Sunday, October 26, 2014

Is Singapore Army's Leopard EVO the most powerful tank in the Pacific?



While doing a "by the numbers" post on MBTs/IFVs in the Pacific, I was struck by a realization.

Tiny Singapore has the best MBT (in my opinion) in the Pacific region.

Everyone knows about the Leopard 2.  Many think that in its basic form its the best combination of firepower, protection and mobility.  Add EVO armor to it and it takes it to another level.  Mix in the professionalism of the Singaporean Army and you have perhaps the finest MBT in the region.

I never would have thought that a tiny island nation could somehow beat the best in the area but there you have it.  The Leopard EVO is better than the M1A2 of the Australian and US Army, the Type 99 fielded by China, the Type 10 of Japan, and the K2 used by S. Korea.  "Nuff said.

30 comments :

  1. Singapore isnt much of an island, with very narrow crossings between it and Malaysia, and Indonesia only a stones throw away.
    If war broke out between them, blowing the bridges would preclude invasion, but the Malay could shell the island from the mainland, and win the war.

    They would need to cross the strait themselves and take the war to the malay to have any chance of winning.
    That means tanks, and good ones

    People with no strategic depth tend to be pretty serious about winning in the first round.

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    1. On of my neighbors is from Singapore and that's what he has essentially said to me before. Since they do not have Strategic depth their doctrine is based on winning day 1 and extending into the enemy's territory.

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  2. if thing got serious, malaysian artilery can reduce singapore's infrastructure easily under the protection of their AA/AD.. Singapore cant win a prolonged war with malaysia.. it is worse than israel geographically.. and these tanks will be practically useless sitting on the island..

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    1. 1. you don't understand how much more professional Singapore is when compared to its neighbors...especially Malaysia.
      2. you greatly under estimate military power here. Singapore has region leading ISR assets and even without them are capable of mounting DEVASTATING counter-battery missions.
      3. Malaysia's anti-air defenses are a joke. the Singaporean Air Force will have a field day. and then finally

      4. Do you really believe that a nation as technologically advanced as Singapore DOESN'T HAVE nuclear weapons?

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    2. Sol, I would concur on your assessment. Again, confirmed via my Singaporean neighbor who has served in the SingMil. With the level of training and equipment they have the Malays are incompetent in relative comparative terms.

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    3. Counter battery is fine, but
      A single 105mm howitzer could be broken down, carried in under jungle, set up, fire 6 rounds and then the crew run for it.
      Counter battery kills the gun.

      What do those six shells do to office blocks and apartment buildings?

      I think Singapore would win, but it would have to strike north hard and fast, a siege would be a disaster.
      For that, it needs quality tanks that can afford to take soft hits. Or even hard ones.

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    4. There are systems designed to deal with such threats, missile and gun based such as skyranger/mantis or EAPS/iron-dome, furthermore the singapore military would steamroll over the malaysian military and quickly push them outside of artillery range (within a few hours).

      I would be surprised if any war lasted more than 3 days.

      http://www.lockheedmartin.com/content/dam/lockheed/data/mfc/documents/eaps/mfc-eaps-brochure.pdf

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  3. Never understood why AUS purchased M1s from the USA. A Leopard variant would have been more in line with their logistics.
    At least the Canadian Army mechanized forces were smart enough to pick 100 Leopard A4s.

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    1. They are training aids, to be frank. If we were ever required to deploy to aid the US, we would provide the crew and the US would simply being the mothballed M1s sitting out in a desert somewhere.

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    2. do you really believe that? is it more a question of procurement or are you questioning the professionalism of australian armed forces? i've met a few of them and they seemed cracker jack smart.

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    3. Mate, I am a current serving member in the Australian army. Our professionalism is second to none. Like Abrams and tigers will never see overseas deployment. They also serve little purpose for national defence, given the vast logistical nightmare that is our country (any potential invader will have to be stopped at sea, with the Australian navy and air force keeping them at bay long enough for the US to come to our rescue). We procure them to train interoperability with you guys so we can support your military efforts. The only Australian led military efforts overseas are peacekeeping ones like Solomon Islands or East Timor. And you don't need Abrams or tigers to do those.

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    4. ok. so if that's the case then awesome...but i still don't get the thinking. it would have been money better spent to just increase the number of LAVs that you have and simply tailor assistance overseas to the type forces that you have. the LAV-25 of the Australian Army did great work in Afghanistan. so did the Army.

      why buy them if they don't fit your needs and the US Army frankly has more than enough to handle any scenario.

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    5. I agree with this, although the one thing the abrams has going for it is the amount of spares due to the large quantities in US storage. I do agree that the Leo is overall superior though.

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    6. I'm just a lowly O-3, so I don't know the strategic rationale behind this decision. But if I had to guess, it's because there's a certain ego and pride involved so that our generals can say they have a modern army with armoured and aviation units.

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  4. Is Leopard 2 suitable to fight a war like in Malaysian terrain ? Will the PT-91M Pendekar possed by the Malaysian Armed Force will become obstacle to the Leopard 2 ? I'm interested with this kind of situation.

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    1. it would be fun to wargame this type of stuff but i don't and can't see a scenario where Malaysia would ever attack Singapore. i just don't see it in the cards.

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    2. The Leopard EVO is all round I would agree the best tank. But it doesn't have the best firepower. The K2 Panther has the 120mm L55 gun which has 30% more MV than the 120mm L44 which is on the Type90, Type10, Abrams and the Chinese 125mm is 51 calibers in length not 44. Indonesia which has 104 Leopards 2A4's half of these are being upgraded to EVO also in the near future and in that order they got Marder IFV's as well. Us Australians have the M1A1 Abrams(Still have M113's) not the A2 version and we don't have that Depleted Uranium crap in the armour. We purchased 59 Abrams for a cool 500 million dollars back in 2006 and that came with training we didn't get Leopard 2's to our tankers dismay because it would have been hard to get spare parts and would have been more expensive. The Abrams has not been good for logistics and is very high in maintenance. The last article I read is that we only have about 30 or 40 operational at any given time some have been used for spare parts. I blame the F35 for this debacle.

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    3. from what i've read the depleted uranium crap is responsible for making the turret damn near impenetrable. intel has it that Iraqi RPG guys didn't even bother aiming at it anymore and would instead try and find spots on the side of the hull to hit instead. as a matter of fact i can't think of one time an Abrams has been penetrated in the front turret. additionally the US Army's M1A2 Tusk 2 upgrade was suppose to be a response to after actions of the fighting in Iraq and extra armor has been added to identified vulnerable areas.

      as far as the guns are concerned the L55 is a joke. muzzle velocity is immaterial once you start talking about DU rounds that are ultra dense and can penetrate whatever whenever. i don't understand the logistics problem. spare parts are plentiful and if only 30 or 40 are in operation then thats a decision that's been made by leadership. if the USMC can keep more than that operational then surely the Australian Army can if they wanted to.

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    4. Sol, from purely a physics perspective, I don't understand your comment:

      "as far as the guns are concerned the L55 is a joke. muzzle velocity is immaterial once you start talking about DU rounds that are ultra dense and can penetrate whatever whenever"

      Kenetic Energy (KE) is a result of the mass of an object times its velocity squared (KE = m * v^2) so I fail to see how velocity is immaterial when talking about DU vs Tungsten rounds. Using the KE formula I came up with the following for the M829A3 (DU round) and DM63 (tungsten round):

      M829A3 (L44): Mass = 10kg, Velocity = 1555m/s, therefore KE = 12090125 joules or roughly 12.1 Megajoules.

      DM63 (L44): Mass = 8.35kg, Velocity - 1650m/s, therefore KE = 11366437.5 joules or rougly 11.4 Megajoules.

      Clearly the M829A3 out performs the DM63 in an L44 gun. But look at what happens when the DM63 is used in an L55.

      DM63 (L55): Mass = 8.35kg, Velocity = 1750m/s, therefore KE = 12785937.5 joules or roughtly 12.8 Megajoules.

      As you can see, the DM63 fired from an L55 gun has over a half a megajoule advantage over the M829A3 fired from an L44 gun.

      What I'd personally like to see is the M-1 upgraded to an L55 gun. Assuming the same 100m/s gain as the DM63 we'd get the following:

      M829A3 (L55): Mass = 10kg, Velocity = 1655m/s therefore KE = 13695125 or roughly 13.7 megajoules (a gain of over 1.5 megajoules over the L44)

      To put thing in perspective, one megajoule is roughly equal to the kenetic energy of a 1000kg car traveling down the highway at 160km/h.

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    5. the physics are one thing, war fighting is another. first the current gun can kill anything on the battlefield. thats what you want, thats what you already have. second, is the juice worth the squeeze? a longer barrel causes issues. especially when you're talking about transporting aboard plane or ship. in the end its just not worth it.

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    6. Oggie, you overlook one important aspect. At hyper velocity, the denser object moves through the less dense object like a hot knife through butter. That's why depleted uranium is used as armour, it prevents copper HEAT rounds from penetrating. While the energy is certainly higher for higher velocity rounds, that energy is dissipated as heat on contact. So, to a certain extent Solomon's correct when he says that additional muzzle velocity doesn't really matter (at those speeds anyway).

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    7. Sol-
      Thanks for the clarification, I misunderstood what you were saying. I thought you were saying that velocity did not affect the penetration potential of DU round. I agree that there are other factors to consider, like the ones you brought up in your reply, when doing the cost-benefit analysis for upgrading to an L55 gun.

      James-
      I'm not sure what you are correcting me on. I was comparing two long rod dense metal penetrators to show how a higher velocity, lower mass penetrator can have more KE than a lower velocity higher mass penetrator based on what I thought Sol was trying to say.

      I'm not sure where the comparison with HEAT came into play as those rounds rely more on chemical/thermal energy, by turning the copper into a molten metal to melt through armor, rather than kinetic energy to penetrate armor. To me comparing Sabot rounds and HEAT rounds is like comparing apples to oranges

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  5. AUS army & CDN army armor

    For comparison, Australia recently bought 66 M-1A1/M88 tanks and support equipment (trucks, transporters and trainers) for A$500 (US$416 million.) Canada acquired 100 surplus Leopard 2 A5 and A6 tanks from the Netherlands at a cost of C$650 million ($574 million).

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  6. First of all, Leo-2 is Singapore's have only Armour protection updates, they also installed APU and AC along with new smoke grenade launchers. One more feature of the tanks, is the installation of FN MAG-58 in place of the MG-3 the German tanks use.

    The EMES-15 and the PERI-17A1 remained the same. So the vehicle is inferior to K1A1, Type-10 and of course M1A2 of all versions.

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    1. they use 17a2. but even if they used A1 why would you say that they're inferior to those other vehicles. that makes no sense. EMES-15 is used on leopard 2's.

      your point is just .... weird. i don't get it.

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    2. Leo-2A4 SG with and without extra Armour.

      http://1.bp.blogspot.com/-fAvXUfzR4R0/UkKXqgPAhdI/AAAAAAAABF8/3GKkSgQJhpc/s1600/4698723595_049092bcea_b.jpg

      Leo-2A4 SG with extra Armour.

      http://th09.deviantart.net/fs71/PRE/f/2012/160/0/a/leopard_2a4_2sg_front_by_sofdmc-d52x1r4.jpg

      You can see that the vehicle has the PERI R-17A1 and not the A2

      The only Leo-2A4 with the PERI R-17A2 is the modernized Swiss Leo-2A4 with the designation Pz-87WE
      http://www.news.admin.ch/NSBSubscriber/message/attachments/16664.jpg
      http://www.ogpanzer.ch/guave-cms/images/1/24/pz87we01.jpg
      http://www.ogpanzer.ch/guave-cms/images/1/24/pz87we02.jpg



      PERI R-17A2
      http://www.kotsch88.de/feuerleit/leopard2/16-Leopard2A5.jpg
      http://www.kotsch88.de/feuerleit/leopard2/PERI-R17_A2.jpg


      PERI R-17A1
      http://tank-tula.clan.su/kartinki_stateiy/Deutsch/leopard2/11-leo-PERI-R17.jpg
      http://www.kotsch88.de/feuerleit/leopard2/leo2_peri-1.jpg
      http://www.kotsch88.de/feuerleit/leopard2/PERI-R17_02.jpg

      M1A2 and all the other vehicles I mentioned, have thermal cameras on their CIV. That alone, gives them the capability execute Hunter-Killer engagements day and night. Further more the commander can spot targets on the battlefield with ease thanks again to the thermal camera. The Type-10 tank if I am not mistaken, has a laser range-finder on the CIV, giving even more advantages to the vehicle.

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  7. Something I failed to mention, is that the M1A2 Ver2 of the 2nd ID in S.Korea can execute killer-killer engagements thanks to the M153 CROWS II. No Leo-2 in service can do that.

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  8. Don't want to interrupt the plasma warriors and war game buffs on this thread, even though I agree, would be interesting to see what happens in a simulated engagement between MAL and SING, but just more generally, what I've learnt from personal experience and from extensive chats with 3 generations of infantrymen and tankists in my family: quality of a tank as such only counts for so much in its performance on the battlefield (talking about real tank vs tank or tank vs antitank forces). What makes much more of a difference is the quality/training of the crew (or antitank teams), the courage and fighting spirit of the troops, the quality of the battle-plan and last but not least, the air superiority of one side over the other.
    So forget about muzzle velocity, barrel lentgh, HEAT vs DU round. Most of these tanks have the basics of a modern MBT. What would make the difference is which force is more determined, more skilled, more ruthless and more brutal in its approach to combat.

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  9. oh i dont know, a highly trained modern armed forces superbly equipped like singapore, with limited geographic depth to maneuver and outnumbered by less trained and less high tech enemies like the malaysian... why , based on the toys alone you might all pick singapore as the winner.. easy choice no ?

    but war is not about who got the best toys , especially if you read the numerous examples in the history.. heck the embarassing american defeat in vietnam showed that toys and planes dont necessarily give instant win if the enemy willing to pay the price and outspend you in human cost..

    so if there's a war between singapore and malaysia , a real war not just low,intensity conflict , singapore will be destroyed but with such high cost to malaysia... my prediction..

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    1. Dunno, I'll call it as an initial push into Malaysia, then a stalemate as they call in the UN to make a "peace deal". Something like "you leave us alone, we give you back your land".

      Reducing a city is a process that needs a lot of explosives, more than what I think most countries have, so while Singapore will take infrastructure damage, it won't be that critical. It's not like they themselves don't tear down buildings every 5 years or so for "redevelopment".

      As for incoming artillery, I spoke to someone with some experience in artillery in Singapore before. He mentioned something about a "picket fence" style defence where it is much easier for the defenders to shoot out between the buildings than for attackers to shoot in, as any deviation, even by a few meters, can cause the round to hit an intervening building instead of the target. The Singaporeans are also somewhat the world's leaders in effects of explosives on tall buildings (probably because no one else has the need to actually study the effects), one of their old studies, in the 80s, indicate that when explosives hit a building, the blast degrades very fast from the point of impact, so usually only the original hit location takes structural damage (the rest are blast/frag which don't do much structurally), so it would take a few hits before any building gets compromised. I think most of their buildings have a hardened central core that is proof to anything but direct hits from explosives. That is where they usually put their civilian bomb shelters.

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