Ukrainians say Italian tank gunfire hit a house 120 football fields away

A Ukrainian vehicle crew said they used an Italian B1 Centauro to bomb a house almost seven miles away, one of the longest indirect tank gunfires reported in the war.

“The furthest shot I made was from a closed position. It was 11 kilometers. At 11,100 meters I hit a building right where they were sitting,” the gunner from the 78th Separate Air Assault Brigade crew told Army TV, a Ukrainian Defense Ministry channel.

A closed position means that the crew operates the tank gun essentially as they would artillery: firing from a concealed location at a target beyond line of sight.

A distance of 11,100 yards is approximately 11.9 miles, or approximately the length of 121 football fields.

The gunner, identified by the call sign “Khilya”, was part of a crew demonstrating the B1 Centauro, an 8×8 vehicle with lighter armor compared to a typical main battle tank, but a powerful 105mm gun of NATO standard.

Other Ukrainian gunners have previously made successful hits from similar distances with a tank gun. One of the most famous stories of such a shot came in 2022, when a Ukrainian T-64BV crew said it hit a Russian tank that was 10,600 meters (about 6.5 miles) away.

The practice of using tank guns as artillery has become more common in Ukraine as the battlefield became saturated with drones, which can more easily target an armored vehicle’s weak spots and make it nearly impossible for a crew to approach enemy positions unscathed.

“Right now, to go from tank to tank, you first have to get through a large number of FPV drones and all kinds of Molniya drones. That’s difficult. But from closed positions it fires very accurately,” said the commander of the B1 Centauro, identified by the call sign ‘Director’.

FPV drones are first-person-view drones, while Molniya’s are one-way attack drones often used on the front lines.

The B1 Centauro demonstrated by the crew was fitted with metal anti-drone cages on the chassis, along with a separate cage and mesh that formed a canopy behind the vehicle’s turret.

Produced mainly in the 1990s, these wheeled tank destroyers were reportedly sent to Ukraine for the first time in 2023. They were first seen in publicly released footage in late 2025 operating under the 78th.

The Italian vehicle can fire its cannon upward at an angle of about 15 degrees, while typical self-propelled howitzers or similar artillery can often point their cannon skyward about 60 to 70 degrees.