• Military Menu                       

• Introduction
• Systems
• Facilities
• Agencies
• Industry
• Operations
• Countries
• Hot Documents
• News
• Reports
• Policy
• Budget
• Congress
• Links

• WMD
• Intelligence
• Homeland Security
• Space

Leopard 2A4 Battle tank - Spain

The Leopard was designed for the Central European Plain and to close off to the Soviet Armies the famous Fulda gap. It is a very technologically advanced tank, capable before and now of defeating a whole panoply of adversaries that the now defunct Soviet Army could put on to the battlefield. The idea was to provide a modern version of the Tiger I (or rather the Panther), with the same superiority over Soviet tanks like the T-34 but none of the weaknesses of the previous ‘big cat’.

There are two main development batches of the tank, the original models up to Leopard 2A4 which have vertically-faced turret armour, and the "improved" batch, namely the Leopard 2A5 and newer versions, which have angled arrow-shaped turret appliqué armour together with a number of other improvements.

When Spain started to acquire the first ones in 1998 (the Leopard 2A4), the Cold War had already been finished for several years. It can be argued that having this type of weapon acts as dissuasion to possible enemies and that membership of NATO obliges Spain to have a certain level of arms that are inter-operable with allies, without mentioning the necessity of maintaining an industrial base.

The LEOPARD 2 A4 tanks arrived in Spain as a result of the collaboration between Spain and Germany for the acquisition of this type of tanks in 1995. After Krauss-Maffei withdrew from the Lince development, a special lighter version of the Leopard 2 developed together with Santa Barbara Sistemas, Spain initially leased 109 Leopard 2A4 tanks. Germany transferred to Spain 108 tanks from the stock of the German army that arrived in 1998. These vehicles were distributed among the tank battalions of the mechanized brigades in Córdoba (BRIMZ X) and Badajoz (BRIMZ XI) and in the Zaragoza training unit.

With the arrival of the LEOPARD 2E to the units, the Leopards were sent as a crew to the regiments of Cavalry of Ceuta and Melilla. With the remaining units of LEOPARD 2 A4 it was planned to make special versions of sappers to replace them based on the M-60. To take advantage of the surplus armored material in certain units, a program was designed to transform the LEOPARD 2A4 Combat Tank into special Sapper Tank vehicles and Bridge Launchers. Pending the start of the aforementioned program, a specific plan was developed to rid the Units of this surplus, and for the concentration of 53 Cars in AALOG 41, in the long-term storage modality.

In this way, on 13 March 2012, AALOG 41 was appointed to assume the storage of the 53 Tanks within the facilities that this Unit has in the Logistics Center of Booths, making it responsible for the physical and documentary control, as well as the maintenance of its state of conservation. By October 2012, a first phase of the aforementioned plan is completed, which has successively involved the preparation of the cars in the units of origin, their administrative reception by the Group, the transport of the Cars from their initial location in Badajoz, Vitoria, Valladolid and Villaverde to the Logistics Center, the activation of the warehouse and the execution of the required maintenance tasks.

Previously, and as a continuation of the plan to concentrate maintenance capacities in Zone D of the San Jorge base, the former Captain Mayoral barracks, which began in 2010, the main warehouse of the Casetas Logistics Center was evacuated to activate the workshops again. at the AALOG Maintenance Group facilities.

The adaptation of the new workshops and that of the main warehouse vacated in the Carros warehouse has been carried out very quickly by the Zaragoza Works Command. All these activities have been a planning and management challenge for the new AALOG Integration and Control Center (CICAL). The second phase will begin on January 1, 2013, in which the EME will evaluate the result of the first, and will adopt a decision on the final situation to be achieved and, in particular, on the organizational dependency of the Booth Warehouse.

Around 40 of them were deemed surplus, and had for the past decade or so been left gathering dust in an army logistics base in Zaragoza. These are the tanks that in 2022 Madrid considered delivering to Kyiv.

Leopard to Ukraine

Spain confirmed an explosive report that it is considering supplying the Ukrainian army with dozens of Leopard 2 main battle tanks. The move would make Spain the first NATO-country to provide Kyiv with modern third-generation military vehicles and could heavily impact Ukraine’s chances in its battles against Russia in Donbas. But the news has put Berlin in a tough spot since its lawmakers would have the final say on whether the German-built super tanks ought to roll in Ukraine or not.

“The possibility of making this shipment is on the table,” Spain’s Defence Minister Margarita Robles on Wednesday confirmed to Spanish broadcaster Cadena SER, after daily newspaper El Pais on the weekend revealed the government was considering sending around 40 Leopard 2A4 tanks to Ukraine. According to the paper, which cited government sources, Spain’s Prime Minister Pedro Sanchez had made the offer to Ukraine’s President Volodomyr Zelensky already during a 21April 2022 visit to Kyiv, but said the plans had then temporarily been put on hold due to the complexity of the operation.

The article also said that Spain had offered to provide Ukrainian troops with the necessary training to operate the tanks, which would take place in Latvia where Spain currently has 500 soldiers deployed as part of NATO’s Enhanced Advanced Presence operation.

But even though Spain sees no immediate use for these tanks itself, handing them over to Ukraine would represent a huge leap in the West’s military support for Kyiv. “It would be the first time a NATO country supplied [Ukraine with] modern Western battle tanks,” German media stated shortly after El Pais published its article, noting Russia might interpret the move as a deliberate escalation of the conflict, and could go as far as accuse NATO of acting as a co-belligerent to Kyiv.

The tanks would inevitably boost Kyiv’s capabilities on the battlefield, where up until now it has had to make do with mainly Soviet-era T-64 and T-72 vehicles from the 1970s.

Gustav Gressel, an expert on Russian military issues at the European Council on Foreign Relations in Berlin, said that there are two main problems with these old USSR-era tanks. “They’re starting to run out […] and some components are only available via Russia which is far from ideal considering the current context.”

Alexandre Vautravers, a security and armaments expert and editor at the military magazine Revue Militaire Suisse (RMS), also pointed to the fact that these tanks are not fit for modern warfare. "They are what we call second-generation tanks, manufactured until the 1970s, whereas the Leopard 2s are third-generation tanks." According to Vautravers, switching to Leopard 2 would be a huge lift for the Ukrainian army in Donbas, considering Russia has mainly deployed second-generation – albeit upgraded – tanks to the area.

"The armour of the third-generation tanks, especially on the front, is twice as effective as on previous-generation vehicles," he explained. They also have much greater firepower: The firing rate is faster, and the ammunition used can pierce armour to a much greater extent than second-generation tanks ever could.

The Leopard 2s are also much more mobile. Although there is not that much difference in top-speed (70 km/h versus 60 km/h), "these vehicles can accelerate much easier and move much quicker in difficult terrain," he said. "The on-board electronics have made considerable progress," he added, pointing to the Leopard 2’s digital fire control system, as well as some of its other high-tech features, which include advanced night vision and sighting equipment.

In all, Vautravers said a Leopard 2 tank in motion can “fire with almost as much precision as if it were standing still", and are much quicker to fire off the first shot “which is often decisive in a tank versus tank confrontation." In order to take advantage of the Leopard 2’s full potential, however, Vautravers underscored the importance for the Ukrainians to get proper training, since second-generation and third-generation tanks were not at all built for the same purposes. “If it would be used in the same way [as a second-generation tank] – to defend yourself basically – you wouldn’t see a big difference,” he said, noting the Leopard 2’s strengths lie in its offensive capabilities.

But there is another hurdle that could prevent Ukraine from receiving the tanks – the fact that they were manufactured in Germany. According to German daily Süddeutsche Zeitung this means that Berlin would have to approve Madrid’s potential export of Leopard 2s to Kyiv. But the topic of sending tanks to Ukraine is especially sensitive in Germany, where discussions have so far only been limited to potentially supplying Kyiv with second-generation vehicles. And even those plans have been slow to get off the ground.

“For historical reasons, [German Chancellor Olaf] Scholz is very afraid of the political impact of images showing German tanks firing at Russians," Gressel explained. Spain’s potential plans to send third-generation German tanks to Ukraine would therefore make Berlin more than uncomfortable, which, up until now, has been able to argue that even if it chooses not to equip Ukraine with tanks itself, other European countries are free to do so. The latest developments in Spain, however, made it clear that “Germany makes and supplies tanks to almost half of Europe”, Gressel said. Europe’s willingness to support Kyiv with modern military equipment, therefore, seems to depend more on Germany than any other country on the continent.