Sorry about the delay.

See here for details.

The Leopard 2 and Merkava won overwhelmingly the first first round, but now is where they face their toughest battles yet. Round two has the Leopard 2 facing off against the Abrams and the Merkava taking on the Challenger 2.

The polls opened on January 7th and will close on January 14th.

This again, huh? I'd go Leopard 2a6 over the M1a2 mainly because it has superior anti-mine protection, and better overall sloping. FCS and most everything else are going to run very close to equal.

Personally, I think that the vote should be closed to all people from the USA and Germany cuz people's patriotism gets in the way.

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.

I went with Leo 2 A6 because of its fuel efficiency compared to the M1A2, it's additional mine protection and the ease at which problems can be diagnosed and repaired. Also, the Leo 2 A6 is well built with very high engineering standards. In all of the other areas it's very difficult to seperate them.

I definately see the point made by Whispering about the fact that the M1 has been proven in combat. However, the Leopard 2 isn't just some run-of-the-mill design from a middling country. This is a German-made tank from the people who arguably have built the best MBTs in history. If any tank can be expected to perform it would be a German tank. The Germans are, after all, probably the best engineers in the world.

The more I think about it I believe the Leopard 2 to be the better designed tank.

They are pretty much the same tank IMO, as pointed out by others they both evolved from the MBT-70 program or whatever it was called what was a joint German-American Army project. I will also stick with the battle hardened theory because that was also the reason that the Abrams and Challenger 2 received first round bye and until the Leopard 2 has some combat statistics to back up its stats on paper I will go with the Abrams. Remember, teh T-72 on paper looked like an awesome tank for the Russians but it was so ineffective in Afghanistan that the Soviets used T-64's instead.

Abrams. No, not just for my sig. I think it is good tank. It has powerfire than armor, I think.

M1..............

M1. I really think its the best tank in the world right now. Not only that after two wars they are able to work out all the bugs and improve their reliability and protection even more.

Besides you guys may not know despite the "official" listing of its speed of 72kmh/45mph, the M1 can actually go more than 100kph/60-70mph (and shoot on the move to boot). If you talk to some of their crews they'll tell you that during wartime the first thing they do is take off the governors that regulate their speed.

Other tanks can't do that unless they also have a turbine engine. Most tanks have regular diesel engines.

which of these two has seen more combat?