“… The Leopard 2 and Abrams are very similar tanks. ( Both use basically the same German-designed main gun. ) The major difference is in the type of engine used. The Leopard 2 uses a diesel engine, while the Abrams used a gas turbine. Each engine has its advantages and disadvantages. The Leopard 2’s diesel is more [fuel] efficient, giving the German tank more range (550 kilometers to 426 kilometers for the Abrams). ( But the M1 is probably a little faster. ) That said, the gas turbine on the Abrams is quieter, meaning that opponents without infrared systems will have a harder time detecting the Abrams at night, which can mean their only warning an Abrams is around could be when the Abrams sends a 120mm candygram their way – most of the time, the result will be a direct hit.

There are smaller differences. The Leopard 2 has two 7.62mm machine guns – one anti-aircraft gun, the other a coaxial machine gun. The Abrams has three: One 12.7mm machine gun for anti-aircraft work (also very useful against infantry and unarmored vehicles), a 7.62mm coaxial machine gun, and a second machine gun mounted near the loader’s hatch. The Abrams has an edge here, since the loader can cover a sector in addition to the coaxial machine gun and the commander’s machine gun. This means it is that much harder for infantry to sneak up on the Abrams than it would be to sneak up on a Leopard.

The matter of auxiliary power is another thing not always mentioned in the specs. The Leopard 2 has none. The Abrams features an auxiliary power unit, which allows it to shut off the turbine in some instances, allowing it to conserve fuel. In situations where the Abrams is on defense, this is a huge advantage – not only because the Abrams saves fuel, but because infrared sensors have a harder time picking it up. Again, the first indication the Abrams is there will be when it fires – and well-trained Abrams crews are very accurate. If you see an Abrams firing at you, it is probably the last thing you will see.

Finally, there is another item that doesn’t show up in the specs: Internal arrangement. The Leopard stores some of its main gun ammunition in the crew compartment, and uses steel as its liner. While the steel can keep something out, it also creates nasty spall fragments when a sabot or HESH (high-explosive squash head) round strikes the tank. The Abrams keeps its main gun ammo in a separate compartment … reducing casualties when an Abrams is hit. This is important – an uninjured crew can fight back even if the tank is damaged. This was proven In Desert Storm, when an Abrams stuck in the mud continued fighting despite taking three hits from the main guns of Iraqi T-72 tanks – and promptly dispatched the offending T-72s. The tank defied American efforts to destroy it in place, and after being recovered had the turret replaced and was back with its unit in 24 hours. The damaged turret was sent back to the United States for analysis.

In short, the Abrams still takes the title overall, despite arguable deficiencies in range [ per tank or fuel ] (which careful logistics planning can overcome), as its combat record proves. The Leopard 2 is a close second, and the Challenger 2 isn’t far behind the Leopard.

…

Source

” RetiredCdnTanker RE:M1-A2 VS. LEOPARD II A6 – RetiredCdnTanker 3/2/2005 10:57:26 AM
I try to check in and read the responses weekly, I’m just to darn busy right now, darn it.

I will make a comment about these comparison threads, though.

The Leo 2, M1A2, Leclerc and Challenger 2 were all designed with roughly the same requirements, and thus can be compared. The FCS, weapons, power train and suspension are all directly comparable. The same way that a Mercedes can be compared to a BMW. That being said, the tanks mentioned all, indeed, meet the requirements laid out by their respective governments.

(Well, excepting perhaps the Leclerc, but only in terms of reliability and build quality. I doubt if the Leclerc meets its design criteria in those regards.)

I have been inside all of the above tanks, and I have my own opinions on them. I like the driver station on the Challenger the best, with the M1 a close second. For gunner stations, I had by far the most difficulty with the Challenger 2, the others being roughly equal. Loading the Challenger was quite a bit worse than loading the smoothbores as well.

For me, personally, I preferred the Leo 2 turret in terms of ergonomics and “feel”. The M1A2 is by far the best tank in terms of keeping the crew commander situationally aware of what was happening around him. It’s as good as the Swedish 122, which I thought was in a field of its own in that regard. The M1 is also slightly more maintenance friendly than the others, I thought.

Bottom line? I would feel OK taking any of the three to war. I leave out the Leclerc because I simply did not like it ergonomically, and of three tanks available, only one worked. That doesn’t fill me with a sense of confidence in the vehicle.

In my opinion, comparing the tanks is like comparing similar cars. What are you most comfortable in, what is the most reliable, what best suits your needs. … ” ( end quote )

Btw, America’s and Israel’s tanks use armor-piercing main gun ammunition made out of the the most efficacious material available, which is Uranium 238. For reasons of political correctness, the Germans use 12 cm shot made from tungsten, which is not as good or as bad as U238, depending upon one’s criteria of goodness and badness.
– David Davenport

Wrong.

[" ...does anybody really believe the Chinese will resort to arms ... " ]

That’s what Gen MacArthur before November 1950.

As to NATO, the simple answer is that it was designed for the last century. A formal alliance has no fundamental purpose in an era in which a) nearly all the major threats to our security come from the near and far eastern theatres; b) regarding these regions we and the European allies are deeply divided about not only the use of military force against such threats but also the nature of these threats; and c) even if we could close the conceptual gap with the Euros the US would still be doing nearly 100% of the heavy lifting.

NATO’s little more than a political institution now. As such it’s valuable, sure, but let’s not pretend it means anything in the military/strategic sphere.

As to the comments about a Russia-China alliance, forget it. Russia’s Far East regional fiefdoms are already more influenced by China than by Moscow and will be de facto satellites within 15 years or so. Already Russian businessmen there are being forced to communicate in Chinese rather than Russian. Ignore Putin’s posturing; he’s desperate and will likely be overthrown by his FSB handlers as soon as oil prices dip and the country’s potemkin resurgence comes to a halt.

Meanwhile, the land of the rising sun is not sitting idly by.

Having worked on European and US sourced military equipment, I have to say that the Euro stuff is at least comparable. Here’s what happens:

US and Euro both produce a Bopamagilvy. Cost is $5 mill for the US one, $2 mill for the Euro one. The Euro one works 80% of the time, the US one 50%.
NATO buys 100 Euro-Bopamaglivies, US buys 1000 US-Bopamagilvies.
After 1 year, NATO still has 98 in stock, the US only 100 (having expended the rest in training and tests), and makes an improved Mk II based on “lessons learnt”, that costs $4 million. They order another 1000, thereby putting the developing company “in the black”. Meanwhile, the Euro company made a loss, and gets a state handout instead of follow-up orders.

Repeat for 10 years.

The US Mk XI Bopamagilvy now has a reliability of 90%, and costs $0.5 million (though uses 10-year-old-technology). NATO still has 80 of the Mk I Euro-Bopamagilvy in stocks, and wonders why it didn’t buy US in the first place. So it sets about developing a Mk II Bopamagilvy using contemporary technology, while the US is working on the Super-Bopamagilvy, and the whole process is repeated.

Third parties who want Bopamagilvies know that if they buy Euro, then in case of war they’re SOOL when it comes to getting 200 replacements – whereas the US just cranks up an extra shift. Which is why Australia is buying old Abrams M1-A2s rather than the *far* better, faster, cheaper, Leopard III (it’s better in *every* respect). Even though it means we have to greatly upgrade infrastructure for a 2nd-rate piece of kit, we have logistics support anywhere in the world. So it’s no contest.

1. Russia. Bush ain’t ignoring it, he’s simply not directly confronting Putin. The US has been quietly supporting Democracy in most of the USSR successor states, including the recent not-so-quiet occurances in the Ukraine and Georgia. Russia is going to wake up in a few years and realize that the US has surrounded it with states who look to the US for leadership if Russia doesn’t quit moving towards a expansionist dictatorship. Bush is playing a game of Go here, and winning.

2. Japan has been moving towards becoming a local military power since the fall of the USSR took the hobbles off the NK’s. They’re building Carriers for pete’s sake (Calling them Helicopter Destroyers, but they’re small carriers nonetheless). They’ve got the second largest modern fleet on the planet and are number 3 in terms of combat power of their Navy (The UK is #3 and #2 respectively, disparity is due to Carriers and SSBN’s that the UK has and Japan doesn’t). It’s also looking like certain provisions in the Japanese Constitution may get ammended in the next 5-10 years, specifically the limits on Defense Spending and foreign combat deployments. When these limits come off, look for Japan to build up their army and start deploying with teh US more, and to start building real Fleet Carriers (The only reason they aren’t right now is cost, with the 1% of GDP limit on military spending, the cost of a CV or CVN would force them to dock their fleet for ~5 years).

In case anybody hasn’t been paying attention, the yuan renminbi is a semiconvertable currency unsuited for international trade and pegged to the US dollar; the Hong Kong dollar is a fully convertable currency pegged to the US dollar; and finally, due to the fact that China’s exports are mostly to the U.S., its hard-currency income is almost all dollars (and the rest is yen).

If China guts the U.S. dollar, it destroys the value of its income, and will find itself in trouble buying oil (in either dollars or euros). And it can then either leave the yuan-dollar rate intact (and thus raise internal prices), or increase the value of the yuan against the dollar (increasing the cost of Chinese wages in goods exported to the U.S., hurting exports and reducing Chinese income further . . .)

So, the Chinese economy will be hit severely by a Chinese attack on the dollar. And the Chinese people, seeing their new prosperity go away, will blame the Chinese government. Destabilizing the political fabric of your own country to cause a recession in another is not a brilliant bit of statescraft.

Nothing; however, they do a bunch of stuff cheaper and better. About what that is I’ll say nothing more.

Condi for Prez – Why Condi, Rummy and the Japanese Navy Please note what the Bush administration’s foreign policy (guided by our heroine, Condi) has accomplished in the last 4 years. Japan has built a mighty anti-submarine fleet of destroyers…

French foreign policy think tanks have long promoted the goal of “multipolarity” in a post-Cold War world, i.e. the preference for many different, competing power centers rather than the “unipolarity” of the U.S. as a single hyper-power. Multipolarity is no longer simply a strategic goal. It is an emerging reality.

If they were serious about multipolarity they would increase their defense spending. Instead they are trying to get the results of multipolar power on the cheap by manipulating the U.S. It’s not working and it won’t work.

And WRT countries selling oil in Euros rather than dollars: so what. It only means that instead of selling to us in dollars they’ll sell to middlemen in Euros, and then we’ll buy from the middlemen. Iran et al, by playing such games, could enrich some middlemen but couldn’t effect a significant long-term reduction in the value of the dollar. The dollar rises or falls based mainly on Fed policy (and Fed policy relative to that of the ECB and BOJ) and on the relative attractiveness of dollar-denominated investments. If oil producers want to stop investing in dollar-denominated assets it would probably hurt them more than us.

Only an “imperial,” childish America, fearful of “loss of global power” would fear the pluralistic development of multiple associations between democratically accountable republics. That’s not my America.

Instead, Ralf’s post reveals Bush’s administration is welcoming the diversification you say you fear, with little regulation, except to ensure that the participating nations are truly democratic and, importantly, capitalistic.

-Steve

Was the petroeuro issue a primary motivation for our Iraq moves?

Monday, Feb. 21, 2005
Time Magazine
Tony Karon
Machiavelli’s advice to political leaders was that it’s more important to be feared than to be loved. That’s no help for President Bush on his European tour; in spite of the warm words he’s exchanging with European leaders, the reality is that the Bush administration is neither loved nor feared in growing sectors of the international community — increasingly, it is simply being ignored.
New evidence of this trend, which has developed in the wake of the war in Iraq, emerges every week:
…
All over the world, new bonds of trade and strategic cooperation are being forged around the U.S. China has not only begun to displace the U.S. as the dominant player in the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation organization (APEC), it is fast emerging as the major trading partner to some of Latin America’s largest economies. The European decision to lift its arms embargo may reflect an awareness of the strategic significance of Beijing’s emergence as an economic power — a dynamic that will dwarf the U.S. war with al-Qaeda in terms of its impact on the global strategic balance. And as China emerges alongside other new players such as India and Brazil, the U.S. will find itself forced to engage with a growing share of the international community that no longer deems it necessary to subordinate their own interests to Washington’s, nor to assume that the two are one and the same. French foreign policy think tanks have long promoted the goal of “multipolarity” in a post-Cold War world, i.e. the preference for many different, competing power centers rather than the “unipolarity” of the U.S. as a single hyper-power. Multipolarity is no longer simply a strategic goal. It is an emerging reality.

This attitude is wrongheaded in my view. We are wrong to act as if the Chicom regime represents the natural and legitimate state of affairs in China. We have to be pragmatic and deal with it, of course, but I think more coldness and caution would be in order. Taking advantage of economic opportunities and (where possible) private cultural ties is one thing; institutional links are another – the latter will turn out to have been a wasted investment when the regime either crumbles or mutates into something dangerous and unstable, as I believe it is likely to do. China is fundamentally unstable country because its political system is brittle and lacks legitimacy. When the economic crisis comes – as it will, when dealing with the bad debts cannot be put off any longer or the growth of exports slows – the regime may lose the only thing that gives it any legitimacy, and would then have very little to fall back on other than violence. It is no surprise that the regime is already cultivating a rather nasty strain of nationalism and anti-US aggressiveness.

It may be that Foreign Minister Downer knows this – I sense in the excerpt quoted by Ralf some distaste for the original decision to drop the embargo in 1992, which was made by the goverment of the other party (Downer is not exactly enthusiastic about anyone else selling arms to China). The Government may have realised that we made a mistake in getting unhealthily close to the corrupt and murderous Suharto regime in Indonesia back in the early 1990s (though I accept that Suharto’s operation was a big improvement over Sukarno’s Communist-influenced regime).

India (as a Anglosphere country with a stable, relatively flexible and consensual system of government) is a much better bet politically, culturally and economically. Working on deepening our security and diplomatic links with India would be definitely worth the effort for Australia. One of the most encouraging things about the Bush foreign policy is that the Indian relationship seems to have been given a very high priority (if a low profile in the media).

just in case you didn’t see this particular item in my post above: Australia lifted its arms embargo on China as earlyas 1992:

The Australian Government has defended its decision not to back the United States in lobbying the European Union to maintain an arms embargo on China.

The US is pushing for Japan and Australia to encourage Europe not to lift its embargo.

Australia imposed an arms embargo on China in 1989 over the Tiananmen Square massacre, but lifted it in 1992.

Foreign Affairs Minister Alexander Downer says for that reason, it would not make sense for Australia to lobby the Europeans now.

“We could hardly say you mustn’t lift your arms embargo but we have lifted our arms embargo so it’s alright for us but it’s not alright for you,” he said.

“Instead what we’ve said to the European Union is if you’re going to go ahead and lift your arms embargo on China please do so in a way that has no impact on the power balance or the strategic structure of the east Asian region.”

asking for consultations isn’t to say that ‘you can’t do anything without our approval’.

Iraq was no threat to the US per se, so the war on it was a completely different matter than a Soviet invasion would have been, so I think that discussions were in order. That said you do know very well (since you read Daily Pundit and Chicago Boyz back then) that I criticized Schröder’s opportunistic behaviour at numerous occasions, and also was in favor of the war on Iraq myself.

And I do have to point out that Germany is helping in the war on terror, disagreements over Iraq aside, and had sent 100 commados during, and not after, the fighting in Afghanistan.

We are dropping the ball with Russia though. Pat Buchanan has a good article on this today. This bluster about Democracy is aimed at the wrong country. We were on the way toward building a good fence around China and North Korea. Too bad the Democracy idealogues can’t separate idealism vs realpolitik. The effect would be to drive Moscow towards Beijing, which would be a blunder. Russia has the advanced weapons technology and natural resources that China needs, not to mention lebensraum…

Jonathan has it right though, China would be shooting itself in the foot. It’s like the analogy where if you’re going to borrow money from a bank to start a business, borrow so much that you make the bank your business partner. The one saving grace is that the well to do class in China tends to care more about business than politics. And they are leading the way for a relatively stable populace that want to climb the ladder. In the end I think it will be a major factor. They are living under the boot, but that particular boot isn’t stupid, or at least isn’t as stupid as a boot can be. But then again as you say, Europeans circa 1914 thought no one would be stupid enough to stop economic prosperity for revenge.

@Richard, on Japan. It is no secret why Japan is worked up. North Korea has announced that they have nukes. The Japanese have been hoping for a long time that things would settle down on the Korean peninsula and tried to just work the worry beads and pretend it was all ok. NK pushes the anti-Japan propaganda harder than the Neo-Nazis push anti-semitism. They still hold a grudge left over from WWII. Anyway; when Japan looks around the region they see a lot of neutrals with long memories, one head case with a bone to pick, and no friends. NK with nukes is their nightmare.

@Don, on the ME. You need to let the pessimism go and at least step into realism. We can save optimism for later. In your 8:37 post you laid out both the problem and identified our current course as the solution…but then managed to make the current course sound bad :) You are absolutely right that Zarqawi is trying the bleed and patience game. You are also right that the way to beat that is to be willing to kill to win, play a long game, and nurture a spark of economic freedom and democracy…all of which we are doing in the Middle East today. Unless of course we lose the plot and pull out.
You laid out what doesn’t work (the rent-a-thug stability game) but that is exactly what we are *not* doing today.
So the point I am making is that you sound like you should be positive and I cannot determine where you’ve gone off the rails.

One additional note Don: You are wrong regarding Eastern Europe. It has turned out well precisely because we *did* break all the furniture…just not as overtly as sending in the uniforms. We forced Russia to spend all of her resources and time countering us externally, while working to build and support resistance groups internally. When the wheels came off the wagon it was not an accident of fate it was the result of years of work. We did not hit the Iron Curtain with a hammer once, we poured saltwater against it for years.