The new confrontation in Europe, sparked by the aggressive actions of the United States, caught most NATO countries by surprise. During the relative lull that followed the collapse of the socialist camp and the collapse of the USSR, the European members of the alliance not only radically reduced their military budgets, but also significantly reduced their arsenals. Moreover, weapons were often not preserved in long-term storage warehouses, but were simply destroyed. Land and storage areas are expensive in Europe. For example, at the beginning of 2000, the Bundeswehr disposed of several hundred thousand G-3 rifles, taken out of service in 1997, for which they could not find buyers in third world countries.
But rifles are the tenth thing. It became clear that NATO needed a sufficient amount of armored vehicles to counter the "Russian threat". The same Bundeswehr, which during the Cold War was the main armored fist of the North Atlantic Alliance, today has only three hundred tanks, and half of them, according to the reports of the German media a year ago, are not on the move.
The situation is somewhat better in the Armed Forces of France and Poland. Another big problem is that NATO countries (with the exception of Turkey), without developing new vehicles, found themselves without promising tank models.
This is understandable: in the wars that NATO countries waged in the 90s and early 2000s, it was possible to get by with a small number of existing vehicles.
Now the only way out for them was to improve those tanks that are in service. Considering that these are mainly models developed 30-40 years ago, then the resource for their modernization is extremely limited.
Die Welt newspaper published an article about three modernized Leopard-2 tanks under the designation A7V (the same as the first German tank used by Kaiser Germany a hundred years ago on the Western Front), the letter V stands for "verbessert".
The presentation of these three vehicles (a total of 20 such tanks are in service with the Bundeswehr today) took place recently on the Luneburg Heath in the vicinity of Münster.
The difference between the Leopard 2 A7V is full computerization, a set of improved armor, which provides all-aspect protection, as well as protection from weapons systems attacking from above.
Daytime and thermal imaging cameras allow all crew members to be in control of the situation around the vehicle. The tank will receive a new stabilized panoramic sight, an electronic ballistic computer and a laser rangefinder. The driver received a seat suspended from the ceiling, which increases his chances of surviving an explosion.
The standard MTU power unit received new gearboxes, new tracks from Diehl, an improved torsion bar suspension and braking system, which was a consequence of the increased weight of the machine.
An important option has become a generator independent of the engine, which allows the electronics and the air conditioning system to function even when the power unit is inoperative or damaged.
The tankers themselves consider this opportunity very important, and not only for countries with hot climates.
The weight of the car is 60 tons, and it develops a speed of up to 70 km / h.
It is noteworthy that Die Welt emphasizes that, in addition to the modernization of machines, in order for them to operate successfully in the proposed theater of operations, the road transport network of Eastern Europe needs radical improvement.
Obviously, with all the useful and practical additions, the Leopard 2 A7V did not acquire fundamentally new and “breakthrough” characteristics. For example, the updated tank has the same manual loading, which, of course, affects the rate of fire.
The material indicates that tankers complain about the tightness of the combat vehicle, which has increased even more compared to previous modifications, which also indicates the exhaustion of the resource for modernization.
Note that Die Welt reports that "German tanks are now in the Baltics to intimidate Russia."
To what extent they can intimidate our country, whose tank park is at least ten times larger than the German one, is, of course, a rhetorical question.
However, hardly practical Germans, moreover, who are not distinguished by excessive belligerence today, in reality set themselves such tasks.
Do not forget that tanks "Leopard-2" are, among other things, and the "bestseller" in the world arms market. These machines are in service with 18 states, and German manufacturers are seriously interested in offering them modernization programs for existing machines. This is what explains the passages of the German media about "intimidation" and "steel monsters".
