Tag Archives: Kampfpanzer

German big cat show

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Last week in Munich, the German Bundeswehr introduced the new Kampfpanzer Leopard 2 A8 main battle tank to the public. The service, which has ordered 123 of the model thus far, stresses that, rather than upgrading older tanks, the Leopard A8 is a completely new design – and thus the first newly built MBT for the German Army since 1992.

Im Werk von KNDS wird der neue Leopard 2 A8 vorgestellt.

Of note, the display model included a Rafael EuroTrophy Active Protection System (APS) factory-installed. While 1,900 MBTs and AFVs around the world have Trophy, this is the first factory-fresh Leopard with the system. It also has a fully digital fire-control suite and an all-round situational awareness system with sensor-fusion capability on top of a host of improvements to the benchline Leopard 2A7HU production model.

Panzer Leopard rollt in München vom Band. Mit dabei: der Inspekteur des Heeres Ulrich de Maizière und Verteidigungsminister Kai-Uwe von Hassel.

The Germans have taken a keen interest in how second/third-hand Leopard 2A4/2A4V/2/2A6s have performed (and have been zapped) during real-life combat in Ukraine over the past few years to improve 2A8.

The first production models fielded will be with the PzBrig 45, also known as the Lithuania Brigade (Litauenbrigade), Germany’s first armored unit based abroad permanently since 1945.

Krauss-Maffei-Wegmann’s sizzle reel:

Future 2A8 operators besides Germany include the Netherlands (46 on order), Norway (54), Czechia (77), Lithuania (44), Italy (132), and Sweden (44), while Austria, Slovakia, and Croatia are all negotiating a purchase, making the new big cat a de facto NATO standard.

1965 Similarity

The rollout comes a little over 60 years since the original Leopard hit the scene, also in a similar event in Munich.

The Bundestag in 1964 allocated 1.5 billion DM for the purchase of 1,500 units of the new model. Subsequently, on 9 September 1965, a test drive was held at Krauss-Maffei in Munich, the main manufacturer, by Defense Minister Kai-Uwe von Hassel (CDU).

Inspector of the Army, Ulrich de Maizière, and the Minister of Defense, Kai-Uwe von Hassel, the first Leopard tank rolled off the assembly line in Munich, Sept 23 1965 (Panzer Leopard rollt in München vom Band. Mit dabei: der Inspekteur des Heeres Ulrich de Maizière und Verteidigungsminister Kai-Uwe von Hassel.)

The official handover of the first Leopard production model to the 4th Company of Panzerlehrbataillon 93 occurred soon after.

By 1976, the Bundeswehr’s total inventory already comprised almost 2,500 Leopard 1s.

Over 10,000 Leopard tanks have been made across the Leopard 1 and Leopard 2 lines, with the Leopard 1 having 6,485 total units built and the Leopard 2 having over 3,600 battle tanks produced since 1979.

And, since you have come this far and may be curious, this is what the U.S. is up to these days with the Abrams– or isn’t.

Meet the M1E3.

Germans reboot a Cold War Panzer battalion

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The German Army has been steady in retiring armored units since the Cold War thawed in 1991, shrinking from some 4,000 Leopards holding the Fulda gap to just two active Panzerbrigades and a paltry 225 Leopard 2A4 and 2A6 tanks backed up by a similar number of Marder, Puma and Boxer armored vehicles by 2016. Since then, they have moved to increase those numbers to a planned 320 tanks and (slowly) update their big cats to the 2A7V standard.

Kampfpanzer Leopard!

With that, the Bundeswehr announced on 27 November that Panzerbataillon 363 will be stood up, equipped with 44 Leopards, and based at Hardheim, Baden-Württemberg. PzBtl 363 was a former West German Heer unit that was established at Böblingen in 1963 and disbanded 30 October 2006. Now, after 13 years with their colors furled, they will be reborn.

Notably, the WWII Wehrmacht fielded heavy tank battalions that all used a numbering sequence in the 500s (PzAbt 501 to 511), meaning the FGR’s PzBtl 363 had no Nazi-era lineage. However, there was a short-lived Panzerjäger-Abteilung 363 as part of the 363rd Volksgrenadier Division which was destroyed in the Ruhr Pocket in April 1945,  but of course, a panzerjäger battalion is not a panzer battalion proper.

Panzers, rolling

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Some 20 years ago this month, the largest deployment of the German Bundeswehr since it was established in 1955 got underway. With United Nations Security Council Resolution 1244 adopted on 10 June 1999, what became known as KFOR, some 50,000-strong, was soon stood up. Of these, 8,500 came from Germany and the force included both heavy and light armor as well as mountain (Gebirgsjäger) and parachute (Fallschirmjäger) units, the first time such detachments saw use in the Balkans since 1945.

Soldier of the Panzer Grenadier battalion 112 on a Marten AFV. On June 12., 1999

A convoy of German KFOR troops during the move into Prizren, Kosovo.

German Fallschirmjäger 1999 KFOR, note the newly-adopted HK G36

Prizren sniper overwatch KFOR June 1999, German Scharfschütze mit dem G22, an Accuracy International AWM with matched Zeiss 3–12×56mm glass

A convoy of several Leopard 2 A4 MBTs drives out of the camp at the airfield. KFOR

Strassenszene in Prizren – Waffenträger Wiesel der Fallschirmjäger. You have to love a Wiesel.

A TPZ Fox secures the bridge to the Prizren, Kosovo, old town area near the iconic Sinan Pasha Mosque, the latter built in 1615 by the Ottomans. (November 1999).

Ein Kampfpanzer Leopard 2 A5 in destroyed village near Nasec.

Ein Kampfpanzer Leopard 2 A5 in destroyed village near Nasec.

In the past 20 years, 135,000 Germans have taken part in KFOR operations, and 70 are still deployed today.