Quotulatiousness

July 17, 2011

Saudi Arabia upgrades their armoured forces

Filed under: Germany, Middle East, Military, Technology — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 10:49

Saudi Arabia will add a few hundred of the most up-to-date panzers to their defence forces:

Saudi Arabia is buying 244 Leopard 2A7+ tanks from Germany. Saudi Arabia is believed to have already ordered 44, and now has increased that order. It was only a year ago that German tank manufacturer KMW has revealed this, the latest version of its Leopard 2.

Two years ago, the German Army announced that it was going to upgrade 150 of its Leopard 2A6 tanks to the A7 standard. That would include more armor on the sides and rear (especially to protect against RPGs), more external cameras (so the crew inside could see anything in any direction, day or night), a remote control machine-gun station on top of the turret, better fire control and combat control computers and displays, more powerful auxiliary power unit and better air conditioning, and numerous other minor improvements. This would increase the weight of the tank to nearly 70 tons.

[. . .]

Saudi Arabia is concerned about Iran, which has a force of 1,500 much older tanks (most of them Russian T-72s and T-54/55s). Saudi Arabia has 1,300 tanks, most of them older American M-60s and French AMX-30s. But the Saudis also have 370 U.S. M-1s and 150 Russian T-90s. The 244 Leopards will increase the Saudi edge. The Saudis also have the money to buy spare parts for their modern tanks, and Western instructors to provide the best training. But the Iranians are better soldiers, so they might have an edge there.

April 15, 2011

RAF proves Eurofighter can take out stationary, unmanned, abandoned enemy tanks

Filed under: Africa, Britain, Military, Politics — Tags: , , , , — Nicholas @ 09:29

In a triumph of military daring and precision bombing public relations, the Royal Air Force has demonstrated the ground-attack capability of their Eurofighter Typhoon aircraft:

The RAF has blown up two apparently abandoned Libyan tanks using a Eurofighter Typhoon jet in a move which appears to have been motivated more by Whitehall infighting than by any attempt to battle the forces of dictator Muammar Gaddafi.

[. . .]

The video appears to show a T-72 tank neatly parked, stationary and unmanned: the target was plainly not in use. The Telegraph reports that the location struck was “an abandoned tank park”. Many Libyan armoured vehicles are old and not serviceable due to lack of parts and servicing. RAF sources admitted to the paper that the jets making the strike had had to spend “a long time” searching before they could find a valid target to hit, and that the timing of the strike was “no coincidence”.

So why is the RAF not only conducting unnecessary air attacks on useless hunks of metal? The answer is not so much military as it is political:

This hasty effort by the RAF to get Typhoons into ground-attack action took place just ahead of the scheduled release by the Parliamentary Public Accounts Committee of a damning report on the Eurofighter, titled Management of the Typhoon project. This report had been expected to be highly critical of the Typhoon, and indeed it is. It says:

In 2004, the Department decided to retire the ground attack Jaguar aircraft early and to spend £119 million to install ground attack upgrades on early Typhoons to cover the resulting capability gap. These upgrades were ready for use by 2008. A year later, the Department decided to retire the air defence Tornado F3 aircraft early to save money and therefore re-prioritised Typhoon away from ground attack missions to air defence tasks. It is now not using Typhoon’s ground attack capability.

So, absent some secret plan of the Libyan army to somehow put their abandoned equipment back into immediate use, this was a PR strike to rally public opinion against parliamentary interference.

October 19, 2010

Canadian tank use in Afghanistan

Filed under: Asia, Cancon, Military — Tags: , , , — Nicholas @ 07:46

Strategy Page gives a nice overview of the Canadian introduction of tanks to the Afghan war:

Canadian use of Leopard 2 tanks in Afghanistan convinced the brass that these Cold War era vehicles are valuable weapons for irregular warfare. Immune to most enemy weapons and possessing enormous firepower, the heavy tanks were very useful. In light of this experience with the Leopard 2s in Afghanistan, Canada has bought 100 Leopard 2A6s from the Netherlands and another 20 2A4s from Germany. The last twenty were modified for operations in Afghanistan (better protection against mines and roadside bombs).

It was three years ago that Canada bought the hundred second hand Leopard 2 tanks from the Netherlands, to provide their troops in Afghanistan with some additional combat power. First, they leased 20 German Leopard 2s and sent them to Afghanistan to replace the older Leopard 1s. Initially, crews for the Leopard 2s trained on the elderly Leopard 1s in Canada, before going Afghanistan. There, they have to quickly familiarize themselves with the slightly different Leopard 2s. But now there are sufficient Leopard 2s in Canada for training.

It was four years ago that Canada sent 17 of its Leopard 1 tanks to Afghanistan, to give Canadian troops there some extra firepower against the Taliban. But during the Spring and Summer, the lack of air conditioning became a major problem for the crews. The age of the tanks was a factor as well, so Canada has made arrangements with Germany, the manufacturer of the Leopard, to lease twenty of the most modern version of the tank, the Leopard 2A6M (which had enough room inside to install air conditioning).

Canada is the last nation using the Leopard 1. The A6M has considerably better protection against mines, roadside bombs and RPG rockets. The 62 ton Leopard 2 has a 120mm main gun and two 7.62mm machine-guns. The 43 ton Leopard 1 has a 105mm gun, and is actually a little slower (65 kilometers an hour) than the Leopard 2. Both tanks have a four man crew.

Being the last major user of older technology is a familiar place for Canadian soldiers to be. We were also one of the last nations to retire the Centurion tank, and back in the 1970’s, it was quite common for all the vehicles in a unit to be older than almost all the troops in the unit. I got my military driver’s license on a jeep that was more than twice my age, for example.

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