LED lighting for use in miniature tanks
Answer

There are many types of LED and LED strips.  For newbies, I would recommend to start off with 12V LED strips (Ref 6), which is the easiest to DIY.  For ninjas, I would recommend WS2812 RGB LEDS, which is a bit tricky to handle.




To DIY 12V LED strips, first thing first is to study the inner circuitry and workings. I would recommend to read the tutorials by WaveFormLighting (Ref 8). It is only after we know what is going on inside the strip, then we can do fancy things such as dimming, using tricks such as PWM (Pulse Width Modulation).



Talk is cheap, let us now study the schematic (Wait a second. Have you already read the tutorials by Components 101 and WaveformLighting? :)) and see how we can light up the real thing: the 12V LED strip, and later dim it.

3.1  Now I have cut a 3 LED segment from my half a meter long green strip, and now going to solder wires and test it with 12VDC.


3.2 I found the green LED strip is too bright at 12V.  I tried to lower power supply to 7V and found the LED dimmed to more pleasing to my eyes.  I know a better way to dim is to use PWM, which the trick I will use pretty soon.
3.2.1 12V full brightness



3.2.2 7V dimming




Testing R, G, B, Y strips together

So I have separately test 4 R, G, B, Y LED strips.  The OP can use 3 LED strips or 6 LED strips, or even longer (but in multiples of 3 LEDs). The strips have 3M adhesive tapes at the back, so it is easy to just peel off the protective surface and stick the sticky strip to any smooth surface.  It took me less than three minutes to stick four strips on a proto board, and use 12V to light up them all at once, as shown below.



5. Dimming LED strips using PWM

I am thinking of using 7/8 channel ULN2003/2803 500mA sink drivers to switch the power on/off the LED strip.

Then I can use a cheapy 555 timer module to generate square pulses of difference duty cycles, as PWM signals to input to the ULN2003/ULN2803 drivers to DIM the LED strips.


Note: Using ULN2803 8-channel driver and NE555 timer, we can test
PWM dimming offline, during prototyping stage, without using Arduino or Rpi.  I think this offline testing approach is more time efficient for newbies, who are slow in programming.
/ to continue, ...

References
(1) Tank classification - Wikipedia
(2) 1W LED Tutorial - Components 101
(3) MBT tank series - Fandom Games
(4) Norgencian Army - Fandom Games
(5) M1A2 US MBT Tanks Army WW2 High Simulation GUDI 6101 Military Series Educational DIY Building Blocks toy for Children Boys Gifts - AliRadar US$46
(6) 7 Things to Know Before Buying and Installing 12V LED Strip Lights - Taylor Scully, 2019dec, 426,876 Views
(7) 12V LED strip catalog (total 60 pages! :))- AliExpress
(8) LED Strip Light Internal Schematic and Voltage Information - WaveformLighting
(9) ULN2803A 8-channel 500mA Darlington Transistor Arrays Sink Drivers - TI
(10) 555 Timer Module Catalog - AliExpress
(11) When and Why do LEDs Need Current Limiting Resistors? (And why use CCS (Constant Current Source)? )- WaveformLighting
(12) How to control a RGB LED-Strip with a Raspberry Pi (and N-channel Power MOSFET) - David Ordnung

Appendices
Appendix A - WS2812 RGB LEDs


Appendix B - 1W 350mA LED, without heat sink


Appendix C - 1W LED with heat sink