Question about the Lecleric MBT

''One figure I have seen is that with M1 40% of the purchase price covers the electronics alone, and Israel doesn't have as much money as the US.''

YOu are missing something, the US has about 8000 Abrams tanks, Israël has about 1000 Merkava mk'' tanks (not all are Mark 4's), so if you compare this to the US you got about the same ammount of money to spend on your tank design, and Israël spends ALOT of money on there Military!

''I'd also guess Merkava wasn't designed or intended to have the same electronics capabilities as the others - the Israelis have a very different tactical, operational and strategic situation from France or the US.''

Did you forgot Israël is surrounded by potential enemies of wich Iran is the most dangerous one! They don't only concentrate on the Palastinians, if that was true they probably won't have any tanks... They must always be stronger than there neighbours, one of those neighbours (I think it was Saudie-Arabië) has a bunch of M1a2 Abrams tanks if i'm correct (or even the Leclerc!)...

''They also claim it's the first MBT to be able to truly fire accurately on the move - that sounds like a good topic for argument, but as I haven't seen what figures they're using to support this, I won't argue it.''

Thats absolutely Bull, I don't know why they say that, they never won an international tank competition, in the past few years the Leopard2a5/a6 always won...

 

Agreed Israel spends a lot of money, but it still has a smaller economy. US funding for projects (even civilian ones) is fantastic compared to most other countries. I worked with some US design engineers, and their propsals budget (for gathering information, studying requirements and feasibilty) exceeded my total budget by about three times!
The Americans, in general, have money to throw at projects until they get exactly what they want.
Yes the Israelis are surrounded by enemies (UAE is getting Lecelerc), but that simplifies the situation, they know where the bad guys are, and who they are, from one year to the next. The US doesn't know it could be called on to fight from one month to another. Merkava is optimised for the Middle East scenario.
As far as competitions go, do you mean the international shoot-outs (CAT and such), do the French compete? Haven't seen much if anything about Leclerc at these comps, they generally don't go in for public demonstrations like that.
But apparently Leclerc came a close second to Leopard 2A5 in the greek competition to select their next MBT. And the bit about firing accurately on the move is also endorsed by a couple of US defence industry sites I've been looking at, possibly because the Leclercs can data-link their target info from one to another and engage that way.
Oli

 

Now, I always thought that firing on the move had been mastered in the 60s, when targetting computers were linked to gyro-stabilisers. :-?

 

"mastered" is a relative term, there's degrees of accuracy, and as I hope I indicated, I'm not entirely sure what the French mean, but it has been repeated on normally reliable US and Israeli sites.
Again, I have the feeling it's something that we as interested but non-involved parties will quite find the truth of... :cry:
Oli

 

This is especially true when the dutch are at the controls and firing !

 

Fair point.

I suppose they are just claiming to have the most accurate 'firing while moving' system.