I dun think so, the tanks are roughly equal in armor and
mobility (the Abrams armor is probably heavier, the americans being
crazy about DU). In a slug out fight I suppose the outcome is more
dependent on crew then tank, though I suspect the M1 DU package
will give it an edge over the Leopard 2, which due to certain
conservations in european states about using nuclear material, is
relys on less effective materials to make up it's armor.
However in the generally tatical sense, when it comes to factoring
in most of the fog of war and stuff into the M1A2 vs Leopard 2
battles, the advanced digitalized technology of the Americans will
start to show it's edge over the Leopard 2, which is by comparism,
relatively blind and deaf very fast.
IVIS technology and intergrated databus gives M1A2 unit far more
situtational awareness and response times then any Leopard 2 unit
(which is very important, given tanks are largely blind), and
that's going to be a definate advantage. FCS of the M1A2 is
superior above any tank currently, given the new upgraded databus
the blackboxes that control FCS makes up a sizeable proportion of
the tank's cost), and thus the M1A2 Abrams can shoot more
accucrately then any tank in the market today. Any body rooting for
the Leopard 2 dun seem to have any valid reason rather then rabid
anti-americanism...
Unfortunately the reason why we dun see many M1A2s around opr being
deployed is because they are expensive to build, and hence the army
is still relying on it's M1A1 tanks to do the job while they slowly
filter in the A2 models. All of the american tanks in Gulf War2 are
A1 variants.
And by the way, the M1A1 has preformed very well in GW2 so far,
most of the supposed knock outs were shots to the thinly armoured
rear areas of the tank. That kind of ambush woulds have taken out
any MBT. However when the Abrams was not ambushed or surprised, the
Iraqis found that it was pratically impossible to destroy. Their
RPGs simply left burn marks and their 125mm tank cannons bounced
off the frontal armor of the A1 like peashooter ammo. That's the
reason why the Americans happy happy dare to drive their tanks to
the heart of Badhdad in the midst of heavy RPG fire and all the
nonsense the Iraqis were throwing at them, the Abrams will be
relatively unaffected unless their crews got careless or failed to
check six.
