| Well, I don't think my opinion is too heavily influenced on patriotism; if it comes down to the Challenger 2 vs. the Abrams I'm going with the Brittish design.
However, I find the Abrams to be the superior tank in this case. There are many reasons and I'm sure they will all be brought up by other posters so I'll just stick with one. Because the Abrams is battle tested. It has fought and won multiple wars and is still a top-of-the-line MBT. The truth is that you don't know how any piece of millitary hardware is going to perform until you throw it into a foreign landscape where the enemy knows that if he doesn't kill it... he dies. The Abrams has made other tanks that have stood against it look like ameatures with tripple-didget kill/loss ratios at times.
Not only this but in Iraq right now you have dismounted infantry with powerful weapons and who know all the weak points on the tank trying to kill it at close quarters; a tank driver's worst nightmare. And yet the vehicle has still proven to be extrordinarily difficult to knock out.
The Leopard 2 has not been in the same situations and although battle testing isn't the only criteria you use to judge a tank, I think it is an extremely important one and it is the main factor in my choice of the Abrams. |