Sunday, August 29, 2010

Leopard 2A7+


KMW has been pretty busy lately.  Not to the level of BAE (which really might be from the fact that BAE is a collection of companies and not one single entity) but they've been busy none-the-less.

Still this latest offering is curious.

Over the years we've seen the super long barreled Leopard 2A6, and the Peace Support Operations Leopard.  With the 2A7+ we see them returning to the PSO variant, dropping the long barrel, adding machineguns and bolt on armor and the now common dozer blade.

I'm not sure if this is really qualifies for a new model designation or not.  It seems to be more inline with what the US Army did a couple of years ago with its TUSK upgrade. 


Leopard 2A7+ Specifications (From the KMW Website)
 Weight  67.5 t
 Length 
(gun at 12 o'clock)  10.97 m
 Width  4.00 m
 Height (turret roof)  2.64 m
 Engine power  1,100 kW (1,500 hp)
 Maximum speed  72 km/h
 Cruising range  450 km
 Armament


 
 120 mm / L55 smoothbore
 cannon and 12.7 mm MG
 oder 40 mm granade launcher
 7.62 mm coaxial MG