Published: Wednesday, 30 December 2015 09:16

Poland will start the modernization of its Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks in 2018.

The Polish Defense Ministry signed a contract to modernise 128 Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks used by the Polish army. Poland’s original set of 128 Leopard 2A4 tanks were bought and transferred in the mid-2000s. Poland also purchased a total of 105 Leopard 2A5.
     
In October 2015, Poland’s Armament Inspectorate has received three offers to upgrade the country’s Leopard 2A4 main battle tanks. Turkey’s Aselsan and Germany’s Rheinmetall and Krauss-Maffei Wegmann are the three bidders.

In total 142 MBTs will be modernized, with a prototype scheduled for production in 2018.

Rumors have Poland looking for a final configuration that’s similar to Canada’s new Leopard 2A6Ms. That would reshape and strengthen the armor structure to 2A5 levels and beyond, upgrade the sights and communications, beef up the internal climate control to handle hot environments like Afghanistan, add extra mine blast protection underneath, and provide points to fit engineering utilities like dozer blades and mine clearance rollers.

The modernisation programme will start in 2018 and will mostly be conducted by Polish companies, although one of key partners in the deal is German defence-technology company Rheinmetall.

General Adam Duda, the head of the Polish military inspectorate said that the project is of essential strategic value for the Polish army and will significantly increase the tanks’ performance as well as the safety of Polish soldiers on the battlefield.

Besides the modernisation of the tanks, cooperation between partners is being tightened to ensure full functionality of the tanks and faster repairs in the future.

The Leopard 2A4 is a German-made main battle tank designed and manufactured by the Company Krauss-Maffei Wegmann, the successor of the main battle tank Leopard 1.

The Leopard 2A4 is armed with a 120 mm smoothbore gun which has been developed by Rheinmetall and fires two types of ammunition, APFSDS-T and HEAT-MP-T. The APFSDS-T has an effective range of over 2,000 m and the HEAT-MP-T has a high degree of effectiveness against both soft and hard targets.

What is that 2nd soldier from the right holding? Looks like a bolt-action spotting rifle?

maybe this?

Djibouti is a kind of earthly Tatooine.

Right on its doorstep are two high-profile al Qaeda affiliates: al-Shabaab, based in Somalia, and al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, based in Yemen.

The Japanese use their base here as an African logistical hub and to protect regional shipping.

The French, who colonized Djibouti in the mid-19th century and controlled the country well into the 20th century, also maintains a military force here.

The German, Italian, and Spanish militaries also have a presence in Djibouti, focusing on countering piracy in the Gulf of Aden and off the coast of Ethiopia.

The United States has reportedly agreed to spend some $70 million a year for permission to maintain a military base in Djibouti called Camp Lemonnier.

And with the arrival of China, a country famously indifferent to the political freedoms of its allies, the situation looks bleaker still. The safari will go on.

I don't suppose that people realize this but the vest that the indian is wearing uses Chinese digital camo pattern

Staff of McDonalds outlet in Taiwan wearing Army uniform. Ministry of Defence to take action against fast food co.
http://udn.com/news/story/1/1416770

tldr; mcd employee cosplayed with full army uniform, a violation of the law and the defence ministry will take court action against the outlet

it more like use for daily transportation 4wd to replace there old Mitsubishi pajaro。

INTERVIEW: “MY LIFE AS A LEOPARD 2 CREWMAN” - PT.3

DEC 28TH | 2015

In the first part of the interview, ADSL explained how he became a tanker and what it was like to fire his first round in a Leopard 2 MBT and the second part covered vehicle maintenance and cleaning.

SO, HOW GOOD IS THE LEOPARD 2 IN COMPARISON TO THE M1A2?

I thought that question would come up eventually and there is an easy answer: the Leopard 2 is superior!

This is the answer you will get from any serious tanker anywhere on this planet! Nobody says “our tank is weak and the other tank is better”. This shows our pride and faith in what we drive and it is important to have this spirit. Only someone who believes in his “Iron Pig” is a good tanker.

Actually, I have never had the pleasure to drive an M1, which of course is something I would like to do even today. However, I did see some Americans training in Bergen (a NATO training area and shooting range in northern Germany) and served with a couple of senior Master Sergeants who shared their experiences. Some of them had multiple experiences with other tanks and with training events in an international environment.

The setup of the tanks is not that different; they both share the same crew layout and roles. They look a little different of course, but even here there are many similarities, commonly shared between all western tanks from the 80s and 90s. All of them use a secret amour layout, which is composed of cast steel and some composite amour layers inside. They are bulky and quite tall. The differences are more noticeable inside. The Americans favor a different layout for the gunnery station, sight systems and controls. They still use some sensors we experienced to be inaccurate, such as the wind sensor. We use a multi-fuel twin turbo diesel engine while the M1 has a gas turbine. Does it make a difference though?

Well, the Leopard 2 (including the A4 and A5 versions) is extremely agile and can accelerate fast even in extremely rough conditions. However, it takes some time to transfer the torque to the tracks, while the M1 has the torque readily available because it uses a turbine. Nevertheless, on medium to long distances, the Leopard 2 out-accelerates the Abrams. When it comes to agility, the Leopard 2 was always able to turn more tightly than the M1. Whether that makes one tank superior to the other or not… it’s hard to say.

The M1 in this case was the A1 and A2 version and it was always a little bit heavier than our A4 or A5. The A6 with its longer gun barrel brought us nearly to the same level and we lost a lot of the agility due to that. We traded that in for having a bigger punch and a somewhat better range.

The M1A1 and the following versions use the same license-produced gun we have used since the very first version of the Leopard 2. It shows that it was the correct decision to adopt the 120mm smoothbore, allowing the Leopard 2 to boast that the gun it used from the start was better than the gun used in the first versions of the M1.

There are many other differences and many similarities as well. What makes the real difference is always the crew and its training. When I was serving, we still worked with national service recruits. In those days the length of national service was first 10 months and later 9 months, with the first 2-3 months consisting of basic training. Consequently, there was not a lot of time to train them and create a team out of them. In any case, we were always able to reach our goals and were comparable to other crews.

Until the early 90s, there were some contests between different nations and their tank crews. The Canadian Army Trophy was one of the tank-exclusive ones. Before it was cancelled, Germany and other Leopard users won most of the trophies. I believe that this fact alone shows quite well that the Leopard and its crews do rightfully belong amongst the best in the world. Saying anything else would be blasphemy.

Of course, there have been things on other tanks or armies that we wanted to have as well. Many of our commanders, for example, desired the .50 caliber machinegun on the M1 commander hatch for its power, or helmets for tank crews with built-in radio, which were better when compared to our system. One thing we never wanted, however, was to trade in our “ride”, we were very proud of it and felt honored to have it.

The Americans have one advantage over us: the M1 is at least already combat-proven and known to work well, which does not apply to the Leopard 2, besides its use in Kosovo and by Canada in Afghanistan. Still, if it came to the worst, I am sure it could do its job.
For me personally and for most of my former or still active comrades, the Leopard 2 is the best tank in the world.

Hahaha idiot dumbass US shill writer. Itu basic military 4x4.

This is PLA's "new Humvee":


Lain kali nak kondem China buat research betol2 dulu. Bodo piang.

Loaded with enough explosives to level a town, this is the Second World War ticking timebomb ship that lies on the seabed just off the coast of Kent.

The incredible image, using the latest in multi-beam sonar technology, captures in detail for the first time the SS Richard Montgomery, which sank in 1944 after a fatal crack tore the vessel in two.

The American Liberty ship had been bringing munitions from the US to the UK and was packed with dozens of high-explosive ‘blockbuster bombs’ when it ran aground just over a mile off the coast in the Thames Estuary.

Nevada rancher Cliven Bundy’s three sons and “about 150” militiamen have occupied the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge HQ to protest the pending imprisonment of two Oregon ranchers accused of arson, arguing the federal government has no authority in local cases.

“We’re going to be freeing these lands up, and getting ranchers back to ranching, getting the loggers back to logging, getting the miners back to mining where they could do it under the protection of the people and not be afraid of this tyranny that’s been set upon them,” Ammon Bundy, who appears to be the leader of the group, said in a Facebook video posted by Sarah Dee Spurlock on Saturday.

On the eve of recapturing Mosul from Daesh, the US military will fully arm and train two brigades of Kurdish fighters, Peshmerga Forces’ Chief of Staff Jamal Emniki revealed, according to the Iraqi Kurdistan media outlet BasNews.

In addition, the US will train two brigades, BasNews reported on Saturday. A number of US allies, including Germany, Italy, UK, are contributing to the training and arming of the Kurds. The ultimate goal is to have a reliable ground force to battle Daesh, aided by aerial support from the international coalition.

“The sets will include individual soldier equipment, including helmets, body armor, first aid kits, rifles and machine guns. Also included are vehicles to move troops, supplies and equipment,” Joseph Pennington, US consul general to Erbil, Iraqi Kurdistan’s capital city, told Al-Monitor earlier.

“The US has given its approval to deliver heavy equipment to us,” Jabar Yawar, spokesman of the Peshmerga Ministry told local TV Rudaw in December. “There are now long-range artillery and gunships in Kuwait waiting to be delivered to the Kurdistan region in [January]”. In another interview with Rudaw, Yawar also talked about “armored vehicles, Humvees and Mine-Resistant Ambush Protected [vehicles ] (MRAPs)”.

MOSCOW, January 3. / TASS /. The flagship of Russia’s Pacific Fleet, the Varyag guided missile cruiser has passed the Suez Canal and entered into the Mediterranean Sea, Roman Martov, chief of information support department at the press service of the Eastern Military District, told reporters on Sunday.

In December 2015, TASS reported that Varyag would be dispatched off the Syrian coast to replace the missile cruiser Moskva.