Leopard Battle Tank – Rheinmetall Group was awarded a contract in June 2013 to provide L55 smoothbore guns and 120mm ammunition for approximately 60 Leopard 2A7+ battle tanks. The company also agreed to deliver fire control electronics and electro-optical sensors for the medium-caliber weapon station.
The Leopard 2A7+ battle tank is built based on the Leopard 2 MBT and employs digitized technology and multifunctional user concept for improved sustainability. The turret and chassis of the Leopard 2A7+ are fitted with a cooling system.
Leopard Battle Tank
The tank, which is powered by a diesel engine, features night-vision equipment and a laser range finder that can measure the distance to an object, enabling it to better aim at a moving target while traveling over rough terrain.
Contractors Involved
There are multiple iterations of the Leopard 2 with different features and designs. The Rh-120 is highly accurate while shooting on the move due to a two-axis stabilization system that counteracts the tank’s movement against the position of the Rh-120 gun barrel.
Older tanks need to come to a halt to fire accurately at enemy targets, an action that collectively slows an attacking force’s momentum. The Leopard 2’s stabilization system allows the main gun to remain oriented against a target even while the tank is maneuvering over rough terrain.
This gives the Leopard 2 a high level of accuracy while shooting on the move, or a spill-free delivery of a stein filled with beer. Although the Leopard 2 is 40 years old, there is little public information regarding the armor and its composition.
The best description of the original armor set is that it is a multilayer design with rolled homogeneous steel armor interspaced with nonmetallic, likely ceramic, materials. This is designed to stop traditional armor piercing, dart-like ammunition, and to dissipate the molten jet generated by a high-explosive, anti-tank projectile.
Design And Features Of The Leopard A Main Battle Tank
There are rumors the tank used so-called “Burlington armor,” a composite matrix developed by the United Kingdom and reportedly shared with West Germany. The Leopard 2 also features smoke dischargers and protection against nuclear, chemical, and biological agents.
Canada joined other G7 members who unveiled similar measures. Since the start of the war a year ago, Canada has provided more than C$5 billion ($3.67 billion) in support to Ukraine, Trudeau said. Canada has also trained thousands of Ukrainian soldiers in recent years.
Now, nearly a year after Russia invaded Ukraine, NATO is set to send up to 54 Leopard 2s to energize the Ukrainian army. The tanks, sent from NATO nations including Germany, Poland, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal, will arm Kyiv with a better, more powerful tank fleet than ever before.
In small numbers or large, however, the Leopard 2 would be a much better tank than anything fielded by the mighty Russian Armed Forces. (Editor’s Note: The number of Leopard 2 tanks that NATO countries have donated to Ukraine, so far, are accurate as of publishing time.)
What Are The Advantages Of Leopards Over Other Tanks?
Russian President “Vladimir Putin made a grave miscalculation when he launched his war of aggression,” Trudeau said. “He underestimated Ukrainians, and he underestimated the solidarity of their friends around the world… but today, we are stronger and more unified than ever.”
Britain has promised to supply Ukraine with 14 of its Challenger 2 tanks, and U.S. officials speaking on the condition of anonymity, said that the White House would announce as early as Wednesday that it would send M1 Abrams tanks to Ukraine.
The American-made M1 Abrams tanks require constant upkeep and generally run on special fuel. Although Germany has supplied a large amount of equipment to Ukraine, including armored cars, it has also been wrestling with its post-second world war tradition of anti-militarism.
The supply of main battle tanks had been seen as problematic because of their much more obviously offensive capabilities. The 54 Leopard 2s are a drop in the bucket of NATO’s tank fleet, which includes more than 1,000 Leopards overall.
Leopard A Mbt Propulsion And Performance
As of this writing, other countries are deliberating sending more tanks, and a multinational Leopard 2 tank force that could consist of more than 100 tanks appears likely. This force, fighting for Ukraine, could reverse Russian advances over the past year, while proving more than a match for Russian T-72 and T-80 tanks, some of which are even older than the Leopards.
Russia escalated attacks against civilian targets across Ukraine in the winter of 2023, targeting civilian population centers and energy infrastructure. The attacks have left many convinced Moscow will continue to target civilians until it is persuaded to end the war, and an offensive weapon like a main battle tank is an excellent tool of persuasion.
While the Leopard 2’s combat career is brief, if the tank is deployed to Ukraine, that will quickly change. In a strange twist of fate, a tank designed to face down the Soviet Union’s mighty Red Army may end up the armored champion of one ex-Soviet country, while fighting another ex-Soviet country.
While Ukraine has won significant victories – in the battle for Kyiv at the beginning of the war as well as in Kharkiv oblast and around Kherson in the south – it is hampered by a shortage of tanks to support its operations and faced by Russian forces increasingly fielding
Cold War Origins
more modern and capable T-90s. Germany’s Federal Security Council approved a deal to sell up to 200 battle tanks to Saudi Arabia in July 2011. Qatar placed an order with KMW for 62 tanks in 2013. The first batch of tanks was delivered to the Qatar Armed Forces in 2015.
Leopard 2A7+ MBT is powered by an MTU MB 873 diesel engine, which generates a power of 1,500hp. The tank can also be fitted with additional power generators with increased power rating for conducting checkpoint missions.
It can reach a maximum speed of 72km/h and has a cruising range of 450km. To understand what made the Leopard 2 the most popular tank in the world, we have to go back to the Cold War itself.
In 1955, a decade after World War II, Germany reconstituted its armed forces. At the time, Germany was split in two: West Germany, an ally of the United States and a member of NATO; and East Germany, an ally of the Soviet Union and a member of the Warsaw Pact.
The Leopard Diaspora
West Germany established the Bundeswehr, or Federal Armed Forces, and under it, the Heer, or German Army. Supplies of the Leopard 2 would help offset Russia’s superiority in artillery firepower, which aided Moscow in seizing two cities in eastern Ukraine’s Luhansk Province over the summer.
They could be of particular value as the war approaches its second year and Ukraine looks to reclaim lost territory and expects a Russian spring offensive. Upgraded Leopards from the -A5 variant onward include the addition of extra layers of armor bolted onto the face of the turret, protecting the tank from frontal attack.
The thickness and composition of this armor is unknown, but it is considered vital to keep the tank protected from modern anti-tank ammunition used by modern Russian main battle tanks. In 1991, following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, West and East Germany reunited into a single state, and the NATO countries radically downsized their armed forces.
This wasn’t the end of the Leopard 2, but rather a rebirth, as Germany and the Netherlands unloaded thousands of used tanks on the global arms market. Germany sold or transferred Leopard 2s to Chile, Denmark, Finland, Greece, Hungary, Indonesia, Norway, Poland, Qatar, Singapore, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, and Turkey, while the Netherlands exported tanks to Austria, Canada, and Portugal.
Leopards To Ukraine
The Leopard 2 became a truly global tank. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 immediately prompted a call for NATO arms. Although NATO member states have donated hundreds of older, obsolete, Soviet-era tanks to the cause, the alliance has so far resisted calls to send Western-style tanks, with their improved armament, armor, communications, crew comfort, and other advantages,
to defend Ukraine. Germany in particular viewed the deployment of such tanks as a dangerous escalation against a nuclear-armed Russia, and even blocked the legal transfer of Leopard 2s to Ukraine from third-party countries. Unlike the other main Western tank, the American M1A2 Abrams, the Leopard 2 has not seen a lot of combat.
The German Army deployed the Leopard 2 to Kosovo for peacekeeping operations, while the Canadians, Danes, and Dutch deployed small numbers of their Leopard 2 fleets to Afghanistan. The Leopard 2s deployed to Afghanistan experienced no losses, although a few did suffer mobility damage due to mines, but were eventually returned to service.
One Danish tanker was also killed. In neither deployment did the tanks operate against an enemy armed with modern tanks or anti-tank weapons. As well as emphasizing its belief that Moscow intends to launch a significant new offensive in the coming months, Kyiv and many of its allies believe that the war will end more quickly if Russia is defeated on the battlefield in Ukraine’s own counter-offensives to take back
Leopard A Mbt Armament
Russian occupied territory. [1/3] Canada’s Prime Minister Justin Trudeau makes an announcement that Canada will send more military equipment and impose additional sanctions on Russian officials on the one-year anniversary of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine, at Fort York Armory in Toronto, Ontario, Canada,
February 24, 2023. REUTERS/Carlos Osorio/File Photo A Rheinmetall Rh-120 120-millimeter smoothbore main gun comes equipped on the Leopard 2. It’s served by one of the most advanced fire-control systems in the world, with a ballistic computer, laser range finder, and thermal night vision that made it
the equal of the American M1 Abrams. This allows the tank to engage targets with high first-round hit accuracy, day or night, and even engage moving enemy targets through enemy smoke screens. According to Rheinmetall, a round fired by the Rh-120 gun is supersonic as it leaves the muzzle, traveling at up to 5,692 feet per second.
(A .30-06 rifle bullet, on the other hand, travels at just 3,000 feet per second.) West Germany’s first postwar tank, the Leopard 1, was effective, but sacrificed armor protection for mobility, leading to questions about survivability.
Late Bloomer
Leopard 2 was an attempt to produce a more balanced tank—one that was mobile, heavily armored, and equipped with a larger, more powerful gun. The original main tank-killing round was the DM-13 armor-piercing, discarding sabot tank round, essentially a high-speed steel dart capable of penetrating 220 millimeters of tank armor at 1.2 miles.
Another round was the DM-12 high-explosive, anti-tank shell that used the shaped explosive charge to penetrate armor. Today, the Leopard 2 carries even more powerful rounds with greater armor penetration, including the Rheinmetall DM53 and DM63 rounds, reportedly capable of penetrating 750 millimeters of tank armor at the same distance.
In January 2023, Poland announced it would send ten Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine, with or without Germany’s blessing, while the U.K. promised to send 14 Challenger II tanks. The United States is also planning to send 31 Abrams tanks.
This finally broke political resistance to tank transfers, and on January 25, Germany announced it would not only send 14 Leopard 2s, it would no longer stand in the way of countries willing to send their tanks to Ukraine.
Information You Can Trust
As of now, Poland, Portugal, Germany, the Netherlands, and Norway all appear poised to donate a total of 54 Leopard 2s. The most popular tank in the world is not American; it’s a big cat in service with more than 20 countries worldwide.
The Kampfpanzer Leopard 2, which Germany designed and built in the 1970s, is one of the most widely used tanks in the world, and is by far the most popular tank in NATO’s inventory. It was so advanced for its time that even the mighty American .css-3wjtm9{-webkit-text-decoration:underline;text-decoration:underline;text-decoration-thickness:0.125rem;text-decoration-color:#1c6a65;
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(The United States has similar requirements, as do other countries, like Switzerland.) Germany has tried to tie the supply of Leopards to a wider coalition that would supply other tanks, including US Abrams – a tank viewed by experts as being less suitable for the war in Ukraine because of its heavy consumption of fuel.
Observation And Fire Control
Washington’s reported promise on February 24 to deliver a significant number of its own Abrams tanks appears to have broken the deadlock. West Germany and NATO could not match their opponents tank for tank, but they could build better tanks.
The Leopard 2 entered service in 1979, and it was a better tank than anything fielded in the Warsaw Pact. West Germany was a frontline NATO state, facing down the numerically superior armies of the Warsaw Pact.
While the United States for a time planned to offset Soviet superiority in tanks, aircraft, and manpower with nuclear weapons, West Germany’s policy was to build up a powerful land army to deter, and if necessary defeat, an invasion;
after all, if either side used nuclear weapons, they would almost certainly be used on German soil. The Heer operated an impressive 12 combat divisions, including five panzer (armored) and four panzergrenadier (mechanized infantry) divisions, as well as several reserve mechanized brigades, for a total of 5,135 tanks.
Leopard A Mbt Protection Features
“Our citizens who are on the list look at such measures with a smile,” Stepanov was quoted as saying. “This is a sign of the helplessness of the anti-Russian camp, which hates Russia, but understands that we cannot be defeated.”
The Leopard 2 carried just 42 rounds of main gun ammunition. This prioritized using the main gun against enemy tanks, while trucks, infantry, and other unarmored targets would be engaged by the tank’s machine guns. The tank was fitted with one MG3A1 7.62-millimeter machine gun—mounted coaxially with the main gun, and fired by the loader—that could engage ground targets.
A second MG3A1 mounted above the turret, fired by the commander, was primarily meant to engage enemy aircraft.
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Emma Nehls is a military writer and historian with a passion for exploring the intricacies of warfare and the human experience within the military. With extensive knowledge and a deep understanding of military strategy, tactics, and historical contexts, Nehls brings a unique perspective to his writings.
