Hello all.

I have read a few scant articles describing how the Germans (a few years ago now) decided to shrink their tank force (budget cuts; end of cold war, ect) and sold off a lot of their tanks cheap to other nations. In particuler; Spain was mentioned as buying lots of the German tanks.

Does anybody know anything about this? I looking for resources that will list when and to whom the Germans sold their tanks. Are their any listings of which nations are the users of the Leo? Does anybody know from your own reading or can you recomend a good website?

Thank you

There are various NGOs and similar organizations (mostly with anti-proliferation and anti-arms trade kind of agendas) that track such things.  I can't recall any specific names, but googling "arms trade" and similar terms will likely pull them up.

 

The German military was generally downsized after the end of the Cold War, and a lot of stuff was both sold (Sweden bought a bunch of surplus East German stuff to augment their more front-line Leo 2s and CV 90s, etc., for instance) and given away free or at pretty nominal prices to help with NATO standardization for eastern European nations (I think they gave the Poles a brigade or two worth of Leo 2s and other equipment).  I think German downsizing also allowed some other NATO nations (like the Netherlands) to speed up their conversion from Leo I (or whatever they had prior to Leo 2).

 

Leo 2 has sold very well, internationally, though I'm not clear on which nations benefitted from German surplus directly.  Spain has the Leo 2, but they are building them in Spain (at least now -- not sure how many came from Germany prior to production in country starting).

I think the UK army only had around 300 Chally 2's, and I heard we got rid of I think 60 recently, so down to 240 operational MBT's, unless I am mistaken.

 

It's something that always got me with all these zombie films.... whats a zombie going to do to a tank, other than get squished?

Well if zombie parts start clogging the running gear you may have problems.

OK - we finally DO agree on something. Zombie film afficiando here as well. Waiting for the February 14th release of Geroge Romero's Diary of the Dead, and the new Day of the Dead with Ving Rhames, scheduled for an April release. (not the same DOTD character, and with SLOW ZOMBIES this time, btw, not like in Dawn of the Dead -he plays Captain Rhodes this time).

 

 

swhitebull - zombie heads run over by tanks make a sound akin to smashing a watermelon. Unfortunately, when dealing with millions of zombies in a Class 4 outbreak, you will run out of fuel for the tanks long before you run out of zombies. Then slowly starve to death in the tank. Great Call of Cthulhu mini-scenario on this in Blood Brothers 2 called Dead on Arrival 2: Dead by Dawn.

 

 

swhitebull

(PS, how did a tank thread get turned into a zombie thread?)