In 2009 Germany began upgrading its few active duty Leopard tanks from the 2A6 to the A7+ standard. The upgrade costs about $100,000 per sight and give Leopard 2 users something most M1 users already have. Third generation also means the engineers have added more wish-list items they have been receiving from earlier users over the years. The ATTICA sight is 3rd generation and that means images are sharper, more easily linked with other systems and the equipment is more reliable and easier to maintain. In most modern tanks both the commander and the gunner have high tech sights, usually with thermal (heat imaging) capability. For example in 2014 Germany, Canada and Denmark agreed to upgrade over a hundred of their Leopard 2A6 tanks with ATTICA thermal imaging systems used by the tank commander and gunner. In many respects the Germans were just trying to stay competitive with the M1 upgrades. A minority of Germans thought there was still a risk of a renewed Russian threat and so plans were made to keep upgrading Leopard 2s for foreign customers (who were now operating most of the remaining Leopard 2s) and the 225 Germany kept on duty.Ĭontinuing to encourage Leopard 2 upgrades made business sense because back in the 1990s the two most modern (and effective) tanks were the American M1 and the Leopard 2. Until 2014 Germany believed that those retired Leopard 2s would eventually be sold off or used for spare parts. But nearly a thousand Leopard 2s were put in storage just in case. Most of the retired Leopards were sold off or scrapped. Germany also retired over older 2,200 Leopard 1s. At that point the German Leopard 2 fleet shrank over 85 percent (from 2,000 to 225). On top of that Germany was reunited in 1990 and the Russian equipped East German military was largely scrapped. Most Germans believed peace would last after the communist governments Russia had imposed on most East European nations after 1945 suddenly collapsed in 1989 followed by the Soviet Union dissolving in 1991. As of the end of 2017 the actual German tank force has been reduced to fewer than a hundred operational tanks. There may be further additions to the active tank force depending on how much of a threat Russia continues to pose. The 104 reactivated Leopard 2A7Vs won’t begin arriving until 2019 and it will take until 2023 to complete the process. ![]() That involved taking 104 retired (in the 1990s) Leopard 2A4 tanks and putting them back into service after refurbishing the older tanks and upgrading them to the A7V standard. This was all attributed to a 2015 program to expand and upgrade the tank force. That’s 39 percent of the 244 Leopard 2s currently available to the army. ![]() That meant Germany only had 95 Leopard 2 tanks that were combat ready. This odd situation was revealed in November 2017 when it was discovered that 53 Leopard 2s were unavailable while undergoing upgrades and 86 were inoperable because of spare parts shortages. It has gotten so bad that currently Turkey, Chile, Greece, Singapore, Spain, Switzerland and Poland each have more operational Leopard 2 tanks than Germany (which had over 2,000 in the early 1990s). The German effort to rebuild some of its Cold War era Leopard 2 tank force has encountered problems.
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