Monday, January 27, 2014

Scale Military Modeller International 02/2014

The Leopard 1/2 is a Main Battle Tank developed by Krauss-Maffei in the early 1970s for the then West German Army. The tank first entered service in 1979 and succeeded the earlier Leopard 1 as the main battle tank of the German Army. Various versions have served in the armed forces of Germany and twelve other European countries, as well as several non-European nations. More than 3,480 Leopard 2s have been manufactured. The Leopard 2 first saw combat in Kosovo with the German Army and has also seen action in Afghanistan with the Danish and Canadian contributions to ISAF. There are two main development batches of the tank, the original models up to Leopard 2A4, which have vertically faced turret armour, and an improved batch, namely the Leopard 2A5 and newer 2A6 versions, which have angled arrow-shaped appliqué armour together with other improvements. All models feature digital fire control systems with laser rangefinders, fully stabilized main gun and coaxial machine gun and advanced night vision and sighting equipment.

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