BRITISH soldiers in a Warrior armoured vehicle shot a Challenger 2 tank by mistake.
Troops unleashed a volley of six shots from a 30mm cannon during an exercise.
AlamyA British Army Warrior Infantry Fighting Vehicle on Salisbury Plain[/caption]
Five rounds struck the Challenger 2 — but pinged off its world-beating armour.
None of the four crew inside was hurt.
The Warrior crew mistook the Challenger 2 for an “enemy tank” after spotting it through a thermal scope around 500 metres away.
They performed an “emergency shoot” with the gunner firing on fully automatic and emptying both the cannon’s three-clip magazines.
The Rarden cannon was loaded with inert practice rounds instead of high- explosive or armour-piercing ones normally used in combat.
Troops from the Royal Welsh regiment were training with the Royal Tank Regiment on Thursday night at the Castlemartin range in Pembrokeshire before deploying to Estonia together to defend Nato’s eastern frontier from Russia.
An Army source said the drills were designed to be “intense and challenging”.
Details emerged after The Sun revealed yesterday how a Special Forces soldier shot and seriously injured a comrade after loading his gun with live bullets by mistake for a hostage-rescue exercise.
GettyBritish soldiers in a Warrior armoured vehicle shot a Challenger 2 (pictured) tank by mistake[/caption] Published: [#item_custom_pubDate]
