The irony. If Germany hadn't embargoed the delivery of Altays engines since 2018 Turkey could have donated(if willing) the vast majority of its Leopard 2A4 inventory to Ukraine.
Now I'm excited to see when we will see the first Articles in western news sites how Turkey should donate its Leo tanks and when we say no how we become a bad ally and partner.
It is also telling how germany wont ask Turkey because they know what our people will tell them "You shouldn't have sabotaged our Altay project".
Also interesting how the US suddenly made an U-turn with the Abrams but still they could easily pledge over a hundred Abrams for Ukraine and have the crews trained.
If i was the Minister of defense , i would rely of IFVs and tank destroyers , they're agile , pack a hell of a punch (30 mm , 105 mm ...) and easily maintained and fixed , as we saw in the Russo-Ukraine war , tanks are nigh-obsolete , regarding their slowness and too costly to maintain in a conflict, a simple Javelin or Skif ATGM can decapitate its turret or destroy its tracks.
I don't think that there's an emergency in Spain that requires building factories for the Leopards, but maybe u know something i don't , the point is , if Spain have some reserve IFVs like the Pizarro, you could send them as u Said without decreasing the numbers of tanks to remain in an acceptable situationnal awareness level ,I agree with this we can send ASCOD/Pizarros and Centauros in good quantities, without hurting so much our capabilities, and they are also in phases of being replaced.
But being one of the EU countries with most Leopards, (I think we might discard Greece), only Germans and us have Leopards in good quantities, so probably the agreement would be Spain to send Leopards and others IFV's, etc. And at industrial level could be good for us if Germans allows us to build them here and even export them, given the circunstances.
Regarding the Dragón, latest new I've heard, its production started past month and would be finished in 2027 with around 350 units.
Autotranslated article:
El VCR 8x8 Dragón para el Ejército de Tierra
El programa Vehículo Blindado de Ruedas (VCR) 8x8 Dragón del Ejército de Tierra se encuentra por fin en las fases de fabricación de los vehículos de líneawww-defensa-com.translate.goog
What types of tanks Canada have in its inventory ?
We have 20 Leopard 2A6Ms and approximately 44-45 Leopard 2A4's.
True true , but if u're gonna send 200-300 tanks to Ukraine, it would be difficult to replace the old stocks of 2A4s with 2A6 , the factories would be overloaded with acquisitions from , literally, almost all of NATO . A question, why haven't Spain bought the M1 Abrams to replace the Leopards ?, i find it highly upgradable with israeli tech like the Iron Fist APS and other western systems and trustworthy for its Armor
Canada doesn't have a threat that requires any type of heavy armour like tanks , the best thing to do is to give a significant number of Leopards to Ukraine (Saving the maintenance and refubrishement money) , replace them with LAV 6.0 or Stryker Dragoons , and voilà, an agile and heavily armed armoured force , basically for Law enforcement and counter-terrorism missions
Oh , so what u're saying is that the army's backbone is the Leopard tank , then i don't think that Spain will give much of itBecause we were used to deal with Leopards 2A4 and Germans allowed us to make the tanks here, including the engine in our shipyards under Rolls Royce license. Only a few parts were need to be sent from Germany to complete the tanks, so it was a very good industrial plan for our country.
Article from 1995:
Aspectos industriales del programa Leopardo para el Ejército de Tierra español
El hecho de que el Gobierno español aprobase la fabricación de un nuevo carro para dotar a las unidades acorazadas de su Ejército, fue objeto de un gran...
We're already upgrading a bunch of our LAV III's to LAV 6.0's. We'll also purchase new LAV 6.0s to supplement the force. The needs for MBTs has definitely not a normal thing for Canada, however, we've been caught unprepared before. When we went to Afghanistan, our Leo 1 tanks were in shambles, but we brought them anyways. We quickly resorted to buying 2A4s off the German and 2A6s of the Dutch, to finish our commitment to that campaign. Canada has to decide if it wants to be in the business of fielding tanks at all. If they want to, they ought to use some of the new military spending that is coming down the pipe to buy about 120 Leopard 2A7s. Otherwise, I agree, ship them to Urkaine.
