Leopard 2
Germany's Leopard 2 — the most widely fielded Western main battle tank, a 120 mm four-crew design exported to more than 20 armies and donated to Ukraine, where its 2A4 and 2A6 variants have fought since 2023.
Germany's Leopard 2 — the most widely fielded Western main battle tank, a 120 mm four-crew design exported to more than 20 armies and donated to Ukraine, where its 2A4 and 2A6 variants have fought since 2023.
Overview
The Leopard 2 is the standard main battle tank of Germany and, through four decades of export, the de facto common heavy tank of European NATO. Built by Krauss-Maffei Wegmann — now part of KNDS Deutschland — around a Rheinmetall 120 mm smoothbore gun and an MTU diesel, it is fielded by more than twenty armies in variants spanning the 1980s-vintage 2A4 to the current 2A7V and the newly delivered 2A8. Its blend of firepower, protection and mobility, plus a deep installed base and shared logistics, made it the natural backbone of the Western coalition's tank donations to Ukraine.
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- Development
- What comes next
- Design & capabilities
- Variants
- Combat record / operational use
- Advantages
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- Analyst Section
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- Comparable systems — analyst view
- Analyst note