(Ankara) In 2016 Turkey decided to launch Operation Euphrates Shield supposedly to take on ISIS next door in Syria, but to be honest it was actually used to wage war on the Kurds and put an end to any dreams they had of forming their own home land. Anyway after suffering heavy losses to their much more numerous but older M60 tanks, the Turks decided to reinforce the area with their Leopard 2 tanks seen as one of the best in the world and during the Battle for Al Bab they lost 10 of them
The Turks when they purchased the tanks off of Germany had plans to upgrade the A4 standard they had purchased to the Turkish NG (next generation) standard.
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| Leopard 2 NG and Leopard 2 A4 However as a cost cutting measure, the Turks decided to not go down that route and instead concentrate on their new Atlay Main Battle Tank However the civil war next door in Syria caught everyone unawares and the Turks found out the hardway that Anti-tank weapons are rewriting the battlefield. The Turks caught with their pants down decided to look into uparmouring their leopard 2 tanks and so gave the thumbs up to the NG package and as of last month, the armour package is ready for production and retrofitting to the tanks:    Not much has been revealed about the upgrade other than it weights 7 tonnes and that it can protect against all known missile attacks |
