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Main Battle Tanks

Kusumo

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Ukrainian BM OPLOT Main Battle Tank.
Published on May 26, 2017
www.malyshevplant.com
The up-to-date Ukrainian BM OPLOT tank is intended for effective day and night combat use under adverse environmental, climatic and weather conditions including those under high temperatures of the surrounding air and high dust loading. The following were introduced: the multifuel engine, the transmission with extended speed range and complex system of movement control, the autonomous power unit for power supply when the vehicle is parked, the unique explosive reactive armour protection against tandem HEAT and APFSDS projectiles, the effective complex system of detection and optical-electronic suppression of the enemy’s guidance and sighting devices, the up-to-date sighting and observation complex with thermal imager, the digital ballistic computer and navigational support system. The capability of targets destruction by missiles at the range of up to 5 km without entering the dangerous
 

Scorpion

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Ukrainian BM OPLOT Main Battle Tank.
Published on May 26, 2017
www.malyshevplant.com
The up-to-date Ukrainian BM OPLOT tank is intended for effective day and night combat use under adverse environmental, climatic and weather conditions including those under high temperatures of the surrounding air and high dust loading. The following were introduced: the multifuel engine, the transmission with extended speed range and complex system of movement control, the autonomous power unit for power supply when the vehicle is parked, the unique explosive reactive armour protection against tandem HEAT and APFSDS projectiles, the effective complex system of detection and optical-electronic suppression of the enemy’s guidance and sighting devices, the up-to-date sighting and observation complex with thermal imager, the digital ballistic computer and navigational support system. The capability of targets destruction by missiles at the range of up to 5 km without entering the dangerous

This is the most advanced tanks in my opinion. Second to the Abrams and Leo. I would love to see how it does in the desert. Why no mention about radioactive protection?
 

Khafee

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The Leclerc has not seen any serious combat , but 15 were deployed in Kosovo for UN peace-keeping duties as well as South Lebanon.

Since your post, the LeClerc has gained quite a reputation \~/\~/

Emirati armoured brigade spearheads Aden breakout
07 August 2015
The impasse in Yemen's conflict appears to have been broken by the deployment of a powerful Emirati armoured formation: a logistical triumph that has helped pro-government forces push out of the southern port city of Aden and capture Al-Anad Air Base 48 km to the northwest.

By 3 August the UAE had landed Leclerc tanks, additional BMP-3s (seemingly not carrying any infantry), at least one 155 mm G6 self-propelled howitzer, and Agrab mortar carriers. One video clip showed nine Leclercs driving out of Aden, meaning at least one tank battalion (squadron) has been landed.

Details: http://www.janes.com/article/53503/analysis-emirati-armoured-brigade-spearheads-aden-breakout

https://warisboring.com/what-to-make-of-frances-leclerc-super-tank-9052c9ecff1f#.h2b04w8wj

Nexter proposes UAE Leclerc upgrades
http://www.janes.com/article/68217/idex-2017-nexter-proposes-uae-leclerc-upgrades



With Azur Kit
LeClerc Azur Kit.jpg

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Without Azut Kit
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mbt-france-leclerc-boom.jpg

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This is the most advanced tanks in my opinion. Second to the Abrams and Leo. I would love to see how it does in the desert. Why no mention about radioactive protection?

I have heard that the Leopard was deployed to afghanistan but have not really heard about its performance.
 

Ejaz

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I have heard that the Leopard was deployed to afghanistan but have not really heard about its performance.

Canada bought a few 2A4M/2A6’s upgraded to 2A4M’s/2A6M "Canadian" standard and deployed 'em to Afghanistan alongside the 2A5DKs of the Danish Army.
 

Khafee

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Design concepts emerge for possible new French–German Main Ground Combat System
Christopher F Foss -
29 May 2018

Key Points

  • France and Germany's potential joint MGCS is moving forward with four general concepts, including unmanned teaming variants
  • Production could start around 2033, but the project faces long odds

France and Germany have been working on the Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) since 2012 to replace their currently deployed main battle tanks (MBTs), and details of the likely requirements are beginning to emerge through four design concepts.

In the French Army the MGCS would potentially replace the Nexter Systems Leclerc MBT, of which 400 were delivered and 200 remain in service. These Leclerc tanks are to be upgraded to extend their operational lives and will play a key role in the French Army SCORPION network enabled capability (NEC) that brings together a range of air and land platforms, industry sources told Jane’s .

In the German Army, the MGCS would potentially replace the Krauss-Maffei Wegmann Leopard 2A6 MBT that is now being upgraded to the Leopard 2A7 standard with the potential for a further upgrade to the Leopard 2A8 standard, the sources said.

The MGCS is currently a government-to-government project under the Land Systems Roadmap Group (LSRG), which meets twice a year to help co-ordinate the two national programmes.

The MGCS is funded by the French DGA and the German BAAINBw, with each having a neutral technical advisor and links to their respective defence industries. Members of the group are studying common functional and technological requirements, negotiating the possible sharing of future key technologies, and planning technology demonstrations.

The current Concept Phase II is understood to be honing four platform concepts, and this should be completed soon.

The first of these is a single platform concept that uses a tracked vehicle with a large calibre externally mounted gun, which could be the Rheinmetall 130 mm smoothbore gun that launched in mid-2016 and has started firing trials.


EMBT - Copy.jpg

In the French Army the MGCS could potentially replace the Leclerc MBT, which will eventually be upgraded to extend its operational life. (Victor M S Barreira)

 

Khafee

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France Tests Huge 140mm Tank Gun As It Pushes Ahead With Germany On A New Tank Design
The Germans are also working on a 130mm cannon that might be another option for the future Franco-German tank.
By Joseph Trevithick
January 25, 2019

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French defense contractor Nexter has reportedly been testing a modified Leclerc main battle tank with a massive 140mm main gun as part of the development of a future Franco-German tank, known as the Main Ground Combat System, or MGCS. For decades, France, as well as Germany, among many others, have considered adding bigger cannons to its tanks to improve their armor penetration and range capabilities, but have repeatedly decided not to do so. So, it still remains to be seen how seriously they’ll pursue this course of action now.

Jane’s 360 reported the news, which the outlet had learned at the International Armored Vehicles (IAV) 2019 conference in London, on Jan. 24, 2019. The up-gunned Leclerc has fired more than 200 rounds successfully and Nexter claims the weapon is 70 percent more effective than existing NATO-standard 120mm tank guns. The MGCS program, which began in 2012, aims to replace France’s Leclercs and Germany’s Leopard 2 tanks with a common design by 2035.

It is unclear if the Leclerc configuration that Jane’s is referring to is materially different from the one that first emerged in 2016. “This is understood to be the first time that a 140 mm gun has been successfully integrated onto a 50-ton MBT [main battle tank],” according to the story, but this could be a reference to a development program that has now been ongoing for multiple years.

French defense company GIAT, which subsequently transformed into Nexter, first proposed mounting a 140mm gun onto the Leclerc back in 1996, four years after the tank first entered French service. The company specifically developed an enlarged turret to house a gun of this caliber that France’s Arsenal de Bourges had developed.

The French military passed on this T4 turret and it went into storage. Circa 2015, Nexter reportedly reinstalled in onto a chassis that had belonged to a turretless Leclerc MARS armored recovery vehicle. It is pictures of this combination, dubbed Le Terminateur, or The Terminator, which first appeared in a French magazine two years later. Since then, additional images of the tank, now wearing a hard-edged tan-green camouflage scheme known as Scorpion have also appeared online.

Regardless, the testing of the gun does point to renewed interest in a larger caliber main gun the final MGCS tank design. In 2016, Germany’s Rheinmetall, which is working together with Nexter on the Franco-German vehicle, also publicly displayed a 130mm gun at that year’s Eurosatory military trade show in France. Rheinmetall had previously worked on a 140mm design, as well.

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Rheinmetall
Rheinmetall's 130mm tank gun. Note the difference in the size of the ammunition, at left, compared to a standard 120mm round.


A reported requirement for the MGCS is for its gun to be at least 50 percent more capable than the existing 120mm types on either the Leclerc or Leopard 2. A larger 130mm or 140mm gun would certainly offer improved range and armor penetration capabilities.

The driving force behind this demand appears to be, at least in part, the appearance of Russia’s T-14 Armata tank, which features an improved 125mm 2A82-1M main gun with more capable ammunition.

The 2A82M-1M is apparently sized to fit in the same space in a turret as the older, Soviet-era 2A46 125mm gun, meaning that it could potentially be an upgrade option for Russia’s existing designs, such as the T-90. There have also long been reports in Russian media that the Kremlin is considering adding a larger 152mm main gun onto the Armata, as well, which could out-gun existing NATO tanks and their 120mm guns.

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Iliya Pitalev/Sputnik via AP
Russia's T-14 tank.


China has reportedly been testing larger caliber main guns, as well. So far, though, none of these Russian or Chinese efforts have led to an actual operational design. There are also very real questions about how much the Kremlin can even afford to modernize its tank fleets, at all.

While a new 130mm or 140mm gun certainly offers a counter to these developments, real or not, it is not without its drawbacks, too. The most immediate issue is the size of the rounds, which will be bigger than their 120mm counterparts and require larger ammo storage options within any future tank.

The 140mm-armed Leclerc, with its enlarged turret, reportedly still requires two-piece ammunition, with the shell separate from the propellant. Even then, it can only hold 31 rounds, nine fewer than the standard version of the tank.

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Wikimedia
A standard Leclerc main battle tank.


Bigger rounds have second-order logistical impacts, as well. Each shell weighs more and takes up more space, requiring more effort to deliver the same amount of ammunition to units in the field.

A 130mm or 140mm also obviously wouldn’t be able to use existing stockpiles of 120mm ammunition and wouldn’t have ammunition interchangeable with other tanks still using the smaller guns. France and Germany are both members of NATO and this could potentially cause problems with the alliance’s standardization and interoperability requirements.

In addition, in the past, the added range and penetration offered the bigger guns offered was relatively modest compared to what engineers could squeeze out of longer 120mm cannons with faster-flying ammunition. In the 1990s, Germany was among many countries to go this route with the Leopard 2A6 variant, which introduced a longer 120mm gun from Rheinmetall that extended the maximum range of the tank by around 1,600 yards – almost a mile – and significantly increased its ability to penetrate enemy armor.




These various factors contributed to decisions not just in France, but also in Germany, the United Kingdom, and the United States, to abandon previously plans to add larger caliber main guns to their respective main battle tank designs. The end of the Cold War and a reduced emphasis on conventional ground operations also played a part in the death of those programs.

At the same time, these developments may be reaching the limit of how much performance it is possible to get out of a 120mm gun and still have that weapon be practical. Lengthening the barrel is a relatively easy way to increase range and muzzle velocity, but creates new problems the longer it gets.

A longer barrel might require higher-pressure ammunition to ensure the shell reaches a consistent peak speed before leaving the muzzle, which would put more strain on the entire gun. The extended proboscis would also increase the tank’s physical footprint, potentially making it more difficult to transport. The U.S. military has had to contend with similar issues in the development of its extended-range 155mm howitzers, which also feature significantly longer barrels than their predecessors.
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Rheinmetall
A size comparison of Rheinmetall's original 120mm gun, its extended L55 variant, and its earlier, proposed 140mm type. It's new 130mm design is shorter than the 120mm L55.


It may become increasingly attractive then to go to a larger caliber, but shorter main gun instead, regardless of the design demands and logistical issues this might create in the process. It’s worth noting that Rheinmetall’s experimental 130mm gun is shorter than its improved 120mm gun, but is more capable.

There has already been a broad level of renewed interest in the potential of larger caliber main guns for tanks across NATO since 2014, when Russia seized of Ukraine’s Crimean Peninsula and subsequent began actively supporting for separatists in that country. After that, the United States and other members of the Alliance rushed to reinvigorate their more traditional combat capabilities, with a particular emphasis on improved armored vehicles, among other things.

Beyond tanks, various NATO members have been similarly looking to up-gun lighter armored vehicles to either better match or outrange their Russian counterparts, too. The U.S. Army alone has added a 30mm cannon to some of its Stryker wheeled armored vehicles, which previously only had a .50 caliber machine gun or 40mm automatic grenade launcher. That service is also looking to replace its tracked Bradley Fighting Vehicles and its 25mm main gun with a new design that might come armed with a 50mm cannon.

At present, Nexter and Rheinmetall have yet to publicly unveil their proposed design, even in mockup or model form, with or without a new, larger main gun. Nexter and German armored vehicle maker Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, which merged to form KMW+Nexter Defense Systems (KNDS) in 2015, did debut what they called European Main Battle Tank (EMBT) at the Eurosatory arms fair in 2018, but this vehicle featured a Leopard 2 hull with a standard Leclerc turret with a 120mm gun.


KNDS said this tank was a technology demonstrator and meant to show off what the new multi-national conglomerate was capable of producing. However, the firm did suggest it could be an attractive option for smaller countries, especially those with bridges and other infrastructure that simply cannot handle the weight of larger main battle tanks.

All told, it still remains to be seen whether any new Franco-German tank, or any other upcoming Western design, will come armed with a 130mm or 140mm main gun or whether this concept will end up being shelved yet again.

 

Khafee

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LEOPARD 2
With the performance characteristics of the A7+
The Leopard 2A7 + was developed and qualified for the new tasks of the German Armed Forces. The system components, optimized to protect the crew, prove thier worth, currently being in use in Afghanistan with NATO's Partner Canada.

Amongst others its features include:
  • Passive all-round protection for the crew against threats such as roadside bombs, mines and bazooka fire
  • Interface for attaching implements, such as a mine plow, mine roller or a dozer blade for clearing mines, booby traps or building debris blocking the roads
  • Cooling system for both the turret and chassis
  • Increased power-rated additional power generators for check-point missions
  • Communication interface on the exterior of the vehicle for dismounted forces
  • Combined driver's night vision (thermal imager / image intensifier) for front and rear view
  • Improved optoelectronics (day / night) for reconnaissance over long distances
  • Digitized and multifunctional user concept
Product Specification
Length 
(gun at 12 o'clock)up to 10.97 m
Width3.77 m - 4 m
Height (turret roof)2.64 m
WeightMLC 70
Engine power1,100 kw (1,500 hp)
Maximum speed72 km/h
Cruising range450 km
Armament120 mm / L55 or L44 smooth bore gun / 7,62 mm machine gun / FLW 200 with 40 mm grenade launcher or .50 MG

 

Khafee

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EU tank breaks cover
15 June 2018
EU-tank-breaks-cover-_ES18D5_ - Copy.jpg


After being kept under wraps, the French-German KNDS Group (Krauss-Maffei Wegmann + Nexter Defense Systems) has unveiled its first joint project, the EMBT, or European Main Battle Tank. Essentially a technology demonstrator, with further development, “the EMBT is a short-term response to the operational need of the market for high-intensity battle tanks”.

The EMBT consists of the KMW Leopard 2A7 MBT platform fitted with the Nexter Leclerc MBT turret. The two elements were integrated at Nexter’s facility at Roanne, where Leclerc production was originally undertaken. Since then, the EMBT has undertaken mobility and firing trials, the latter performed in Portugal, with 22 rounds fired from the 120mm smoothbore gun.

The standard Leopard 2A7 has a three-person turret armed with a manually loaded 120mm smoothbore gun, whereas the Leclerc turret is fitted with a 120mm smoothbore gun fed by a bustle-mounted automatic loader.

The Leclerc turret is lighter and more compact, which reduces the combined weight by six tonnes.

According to KNDS, the EMBT demonstrates that their combined skills make it the legitimate and essential industrial actor of the two key French- German future programmes.

The first of these is the follow-on to the Leopard 2/ Leclerc MBT, which is called the Main Ground Combat System and has a potential in-service date of around 2035. This could well be brought forward because the design of these two MBTs is now many years old and the point will be reached where they can no longer be upgraded.

The second programme is the future artillery system. Called the Common Indirect Fire System, this has a number of elements, including the replacement of the German Army 155mm PzH2000 tracked and French 155mm CAESAR wheeled self-propelled artillery systems.


 

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Franco-German agreement on the new MGCS main battle tank signed
April 28, 2020
Dorothee Frank

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The Federal Ministry of Defense announced the signing of two agreements on the future heavy land combat system between Germany and France at noon.

“The Main Ground Combat System (MGCS) project, to be implemented under German leadership, is to replace the German Leopard 2 main battle tanks and the French Leclerc main battle tanks from the mid-2030s. With the project, Germany and France are sending an important signal for European cooperation in defense policy, ”said the Ministry of Defense in today's communication. “Defense Minister Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer and her French counterpart Florence Parly have signed a framework agreement that sets out the project organization and management structures. Due to the corona situation, the ministers could not meet to sign together. ”

The Leopard 2 and Leclerc main battle tanks, which were introduced in the German and French armed forces, were designed in the 1980s and have experienced extensive increases in combat value since then. Since these main battle tanks are to be replaced by 2035, Germany and France launched the joint MGCS project in 2012. The project is divided into five major phases: analysis of operational needs, concept study, development and technological capability verification, integration and system demonstration, and ultimately the production of the system. The first two phases have already been successfully completed. However, a binationally coordinated prioritization of individual requirements (high level requirements) has so far been lacking.

“Both countries should benefit equally from the cooperation, which is why the contracts to be concluded are based on 50 percent financing between Germany and France. In addition, both nations should be granted sufficient intellectual property rights for the future intended use of the work results, ”the Ministry of Defense writes about the content of the agreement. “The ministers therefore also signed an Implementing Arrangement 1, which forms the basis for the commissioning of a system architecture definition study. The budget committee of the German Bundestag has only recently cleared the way for the commissioning of this two-year study. Here, too, Germany and France share the costs. The system architecture is a prerequisite for the development of a technology demonstrator with which the German and French requirements for the MGCS can be checked. ”
 
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