After intense pressure from its allies, Germany appears to be inching toward approving deliveries of high-tech battle tanks that Ukraine and Western backers hope will boost the country's fight against Russia.
One big appeal of the German-made tanks are their sheer number: More than 2,000 have been deployed in over a dozen European countries and Canada. Overall, Krauss-Maffei Wegmann says over 3,500 units have been supplied to 19 countries.
“We need a fleet of 300 tanks,” Luxembourg’s Foreign Minister Jean Asselborn said Monday in Brussels, alluding to the wide deployment of Leopards across Europe and the need for “synchronous” weaponry — that can operate smoothly together. “In this type of conflict, it’s just not possible to carry out large-scale offensives without the full variety of armored combat equipment and armored vehicles, and tanks are a part of that,” he said. In addition to Main Battle Tanks, or MBTs, like the Leopard 2, others include infantry fighting vehicles and armored personnel carriers.
Still, even Western MBTs are vulnerable to aerial attacks, or anti-tank infantry while in forests and urban areas, highlighting the importance of anti-aircraft and reconnaissance support, said Raths. “You can’t just deploy a bunch of main battle tanks and assume they will win,” he said. “They’re very valuable, but you still need to use them in the correct way and integrate them with all the other military tools that you have at your disposal,” such as infantry, artillery, air defense, combat engineers and helicopters.Germany has final say about whether Leopard 2s can be delivered — even from other countries’ arsenals — and has been reticent about anyone shipping them to Ukraine.
Allies and military analysts say the Leopard 2 is diesel-powered — not driven by jet fuel that powers the M1 Abrams — and is easier to operate than the big U.S. tanks, and thus has shorter training times.
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