Re: Iran\'s Past
"Had they been accepted by the first customer, what would have been the main tank of the British forces?"
Dunno. From what I know the Challenger seemed to be in the right spot at the right time. The MBT-80 was going nowhere by 1979 and the Abrams was deemed too fuel thirsty by the british army when it appeared. So basically I think that the only alternative to jumping on the
Shir-2/Challenger bandwagon was going for the
Leopard 2. From a practical point of view it would have been better but politically how would have it gone?
The problem with the surplus Leopard 2 is that they are going to replace old stuff, like M60s or Cold war era export soviet tanks, bringing a substantial qualitative improvement and standardization for NATO armies. If you are already sitting on a thousands of Challenger you would not want used and logistically different tanks which are, give or take, in the same quality range. You would want a new tank, which would be used initially to supplement the Challenger and replacing whatever obsolete old junk was left.
The only reason to buy surplus Leos would be increasing the numbers on the cheap, but would that be necessary?
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