Improving the breed: any survey of the current armoured fighting vehicle scene will reveal there are many new light armoured vehicles, such as IFVs and APCs, either in production or about to be.

Armada International › Vol. 25 Nbr. 6, December 2001

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Improving the breed: any survey of the current armoured fighting vehicle scene will reveal there are many new light armoured vehicles, such as IFVs and APCs, either in production or about to be.

Improving the breed: any survey of the current armoured fighting vehicle scene will reveal there are many new light armoured vehicles, such as IFVs and APCs, either in production or about to be. For their manufacturers the future looks bright. At the top of the market, the tanks, matters are not so chipper. Wherever one looks, tank manufacturers are either contemplating empty pages in their order books or have already ceased to build from new (although a few exceptions can be made). (Complete Guide)

Because of the downshift in orders, tank manufacturers are displaying a growing trend toward applying themselves to improving the breed by a process of rebuilds, upgrading and general all-round improvement to their existing products.

This situation applies wherever one looks, although there are notable exceptions. For instance, production lines in Spain (currently preparing to licence-produce the Leopard 2A6E) and Egypt (still continuing to churn out licence-produced M1 Abrams) are still very active, but both limited to local markets. The French Leclerc lines are expected to be kept until at least 2006, but after then it seems that customers could be rare. Several nations have expressed a need to modernise their heavily armoured vehicle fleets, but in almost every instance when the time comes to signing contracts the local economic situation starts to look difficult, or natural disasters intercede, and the dotted lines remain blank. The main manufacturing programmes for both have ceased but production lines are far from silent.

The KMW (Krauss-Maffei Wegmann) Leopard 2 line is now busy upgrading earlier models up to L2A6 standard. As it is anticipated that the Leopard 2 will be around for...

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