Comments by "Andy Dee" (@AndyViant) on "France just got left out of development of Europe's next gen tank?" video.

  1.  @MaxzzzZ2  the leclerc is a seriously capable tank, better than the leo2a5 and maybe the leo2a6. The problem has always been cost not capability. The Euro designs have mostly been huge failures. It's the too many cooks in the kitchen thing. Australia is ditching the Eurocopter Tiger because of the issues with it. Reality is each nation should have their pitch using an agreed standard missile/gun platform and the best nation wins. Germany doesn't like that - as the most powerful economy of Europe they want to win the bid AND build it, yet they invest way less $$$ than any of the others in actually buying them. Right now Poland is putting the lot of them to shame, and their solution was to buy Korean for good reason. Because all the Euro stuff has an appalling history of failure and waste.
    8
  2.  @Dan-lg2by  You might wanna tell that to Napoleon dude.
    7
  3. More that France realises that 70 ton MBT's are not a great option given modern logistics needs, requirement to drive over 14th century bridges, and huge running costs. Great as placeholders in a defensive war perhaps, and maybe a deterrent like battleships were in WW2, but the tech has moved on. An MBT that can be destroyed by a crew of 2 infantry with a Javelin, or worse yet a drone is not a winning strategy. France worked that out with the first ATGM's, and changed their strategy ages ago. MBT's are still needed to hold and delay MBT's, sure. But mostly you need enough heavy armour to engage and from there it's about manoeuver and flanking. 2 MBT's to engage and draw fire and 8 flanking vehicles with top fire ATGM's will beat 5 MBT's every day of the week. Cost wise it's probably more like 30 flankers not 8, making that strategy vastly more capable. In fact, France takes that to extremes - since they have a lot smaller flanking vehicles than just the Jaguars and AMX 10 RC's equipped with ATGM's. They worked that out long before the US did. So too did Taiwan and Korea. You would have to ask if Germany STILL hasn't worked it out. America's answer to that problem was the stryker. France's answer was the AMX-10 RC, over 20 years earlier, and even the ERC 90 sagaie. Of the two nations it's fair to say that France came up with the right decision decades earlier. The asymmetric warfare of the last 30 years favoured them, and now drone technology and stealth do even more so. Both countries still have their frontline MBT's too. France still has the capability and tooling to make more leclerc tanks if required France is shifting from the AMX-10 RC to the EBRC jaguars, at 5 million Euros a pop (about 5.3 million each). Meanwhile Poland is paying $6 Billion for 116 abrams, at a cost of 51 Million USD each. Almost a 10:1 ratio of equipment. I'm not saying Poland is making a huge mistake, mind. Poland doesn't have great terrain to use the same tactics as France chooses to use. Poland is far too flat for that kind of warfare, and is purely focusing on a defensive war against Russia.
    3
  4.  @BruneSixtine  It's never needed to be. Who in Africa has tanks that are even of significant threat to the French recon vehicles like the AMX 10 RC. We saw in the Gulf War that the AMX 10 RC carved through Iraq like butter.
    2
  5. lol
    1
  6.  @trevorhart545  will eat a Leopard for breakfast. M1A1 pretty easy, too. It is a much more modern design. Abrams sepv3 not so much...
    1
  7. Nah. You need standardisation of the main logistical demands. Infantry and artillery ammunition, fuel, maybe missiles and tank gun rounds but these last two are less essential. We can all eat the same food and transport trucks are really more or less interchangeable. But of course, that's not really happening - the US pretty much forced it's standards on NATO way back when. Turns out the Brits were right about a caliber of roughly .280 caliber all along, rather than the 5.56x55 and 7.62x51, and these NATO standards are getting dropped like hot potatoes. 5.56 doesn't have the punch for body armour, even in the 77 grain projectiles, and the knockdown has never been good. One thing covid taught us is that relying on global manufacturing and just in time logistics is a recipe for shortages and disaster. Add a major conflict and you better have a big stockpile, but no one can afford that sitting there. So for smaller nations like Belgium or the Netherlands, without the production capability of the France, Germany, Italy or UK, agreeing to stock something that a bigger player uses, so long as they can get an agreement to also manufacture at home really matters. Keeps them able to churn training stock for peacetime but when the big show happens they will need to rely on someone else to provide a big chunk of their gear. For the nations with the production capability and logistics capability to project force on their own if needed (remembering how late the US has been to not one but two world wars) then having your own capability is more crucial. You think the US is gonna get involved in the next Falklands War? Just remember, keep those m4's and strykers in a reserve depot somewhere, just in case. It's much easier to chuck some new optics and battlefield computers on some stuff than it is to manufacture billions of dollars worth of gear in a month.
    1