from an exposed position without turning around. The turning radius of approximately nine meters is tight for a vehicle of this size, though the crew acknowledge it cannot pivot on its own axis the way a tracked tank can by braking one side independently.

Interior communications are dramatically better than what the crew experienced on Soviet equipment. Crew members describe situations on T-64s and T-72s where the driver could not hear the commander through the intercom during combat, producing the dangerous condition of a vehicle advancing blindly while the commander tried to redirect it. The Centauro’s quieter engine and modern intercom system eliminate that problem. The vehicle also includes a Webasto heater with two settings, one for warming the engine before cold-weather starts and one for heating the crew compartment, plus an air conditioning system that was absent from anything in Soviet-era Ukrainian inventory. An electric cooking plate comes in the standard equipment package, though the crew note they have not used it.

The armor assessment is where the soldier’s tone shifts from enthusiasm to realism. The front of the vehicle can stop 30mm rounds, which is the caliber used in infantry fighting vehicle cannons and some helicopter armaments. The side armor stops 12.7mm heavy machine gun fire at best. The soldier’s verdict is frank: the Centauro’s protection profile resembles a BTR armored personnel carrier more than a tank, and in the current environment, where FPV drones carrying shaped-charge warheads now reach any vehicle that pauses in the open, that level of protection is insufficient for the kind of close engagement the vehicle’s designation as a “tank destroyer” might imply. The 78th Brigade has responded by wrapping its Centauros in improvised cage armor and mesh grilles intended to trigger the drone’s fuze before it reaches the hull, and by adding cable spikes designed to push the detonation point further from the armor face. These adaptations reduce but do not eliminate the vulnerability.

Ukraine’s soldiers praise the Centauro loudly for what it is, and just as clearly for what it is not. One paratrooper, asked to compare it with the Soviet tanks he has spent years operating, calls it more comfortable, more accurate, and far more capable of repositioning quickly. He also acknowledges that taking it into direct close-range combat against the drone swarms that define the current front requires thinking about the vehicle differently than its official designation as a tank destroyer might suggest. Shoot accurately from as far as possible, move before anyone can react, and keep the cage armor in good repair. In a war where the tank destroyer is expected to act like artillery one day and a cavalry vehicle the next, the Centauro’s combination of mobility and precision is genuinely valuable, even if its armor was designed for a threat environment that no longer exists in quite the same form.