Tank War: What if France's Leclerc Battled America's M1 Abrams?
Sebastien Roblin
Security,
Does Paris come out on top?
The three principal Western main battle tanks — the Abrams, the German Leopard 2 and the British Challenger 2 — share many design elements such as 120-millimeter guns, four-person crews and composite armor. While similar in its major performance parameters, the Leclerc exhibits a lot of French quirks.
In place of a human loader, it features an auto-loader system with a rate of fire of 12 shells per minute. The auto-loader reduces the crew to just three — a commander, gunner and driver. The Leclerc has a .50-caliber machine gun in the coaxial position next to the main gun, rather than next to the commander’s hatch.
Its 120-millimeter smoothbore main gun is slightly longer than the Abrams’ is, meaning it can, in theory, penetrate more armor. It’s also capable of firing programmable air-burst high-explosive shells. But the Leclerc’s principal advantages lie in its defensive properties and mobility.
The comparative effectiveness of modern tank armor is difficult to calculate, but the Leclerc and the M-1 appear to have similar frontal armor, though some critics argue the Leclerc’s frontal plate has more weak points around its sensors. In place of the M-1’s Chobham composite armor, the Leclerc boasts an unusual mix of composite, traditional and reactive armor that is slightly more effective against kinetic penetrators fired by other tanks.
“So what do you think of France’s new super tank, the Leclerc?” a retired colonel in the French army’s logistical brigade jokingly asked me in 2002. “You know, the one we paid a fortune for and that we’ll never use in battle.”
So far his prediction has proved true. The French military has deployed light armored vehicles and air power in its combat missions in Afghanistan, Congo, Cote d’Ivoire, Central African Republic and Mali.
But the French army’s main battle tanks haven’t fired in anger since the Gulf War.
But in the summer of 2015, the United Arab Emirates threw two battalions of Leclercs into the civil war in Yemen — and from the few sketchy reports, it seems the tank has fared better than the American-made M-1 Abrams has done in the same conflict
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