Armor: Scruffy Leopards Straggle In

[Valin]

StrategyPage

March 19, 2023: Germany and other European NATO members that agreed to send Leopard 2 tanks to Ukraine are running into logistical problems. Germany finally relented and allowed NATO nations that had purchased Leopard 2 tanks from Germany to send them to Ukraine whereupon the real problems started. Most contributors found that their Leopard 2s needed remedial work because they never expected another recurrence of European military tension, let alone another war, and failed to complete, or never started, planned or recommend upgrades.

Delaying these upgrades seemed reasonable because the Americans were still an active NATO member and their M1 tanks were known to be up-to-date. There are still about 2,000 Leopard 2s in service with European nations. Unlike the Americans, the Europeans saw no need to complete needed upgrades to their tanks or even keep most of them operational. So the Ukrainians will have to wait until the Europeans get enough of their Leopard 2s operational or the Americans change their minds on how quickly they will deliver M-1s. There are already over 200 operational M-1s in Europe with American armored brigades. The Ukrainians don’t need American soldiers but they could use their M-1 tanks.

The M1 entered service in 1980 and 10,300 were built. The Leopard 2 followed in 1983 and 3,600 were built. Production of both these tanks sharply declined after the Cold War ended in 1991. At that point a lot of existing Leopard 2s were no longer needed and became a hot item in the second hand market. By 2010 secondhand Leopard 2s were hard to come by because so many had already been sold or scrapped.

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[Valin]

Meanwhile................

Mar 19, 2023
War with Russia is often spoken of in 2023, but the drastic reduction in the size of Britain's armed forces is often overlooked. Here, I compare the sizes of Britain's military in 1991, when it was specifically trained and deployed to resist a Soviet assault into Western Europe, and 2023. The figures are fairly shocking, something the US government recently noted as well.