re: #107 ckkatz

One of the pressures on hold-out governments, like Germany, to supply the Ukrainians is market driven.

The Germans are already saying no to the Leo Ones. Right now, that’s ok actually.

Leo 1’s would require complete retraining for use by the Ukrainian military. They have a four-man crew with a loader. You may not think it but that is a real set of skills that no tanker in Ukraine would have due to the autoloaders on every Russian tank since the T-64. The operator maintenance, while similar because all tanks have the same needs, will be completely different in detail and they would need to learn the new procedures and manuals. That would be even more miserable at the unit level of maintenance. Then there is the difference in the fire control systems, and I am unfamiliar if the German tanks ever received the laser rangefinder upgrades that the Belgian and Canadian Leo’s did. Lastly, they are armed with the L7 105mm rifle. While there is still huge stocks of that ammo available with it’s use on things like the godforsaken Stryker Mobile Gun System, none of it is in Ukrainian stocks and would have to be supplied along with the vehicles.

In short, the Leopard One would be a very poor fit for Ukraine. If there are any T-72’s remaining from DDR days, they would be a much better transfer for Ukraine.