The 1st (UK) Armoured Division was the easternmost unit in VII Corp's sector, its Challenger tanks forming the spearhead of the advance. The division advanced nearly 350 km within 97 hours, destroying the Iraqi 46th Mechanised Brigade, 52nd Armoured Brigade and elements of at least three infantry divisions belonging to the Iraqi 7th corps in a series of battles and engagements. They captured or destroyed about 120[11] tanks and a very large number of armoured personnel carriers, trucks, reconnaissance vehicles, etc.[
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The main threat to the Challenger was deemed to be the Iraqi Republican Guard's T-72M tanks; each British tank was provided with twelve L26A1 "Jericho" depleted uranium(DU) shells specifically for use against T-72Ms, but during the course of the Coalition's ground campaign none was encountered as the division was withdrawn beforehand.[13]
In action, the Global Positioning System (GPS) and Thermal Observation and Gunnery System (TOGS) fitted to the Challengers proved to be decisive, allowing attacks to be made at night, in poor visibility and through smoke screens.[14] In total, British Challengers destroyed roughly 300 Iraqi tanks without suffering a single loss in combat.[15] Patrick Cordingley, the commander of 7th Armoured Brigade, said afterwards that "Challenger is a tank built for combat and not competitions."[16]
On 26 February 1991, a Challenger achieved the longest range confirmed kill of the war, destroying an Iraqi tank with an armour-piercing fin-stabilized discarding-sabot(APFSDS) round fired over a distance of 4,700 metres (2.9 mi)—the longest tank-on-tank kill shot recorded
