Six out of 178 Leopard 1 tanks pledged to Ukraine by European countries had to come out of Danish museum collections

To speed up training Ukrainian tankers, Denmark has tapped into its military museum collections, getting six 1980s-vintage Leopard 1 tanks out of three museums.

Earlier this year, a consortium of Denmark, Germany, and The Netherlands (and later Belgium) pledged to send 178 Leopard 1 A5 tanks to Ukraine.

Danish trainers began teaching Ukrainians at the Klietz training ground west of Berlin, Forbes reports. While turretless training vehicles could be used in the initial phase of the six-week training course, combat-capable tanks with their gunnery were needed for the later phase. According to Forbes writer Davis Axe, this created a problem, since tanks that had been in storage for over two decades needed refurbishing first.

“Apparently the handful of Leopard 1A5s on display in museums were in better condition than were the nearly 100 in storage,” Axe writes.

The German tank-maker Rheinmetall has since bolstered the consortium’s effort to deliver on its pledge, by supplying “practically new-looking” refurbished Leopards to Klietz and directly to the Armed Forces of Ukraine.